Russia retaliates as UN calls for communication
RUSSIA booted out 60 US diplomats last night as the head of the UN warned of the dangers of a communication breakdown.
The 58 envoys in Moscow and two in Yekaterinburg must leave by April 5 – and the US St Petersburg consulate will be shut.
The Kremlin’s move was the first retaliation for 60 Russian diplomats being thrown out of the US this week. Twentyfour other nations joined history’s biggest expulsion of Russians by Britain’s allies.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of more expulsions to come, saying: “The measures would be reciprocal.”
But the US said Russia had simply shown they were not interested in diplomacy.
Last night UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Russian-US relations were deteriorating towards a Cold War situation.
But, he added: “In the Cold War there were mechanisms of communication and control to avoid escalation of incidents to ensure things would not get out of control.
“Those mechanisms have been dismantled. I do believe that mechanisms of this sort are necessary again.”
The wind is appropriately Siberian, chopping at the River Avon’s waters, rattling the cathedral spire. But as Easter approaches, the mood in Salisbury – four weeks on from the Russian spy poisoning – is anything but icy.
At last the city centre is alive again, with traders hawking their wares, young mums pushing prams, couples supping flat whites in the street.
Even the market’s twiceweekly ice-cream van is doing a roaring trade, despite the driving March rain.
Whether this has more to do with the British Bulldog spirit or the council having just introduced free parking – ordinarily £9.10 a day – is a moot point.
Rev Kelvin Inglis, rector at St Thomas’s church, says: “We won’t be put off by chemical warfare, but we don’t like paying for parking.” Since the attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, the city’s central square has been home to police and reporters.
But you wouldn’t know it today. Though Zizzi, the Mill pub, and the green where father – still fighting for his life – and daughter fed the ducks remain cordoned off, elsewhere, it is business as usual.
On Tuesday – market day – thousands braved the rain to put two fingers up to Mr Putin. Since the March 4 Novichok attack, big-screen TVs have been selling fast and a baby boom is predicted in nine months after the people of Salisbury battened down the hatches.
Pregnant mum Abby Nanson was in Zizzi with her husband the night before the attack. She says: “I’m six months pregnant and all my friends on the local mums Facebook group seem to be getting pregnant too, now.
“But now, it’s time to come out fighting and show the Russians
It was dead because of the outrageous cost of parking, not some spy skulduggery ANDY GRIGG RESTAURATEUR, ON REASON CENTRE WAS QUIET