Further sanctions against Russia could come ‘at any time’, says May
Britain has held back from an immediate escalation of the round of tit-for-tat reprisals with Russia in the wake of the Salisbury poison attack.
But Prime Minister Theresa May told a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) that further measures were under active consideration and she was ready to deploy them “at any time”.
There had been speculation that the NSC might agree new retaliatory measures, after Moscow’s response to the UK’S first round of sanctions went further than Mrs May’s expulsion of 23 suspected spies from the Russian embassy.
As well as throwing out 23 UK diplomats, Moscow ordered the British Council to cease activities in Russia and withdrew permission for the reopening of the St Petersburg consulate.
The Russian “undeclared intelligence officers” left the country’s consulate on Tuesday, six days after Mrs May gave them a week to pack their bags and leave the UK.
A procession of vehicles took a number of individuals away from the gated Kensington Palace Gardens complex close to the Russian Embassy in west London.
Children, suitcases, bags and pet baskets were loaded into the three cars, five people carriers and three smallsized coaches which left the west London complex shortly after 10am.
The NSC meeting heard that action had been taken over the past week to tighten checks on
0 Passengers wave after their van bearing diplomatic plates left the Russian Embassy in London yesterday private flights coming into the UK and to prepare legislation which will allow the authorities to target the assets of foreign nationals linked to human rights abuses.
“The Prime Minister reiterated that we will freeze Russian state assets wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life of property of UK nationals or residents,” said the Prime Minister’s spokesman.
The spokesman declined to comment on the decision of the president of the European Commission, Jean-claude Juncker, to write to Mr Putin to congratulate him on his reelection as president.
Without mentioning the March 4 nerve agent attack which has left ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in a critical condition in hospital and injured a policeman who came to their aid, Mr Juncker called in his letter for “positive relations” between the EU and Russia. Conservative MEPS called Mr Juncker’s statement “nauseating”.
US President Donald Trump told journalists that he had called Mr Putin to “congratulate him on his electoral victory”
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he would still do business with Mr Putin despite “all fingers” pointing towards Russia being responsible for the Salisbury spy incident.
He told the BBC: “All fingers point towards Russia’s involvement in this, and obvi- ously the manufacture of the material was undertaken by the Russian state originally.
“What I’m saying is the weapons were made from Russia, clearly. I think Russia has to be held responsible for it but there has to be an absolutely definitive answer to the question where did the nerve agent come from? I asked the Russians be given a sample so that they can say categorically one way or the other.”