Dispute forces Russia to close S.F. consulate
The diplomats at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco have been known to bring plates of delicacies and vodka shots to neighborhood block parties and, for the last few years, inflated a big snowman out front at Christmas.
The gestures of goodwill, though, will be sidelined amid escalating tension between the U.S. and Russia. The Trump administration, in a move reminiscent of the Cold War, ordered the shutdown by Saturday of the stately brick building on Green Street in Cow Hollow.
The closure, the latest in a series of tit-for-tat retaliations, carried clear symbolism but will also limit Moscow’s operations in the U.S. and deprive
Russians in the Bay Area of the support of consular staff.
At the same time, it’s likely to inconvenience Americans seeking to travel to Russia or do business with the country. Last year, the consulate issued 16,000 visas for Americans, officials said.
In addition to the San Francisco closure announced Thursday, the U.S. is forcing the shut down of Russia’s chancery annex in Washington, D.C., and its consular annex in New York, in “the spirit of parity invoked by the Russians,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.
After Saturday, Russia will have three consulates in the U.S. — in Seattle, Houston and Washington, D.C. — the same number the U.S. has in Russia, she said.
“While there will continue to be a disparity in the number of diplomatic and consular annexes,” Nauert said, “we have chosen to allow the Russian government to maintain some of its annexes in an effort to arrest the downward spiral in our relationship.”
The State Department is not expelling the diplomats who work in San Francisco from the country. It was not immediately clear whether Russia would have to sell the building that houses the consulate — its oldest in the U.S.
In a statement, Russian officials called the decision “another unfriendly step of the U.S. authorities” that will hurt both Russian and American citizens.
The new Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, who arrived Thursday in Washington, D.C., commented before the announcement on the strained relationship between the two countries.
“Unfortunately, Russia-U.S. relations have seriously deteriorated over the past few years because of the actions taken by the previous U.S. administration, which was set to undermine the foundations of Russian-U.S. cooperation that took a very long time to create,” he said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper that was posted on the website of the Foreign Ministry.
The San Francisco closure reflects the spiraling of the U.S. relationship with Russia and suggests a turnaround under Trump — who has often spoken glowingly about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian leadership — is now a pipe dream, said Edward Walker, a UC Berkeley political scientist.
“It’s as bad as it’s ever been since the end of the Cold War,” he said. “It’s a negative-sum game that we never should be playing.”
He added, “The nuclear option, like cutting off banking, would be a huge deal. That would be economic war, and we’re nowhere near there with Russia.”
Stuck in the middle of the conflict are Russian entrepreneurs like Daniel Kravtsov who rely on easy access to a consulate to keep their businesses running.
Kravtsov, who is in the U.S. on a work visa, had to go to the consulate in San Francisco twice in the last year alone — once to get some business documents verified and again when money in his Russian bank account got stolen.
“It’s very inconvenient . ... Now we need to go to another city,” Kravtsov said. “I’m upset that everything is going in this direction.”
Russians don’t need to interact with the consulate frequently. But when they do, they typically have pressing reasons like renewing a passport, getting a birth certificate or completing a background check for the police.
Securing an appointment at the consulate in San Francisco was already a time-consuming process, with people from as far away as Los Angeles and Phoenix flying in. Now, the Russian Consulate in Seattle is the closest to the Bay Area, and some experts worry that the move will further strain U.S.-Russia business relations.
“If they were to renew a passport, they would have to wait three months just to get an appointment,” said Andrei Romanenko, a Bay Area immigration attorney who frequently deals with Russian clients. “But now it’s hard to predict what will happen.”
The closure of American consulates in Russia have also frustrated travelers. “It is frustrating on both sides,” he said.
By Thursday afternoon, at least 30 people were in line on Green Street, trying to renew passports or get visas to travel to Russia during the consulate’s walk-in hours.
Hours earlier, Max Kolysh, an American citizen born in Russia, tried to get inside to obtain a visa to travel to his native country for his father’s birthday. He was denied access because he didn’t have an appointment, and he feared it was too late to obtain the documents he needed.
“It’s really upsetting,” he said. “They need to expand (the consulate), not close it.”
Ekaterina Stanton was luckier. The dual citizen did not have an appointment but was able to get in Thursday morning because her renewed Russian passport had already been processed. She plans to visit her mother in Yekaterinburg in central Russia, which just had its U.S. Consulate closed.
“I guess there is a clear reciprocity that affected our family on both sides of the globe,” Stanton, a San Francisco attorney, said. “I’m very upset that the relationship has deteriorated so much. It affects so many common people. It’s sad.”
The State Department’s action on Thursday followed months of escalation. In July, Putin ordered the reduction of personnel in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in response to sanctions passed by Congress and approved by President Trump.
The sanctions were, in turn, retaliation for Russia’s suspected interference in last year’s presidential election as well as other actions, including the 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
In December, then-President Barack Obama ejected 35 Russian diplomats, including 11 from the San Francisco consulate, in response to what a State Department briefing paper described as harassment of U.S. diplomats in Russia that had “gone far beyond international diplomatic norms of behavior.”
The State Department said it hoped the two sides could avoid further retaliatory actions, improve relations and gain “increased cooperation on mutual areas of concern.”
“The United States,” Nauert said, “is prepared to take further action as necessary and as warranted.”
Antonov, the new ambassador, urged common sense as tensions rise.
“It shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia and the United States possess the biggest nuclear potentials and have particular responsibility for global stability and security,” he said. “The world is calmer and safer when we act together on the international arena.”