Russians race to shut down consulate
A Russian diplomatic official Saturday said that his staff fully intended to meet the U.S. State Department’s deadline to shutter the Russian Consulate building in San Francisco by the end of the day, but characterized the move as an “unbelievable” development that would put further strain on the already frayed relationship between the two countries.
At 1 p.m., the Russian flag was still flying above the building, but most of the diplomatic personnel at the consulate were already gone by Saturday afternoon. Workers hauled office furniture and large moving boxes out of the building and into waiting minivans, working quickly to comply with the order handed down by the Trump administration Thursday to close the consulate.
That order came after Russia ordered American diplomats out of the country just days after Congress approved a sweeping new round of sanctions to punish Russia for meddling in the U.S. election, its annexation of Crimea and its sustained military presence in Ukraine.
Andrey Varlamov, the deputy consul general for the Russian Federation in San Francisco, said he and his staff were frustrated with the suddenness with which the consulate building — Russia’s oldest in the U.S. — had to close down. The staff at the building issued 16,000 tourist visas for Americans last year, and around 8,000 passports to Russians. The consulate also serves as a critical cultural hub and diplomatic go-between for Russian citizens living in the Bay Area, particularly when legal troubles arise.
“This is property that belongs to us that we can’t use,” Varlamov said, adding the two days his staff were given to shut down operations forced employees to burn sensitive documents containing personal information of Americans and Russians used in the processing of passports and visas. “We didn’t have time to pack them all. We had to destroy them,” he said. Acrid black smoke could be seen billowing out of the consulate’s chimney on Friday, prompting a visit from the Fire Department.
Varlamov said U.S. officials who identified themselves as representatives of the Office of Foreign Missions, a division
of the State Department, whisked through the consulate building Saturday to oversee efforts to close down operations.
While official diplomatic activities have been halted at the consulate, several Russian individuals and families who reside in the building will be allowed to continue living there until Oct. 1, Varlamov said.
A scattering of curious onlookers filed past the consulate on Saturday, with some even stopping to pose for photographs outside its front gate. Edward Walker, executive director of the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, lives near the consulate and has held regular meetings with the consulate’s employees for years. Shutting down the consulate, Walker said, was “a reflection of how bad the relationship has gotten, and how adversarial it is now.”