Russian Federation on Saturday said its expelled two Americans in connection with an incident last month outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Advertisement
On Friday, the US State Department announced they expelled two Russian diplomats in June over an attack on a US diplomat in Moscow. That diplomat is one of the two Americans expelled, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday.
The U.S. diplomat “was attacked by a Russian policeman” while attempting to enter the American embassy last month in Moscow, Kirby told reporters, speaking just days after a video of the altercation was broadcast on Russian TV.
He noted that Washington had initially sought to handle the affair via direct government-to-government channels but said that Russian officials’ public allegations compelled the U.S.to make the rebuke public. In a raid following Fogle’s arrest, Russian authorities say they discovered an elaborate arsenal of suspected spying equipment including two wigs, three pairs of glasses, a compass, a map of Moscow, a knife, a lighter, his United States embassy ID and wads of 500-euro notes.
Kirby said the attack was “unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee”.
The statement cited Ryabkov as saying, “We hope that they in Washington will realize all the viciousness of the aggressive anti-Russia line”. With the officer pinning him down, the man managed to push himself through a door into the embassy. “But if they decide to follow the way of escalation, they will not be left without response.”.
“Instead of the Central Intelligence Agency employee, who was in disguise, as we understand, it could have been anyone – a terrorist, an extremist, a suicide bomber”, Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told NTV, adding that the guard was just doing his job. She said over the past two years that “harassment and surveillance” of USA diplomatic personnel in Moscow by police and security personnel has increased “significantly”.
In the embassy incident, the American diplomat and Russian guard are shown on surveillance video wrestling and falling to the ground.
The Russian embassy in the US did not have any immediate comment Saturday.
Advertisement
In late June, U.S. State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said there has been a “longstanding problem” of harassment of U.S. diplomats by what she called “host government service”, an apparent reference to security services. In the most recent incident, a Russian ship last week came within 150 yards of a U.S. Navy vessel, the USS San Jacinto, that was sailing in the eastern Mediterranean.
