Staff remove the US flag from the consulate building in St. Petersburg. 2018 year. Photo: Igor Russak/SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire
“We view the American demand as an expulsion and will respond in kind,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The plot of farewell to 27 Russian diplomats (whose three-year term of stay in the United States has expired) and their families with the participation of Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov was shown on federal television. Half of the diplomats being expelled have left Washington these days, and the Americans are demanding that the same number of diplomats leave in six months. The Russian ambassador dismissed the US State Department's argument that Russian diplomats would have to leave because their visas had expired, saying that Washington's refusal to renew them was effectively tantamount to expelling the diplomats. Moscow called on Washington to lift several waves of mutual restrictions on the diplomats of the two countries and «return to the normal practice of diplomatic missions.» This is called «zero option». To use the phraseology of the President of Russia, the Foreign Ministry invites the State Department to «turn the page» and move on. There is no answer yet. Perhaps (and most likely) Washington connects it with the development of the situation around Ukraine. We state that, despite the fact that after the Biden-Putin summit in Geneva, the ambassadors of the two countries, who temporarily left Washington and Moscow for “consultations”, returned to their jobs, there was no further progress.
The diplomatic war, as it is called in the Russian media, or «tug-of-war» — the term used by the American press, has practically frozen the issuance of visas. Ordinary citizens with relatives in Russia and the United States, scientific institutes, cultural and sports organizations, business contacts (where they still remain) suffered.
The «stable, predictable relations» between countries, which the Biden administration has called its priority, are impossible in the conditions of visa and consular «paralysis».
As Arik Burakovsky, Associate Director of Russia and Eurasia Programs at Tufts University, points out, the United States and Russia have increasingly used diplomatic expulsions as a weapon in recent years. Once a tool reserved for particularly egregious cases of espionage, the expulsion of diplomats is now increasingly used as an expression of geopolitical disapproval of the «behavior» of the other side.
Another demand from Washington is to issue visas for the guards of the US ambassador in Moscow, otherwise the Russian ambassador Anatoly Antonov may be expelled from America, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Russian radio stations, calling such behavior «boorish.» The American media spoke about this requirement, referring to Lavrov. “We warned that if the rudeness continues (I can’t name their statements otherwise that “if you don’t accept guards for the ambassador immediately, we will ask Antonov to leave the United States”), if this rudeness continues, we have more reserves in order to truly equalize our diplomatic presences,” the head of Russian diplomacy said last Friday.
Who is to blame?
President Obama is to blame for the current diplomatic war, Lavrov said. “This is another spiral of the crisis that was started by Obama … Three weeks before leaving the White House, he decided to annoy Trump, slam the door and took away five objects of diplomatic property from us, kicked out dozens of diplomats who were forced to pack for three days with their families , well, it all started with that,” the minister added.
I note that President Trump not only did not lift the sanctions against diplomats, but also adopted new ones and then more than once proudly stated that “not a single The President of the United States has not been so tough on Russia.” The topic was continued by the current President Biden.
In December 2016, the White House did impose sanctions that primarily concerned Russian hackers and government organizations: intelligence services, institutions and companies associated, according to US intelligence and the Obama administration, with penetration into the information systems of the US federal government, the Democratic Party and commercial companies and election interference on the side of Donald Trump, as well as the theft of financial assets and personal information. In one package with sanctions against hackers and their «roof», 35 diplomats from the embassy in Washington and the consulate in San Francisco were ordered to leave the United States within 72 hours. The State Department closed two residential complexes in New York and Maryland that the 44th President said were being used for intelligence purposes.
Nobel laureate, best-selling author of philosophical books
President Obama began by trying to «reset» relations with the Kremlin (after the «Munich speech», the war in Georgia, etc.) .
According to legend, in order to better understand Russia, Obama watched the film «Kin-dza-dza» in the White House. But instead of «reboot» it turned out to be «overload». In Syria, where Obama drew «red lines» to prevent aid to the dictator (President Assad), in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine, Russia pursued a policy without looking back at «Obama's lines.» As a result, the president, whom the «hawks» in the United States and party colleagues scolded for foreign policy indecision regarding Moscow, and in Russia considered the cause of all troubles — from rising prices to light bulbs knocked out in the entrances — and portrayed as a fairy-tale villain at New Year's children's performances, ended his relationship with the Kremlin with a “demobilization chord”. Under the distribution were diplomats. Although Washington claimed to be fighting spies.
In response, Vladimir Putin first struck with peacefulness, saying that there would be no retaliatory expulsions of diplomats, and the rest houses of US diplomatic mission employees would not be closed (although Moscow “reserves the right to retaliate”). The President invited the children of American diplomats to a New Year's and Christmas tree party in the Kremlin. This was in sharp contrast to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who called the Obama administration «a group of foreign policy losers, preoccupied and dim-witted.»
what direction the Trump administration will take. Eventually, after Congress passed the 2017 sanctions bill, Moscow confiscated two U.S. diplomatic properties and ordered the U.S. diplomatic mission to cut its staff by 755, resulting in a significant slowdown in visa processing and cuts in public diplomacy. More to come.
The White House closed the Russian diplomatic buildings in New York and Washington, as well as the consulate in San Francisco, in what was condemned by the Russian Foreign Ministry as an «outrageous, disgusting and unprecedented» violation of international law. In 2018, the UK accused the Russian military of poisoning former «double agent» Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury with the Novichok nerve agent. In solidarity, President Donald Trump expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle in «the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history.» Putin, in turn, fired 60 US officials and closed the US consulate in St. Petersburg. The State Department closed its last two consulates in Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok to «ensure the safe and secure operation» of its embassy in Moscow, now the only U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia, while the Russian consulates in New York and Houston continued to operate.
Last April, Biden announced another round of sanctions in response to the SolarWinds data breach and alleged Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election. The US expelled 10 Russian diplomats, in response to which Russia expelled 10 US officials. US and Russian ambassadors John Sullivan and Anatoly Antonov returned home for months of consultations.
The Kremlin has declared the United States an «unfriendly» country, banning Russians from working at the US embassy in Moscow, leading to the suspension of visas, citizen services, and grant programs.
Remaining diplomatic personnel will no longer be allowed to move freely within Russia.
In the history of relations between the USA and the USSR, and then Russia, there have been massive mutual deportations, primarily related to spy scandals. Scouts under diplomatic cover are an inevitable element in the rules of the game of foreign policy and diplomacy. But new and new rounds of expulsions of diplomats not for outright espionage, but for, relatively speaking, «bad behavior» of politicians, as a result, lowered relations between our two countries to the lowest point. However, if the conflict situation around Ukraine can be resolved through diplomatic means, this may be a good reason for reviving consular and visa work and resuming normal exchanges at the level of citizens, NGOs, businesses, etc. If you ask the citizens of the two countries, they will only .