Today, Russia drove out a British diplomat because they thought he was a spy. London called the accusations “complete nonsense.”
Over the past ten years, both Moscow and London have kicked out several embassy staff members, accusing each other of spying, according to AFP.
After one side kicks someone out, the opposing side usually does the same thing.
The Russian security service FSB announced that 29-year-old embassy secretary Albertus Gerhardus Janse Van Rensburg was kicked out for doing “subversive intelligence activities that threaten Russia’s security.”
It went on to say, “A decision was made to take away Janse Van Rensburg’s accreditation, and he was told to leave Russia within two weeks.”
The Russian foreign ministry claimed it had called in Britain’s charge d’affaires over the incident and told the UK not to react.
Britain said that Russia was running a “aggressive and coordinated campaign of harassment.”
A representative for the foreign ministry said, “The accusations made today by Russia against our diplomats are complete nonsense.” They also said that Russia was “pumping out malicious and completely baseless accusations about their work.”
The Ukraine crisis has made things worse between London and Moscow, and surveillance claims have made things worse for decades.
British investigators concluded that the Russian secret service killed Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who had defected to the UK, in London in 2006. They said he was poisoned with polonium.
In 2018, the UK stated that Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in the British cathedral city of Salisbury.
One person died after handling the delivery device, a discarded perfume bottle. This resulted to the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats in decades, who were thought to be spies.
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