Russian foreign ministry has withdrawn their accreditations and directed them to exit the country in two weeks. Moscow also invited a UK embassy official over the allegations.
The British government has dismissed the accusations, with a UK foreign ministry official saying, “This is not the first time that Russia has made malicious and baseless accusations against our staff.”
Disputes over intelligence have long been a source of tensions between London and Moscow. UK previously blamed Russia for staging high-profile poisonings in Britain, such as the 2006 murder of Kremlin dissident Alexander Litvinenko and the 2018 Novichok poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal. As a response to the Skripal affair, Britain and its allies expelled dozens of Russian suspected spies.
The development comes as geopolitics change as Russia more and more shows Europeans, but not the United States, as the cause of conflict in Ukraine. The European finger-pointing aligns with the incoming administration of US presidential hopeful Donald Trump casting the first signals of warming with the Kremlin.
