Russia expelled a British diplomat who worked at the embassy in Moscow Tuesday, accusing him of spying, marking the latest blow to the two countries\u2019 worsening diplomatic relations. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Federal Security Service (FSB) alleged that the British diplomat intentionally provided false information to enter the country as a cover for espionage work, \u201cthereby violating Russian law,\u201d according to state media TASS. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Russian FSB has identified signs of intelligence and subversive work by the said diplomat that threatens the security of the Russian Federation,\u201d TASS cited the security service as saying. <\/p>\n
The Russian Foreign Ministry subsequently revoked the diplomat\u2019s diplomatic accreditation and ordered him to leave Russia within two weeks, TASS reported. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s FSB claimed the diplomat was sent to Moscow to \u201creplace\u201d one of six alleged British intelligence officers that Russia expelled this summer. <\/p>\n
In August, Russia revoked the accreditation of the diplomats, also on allegations of espionage. At the time, Britain described the accusations as \u201ccompletely baseless.\u201d <\/p>\n
Relations between the UK and Russia have been increasingly strained as Russia continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. <\/p>\n
The UK has joined the heavy sanctions imposed by Western nations against Russia and pledged billions of dollars of military and economic support to Ukraine since 2022. <\/p>\n
Last week, Ukraine launched the British-French-made Storm Shadow missiles at targets inside Russia for the first time, according to a Russian military blog and Reuters, a day after Ukraine fired US-made ATACMS missiles into Russia. <\/p>\n
That prompted direct condemnation from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said the Kremlin\u2019s launch of a new medium-range ballistic missile last week was a response to the \u201creckless decisions\u201d of Western countries in supplying weapons to Kyiv. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Russia launched a \u201crecord\u201d 188 drone attacks on Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Russia fired four more Iskander-M ballistic missiles at Ukraine, the Air Force said. The attack damaged critical infrastructure in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, causing power outages, according to the local military administration. <\/p>\n
In the Kyiv region, air defense interceptions could be heard operating throughout the night. Several residential homes were damaged by the downed drones, which shattered windows of houses, Kyiv authorities said. <\/p>\n
Clare Sebastian and Maria Kostenko contributed to this report.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russia expelled a British diplomat who worked at the embassy in Moscow Tuesday, accusing him…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}