Russian diplomats move out of UK embassy following expulsion over Salisbury spy poisoning
Theresa May ordered Russian staff to pack their bags amid heightening tensions with Moscow, claiming London diplomats were 'undeclared intelligence officers'
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Your support makes all the difference.A plane carrying more than 20 Russian diplomats and their families has departed London’s Stansted airport, after they were expelled from Moscow’s Kensington embassy following the Salisbury poisoning.
Embassy staff waved goodbye as a procession of cars carrying roughly 80 people pulled away from the gated Kensington Palace Gardens complex just after 10am.
Hugging each other and carrying pet carriers, suitcases and bags, 23 diplomats with their children and families boarded a chartered flight to return to Russia.
Theresa May ordered the Russian staff to pack their bags last Wednesday, claiming the London diplomats were “undeclared intelligence officers”.
Moscow announced it would also throw out 23 British diplomats, and that it would close the British Council and shut down the British consulate in St Petersburg in retaliation.
The National Security Council was considering the latest developments in the troubling case of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were poisoned using a nerve agent at the beginning of the month and remain in critical condition.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accused Russia of trying to conceal “the needle of truth in a haystack of lies” over the case – after Mr Putin dismissed the idea of Russian responsibility as “nonsense”.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary said the use of a nerve agent against the Skripals was “very deliberate”.
“As Ken Clarke pointed out in Parliament last week, the obvious Russian-ness of the weapon was designed to send a signal to anyone pondering dissent amid the intensifying repression of Mr Putin’s Russia,” he wrote.
“The message is clear: we will hunt you down, we will find you and we will kill you – and though we will scornfully deny our guilt, the world will know that Russia did it.”
Additional reporting by agencies
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