AN old fashioned tit for tat expulsion of diplomats as spies may seriously damage relationships between Russia and Britain but will do no harm to President Boris Yeltsin in his campaign for reelect ion against the strongly nationalistic Communist Party candidate and poll topper, Mr Gennady Zyuganov.
As Russians returned to work after the May Day holidays yesterday they were treated to a spectacle straight out of the Soviet past.
The spokesman for the KGB's successor, the FSB, Mr Alexander Zdanovich, announced that "A number of British special agents working under diplomatic cover have been declared personae non gratae and are being expelled from Russia for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status."
The expulsion move, he said, came after a Russian national, who could now face the death penalty, had been arrested while in contact by radio with a Special Intelligence Service centre in Britain.
Britain's ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood, was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry, a Stalin gothic skyscraper on Smolenskaya Square in central Moscow, to hear a "stern protest" from deputy foreign minister Mr Sergei Krylov and to be told of the imminent expulsion of an unspecified number of members of his diplomatic staff.
In London, the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, and the Foreign Secretary, Mr Malcolm Rifkind, held an emergency meeting and the Foreign Office warned that there would be an "appropriate response" from the British side.
Mr Zdanovich said that the unnamed Russian national, a young man who worked at a government ministry until his arrest a month ago. "had direct access to secret information and transmitted political information of a strategic and military nature to British intelligence services." The spying was, he said, done for financial reward.
While the FSB has issued a hardline statement on the matter, the Russian foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Grigory Karasin, yesterday took a more conciliatory line, saying it was important not to dramatise the matter and to prevent it from affecting relations between the two states.
The incident has taken place against the background of Russia's presidential election campaign, in which Mr Zyuganov has played on the anti western feelings of a population which has seen its standards of living fall dramatically.
