Russia is set to expel British diplomats in retaliation for prime minister Theresa May's decision to kick out 23 Russians over a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Salisbury last week.
Ms May blamed Moscow for the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and gave 23 Russians who she said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the London embassy a week to leave. Russia has denied any involvement.
Asked in the Kazakh capital Astana if Russia planned to expel British diplomats from Moscow, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov smiled and said: "We will, of course."
Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain the attack. US president Donald Trump said it looked as though the Russians were behind it.
Russia has refused Britain’s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down the Skripals.
Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in the Russian intelligence service who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence, and his daughter have been critically ill since March 4th, when they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury. A British policeman who was also poisoned when he went to help them is in a serious but stable condition.
President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy who is poised to win a fourth term in an election on Sunday, has so far only said publicly that Britain should get to the bottom of what has happened.
Insulting language
In a sign of just how tense the relationship has become, British and Russian ministers used openly insulting language while the Russian ambassador said London was trying to divert attention from the difficulties it was having managing Britain's exit from the European Union.
Defence secretary Gavin Williamson sparked particular outrage in Moscow with his blunt comment on Thursday that "Russia should go away, it should shut up". Russia's defence ministry said he was an "intellectual impotent" and Mr Lavrov said he probably lacked education.
Mr Williamson studied social science at the University of Bradford. “Well he’s a nice man, I’m told, maybe he wants to claim a place in history by making some bold statements,” Mr Lavrov said. “Theresa May’s main argument about Russia’s guilt is ‘Highly probable’, while for him it’s ‘Russia should go and shut up’. Maybe he lacks education, I don’t know.”
In London, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn struck a starkly different tone to that of the British government by warning against rushing into a new cold war before full evidence of Moscow's culpability was proven.
"To rush way ahead of the evidence being gathered by the police, in a fevered parliamentary atmosphere, serves neither justice nor our national security," Mr Corbyn wrote in the Guardian.
Mr Corbyn said Labour did not support Mr Putin and that Russia should be held to account if it was behind the attack. “That does not mean we should resign ourselves to a ‘new cold war’ of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent,” he said. – Reuters