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Russia has ordered some US diplomatic staff to leave the country by September 1 and said it was seizing two US diplomatic properties as retaliation to proposed new US sanctions against Moscow.
Key points:
- Vladimir Putin has said Russia would have to retaliate against what he describes as unreasonable US behaviour
- Moscow warns US sanctions will take relations between two countries to a new low
- Russian Foreign Ministry says US has to reduce its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 people
Russia's response, outlined in a statement from the Foreign Ministry, came a day after the US Senate voted to slap new sanctions on Russia, putting President Donald Trump in a tough position by forcing him to take a hard line on Moscow or veto the legislation and anger his own Republican Party.
President Vladimir Putin had warned that Russia had so far exercised restraint, but would have to retaliate against what he described as boorish and unreasonable US behaviour.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also warned the US it would respond in kind if Washington decided to expel any Russian diplomats.
The ministry said it would also seize a Moscow dacha compound used by US diplomats to relax from August 1 as well as a US diplomatic warehouse in Moscow.
Moscow had warned the sanctions would take relations between Russia and the US to a new low.
"This is already having an extremely negative impact on the process of normalising our relations," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency.
US-Russian relations were entering "uncharted territory in a political and diplomatic sense", he added.
The new package of US sanctions aims to hit Mr Putin and his inner circle by targeting alleged corrupt officials, human rights abusers and crucial sectors of the Russian economy, including weapons sales and energy exports.
Relations between the two countries, already at a post-Cold War low, have deteriorated even further after US intelligence agencies accused Russia of trying to meddle in last year's US presidential election, something Moscow flatly denies.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the US had until the beginning of September to reduce its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 people, the same number of Russian diplomats it said were left in the US after Washington expelled 35 Russians in December.
It said in a statement the decision by Congress to impose new sanctions confirmed "the extreme aggression of the United States in international affairs".
"Hiding behind its 'exceptionalism' the United States arrogantly ignores the positions and interests of other countries," the ministry said.
"Under the absolutely invented pretext of Russian interference in their domestic affairs the United States is aggressively pushing forward, one after another, crude anti-Russian actions.
"This all runs counter to the principles of international law."
Staff cut could affect hundreds
It was not immediately clear how many US diplomats and other workers would be forced to leave the country.
An official at the US embassy in Moscow, who declined to be named because they were not allowed to speak to the media, said there were around 1,100 US diplomatic staff in Russia.
That included Russian citizens and US citizens.
Interfax news agency quoted a source as saying the US will be forced to cut hundreds of its embassy staff in Russia.
"We are talking not about dozens but hundreds of diplomatic and technical staff who work for US diplomatic missions in Russia," the agency quoted the source as saying.
Most staff, including around 300 US citizens, work in the main embassy in Moscow with others based in outlying consulates.
The outgoing Obama administration seized two Russian diplomatic compounds — one in New York and another in Maryland — at the same time as it expelled the Russian diplomats in December.
Reuters
Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, russian-federation, united-states
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