MOSCOW: Russia on Monday expelled a British diplomat over allegations of espionage, a move strongly rejected by the United Kingdom as “complete nonsense.”
Russia’s security service, the Federal Security Service (FSB), said the diplomat — identified as 29-year-old embassy secretary Albertus Gerhardus Janse Van Rensburg — was involved in “subversive intelligence activities” that threatened national security.
Authorities said his accreditation had been revoked and he had been ordered to leave the country within two weeks.
The Russian foreign ministry also summoned Britain’s charge d’affaires over the incident and warned London against retaliatory measures.
In response, the UK accused Moscow of conducting an “aggressive and coordinated campaign of harassment” against its diplomatic staff, dismissing the allegations as baseless.
“The accusations made today by Russia against our diplomats are complete nonsense,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said, adding that Moscow was making “malicious and completely baseless accusations.”
Relations between London and Moscow remain strained, particularly since the Ukraine war, with both sides repeatedly expelling diplomats in tit-for-tat actions over alleged espionage.
Tensions between the two countries have persisted for decades. In 2006, former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London after being poisoned with polonium, an incident British investigators linked to Russian operatives.
In 2018, former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in the city of Salisbury, in a case that triggered one of the largest coordinated expulsions of Russian diplomats by Western countries.
