Russia’s FSB orders expulsion of British diplomat, Britain rejects ‘threat’ news

Russia’s intelligence agency has accused the second secretary of the British Embassy in Moscow of espionage.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has ordered a British diplomat to leave the country within two weeks over economic espionage allegations, which the United Kingdom has dismissed as “unacceptable” amid tensions over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said on Monday its counterintelligence officers had expelled Albertus Gerhardus Janse van Rensburg, the second secretary of the British Embassy in Moscow.

“The FSB uncovered indications that the diplomat was carrying out intelligence and subversive activities that threaten the security of the Russian Federation,” the agency said.

It said the diplomat had “attempted to obtain sensitive information during informal meetings with Russian experts in the field of economics”.

“To avoid negative consequences, including criminal liability, Russia’s FSB recommends that compatriots avoid holding meetings with British diplomats,” it said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had lodged a protest with Britain’s chargé d’affaires over the alleged spy.

The British Foreign Office responded by saying that Russia’s allegations against its diplomats were “completely unacceptable” and that it would not tolerate “intimidation” of its embassy staff or their families.

Russia-Britain discord

Russia has claimed that British intelligence launched spying activities on a scale unprecedented since the Cold War to sow discord within the country, and it has long complained that its own diplomats are routinely harassed in major Western capitals.

Britain, which supports Ukraine with money and weapons, sees Russia as its biggest immediate threat and blames increasing cyber attacks, assassinations and sabotage campaigns across the Western world on its intelligence.

Since Russia launched its full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian authorities have tried to suppress opposition to the war with the aim of garnering support for the war among Russian citizens.

Last week, Russia declared the teacher and main protagonist of the Oscar-winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin a “foreign agent.” Pavel Talankin spent two years documenting pro-war propaganda at a school in the Chelyabinsk region of west-central Russia, working as a school videographer.