Relations between the United States and Russia are worse now than they were during the Cold War, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday.
“The situation is worse compared to the classical Cold War since some sort of rules were in force at that time and some decency was in place,” Lavrov said, according to TASS, a state-run media outlet. “Today, our Western partners and I first of all refer to the Great Britain, the United States and some other countries, which are blindly guided by them, put all of their decency aside and resort to bold lies and fake news.”
He offered that complaint in response to the expulsion of scores of Russian diplomats and intelligence officials by western countries, which acted in concert following the poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer in the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Theresa May said that the assassination attempt, which targeted a British citizen who had previously been convicted of treason in Russia, was carried out using “a military-grade nerve agent” in violation of international chemical weapons bans.
“Our responses to all of this are calm and weighted as we keep insisting that all accusations and allegations must be backed with the facts,” Lavrov said.
Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury, England on March 4. The police officer who first attended to them was also hospitalized. May said all three were exposed to a chemical weapon developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
“If we don’t take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council at an ensuing emergency session. “They could be used here in New York, or in cities of any country that sits on this Council. This is a defining moment.”
Subsequently, President Trump ordered 60 Russians identified as intelligence officials working under diplomatic cover to leave the United States, as part of an international wave of expulsions that covered more than 150 Russian officials.
“This is the largest expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in United States history,” Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, said last week. “Today’s actions make the United States a safer place by limiting the ability of Russia to spy on Americans and conduct covert activities that threaten America’s national security.”
Russian officials deny responsibility, suggesting instead that British officials poisoned Skripal themselves as part of a plot to drive a wedge between Russia and European powers. “We have very serious suspicion that this provocation was done by British intelligence,” Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to the UK, said Sunday.
“There is no direct proof of this at the moment, but the British government’s behavior constitutes strong circumstantial evidence in support of this theory, he clarified,” added RT, a state-run media outlet.
