State Department officials suspended the issuance of visas to Russian citizens, to the annoyance of Russian diplomats.
“[W]e will not take it out on US citizens,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday, per state-run media. “That is, if someone hoped that in that case one fool makes many, they were mistaken.”
The U.S. embassy in Moscow announced the decision in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to slash the number of American personnel working in the country. The development continues a diplomatic back and forth that traces back to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The target audience is the Russian people, as Putin’s team seeks to blame western powers for the standoff.
“The US authors of these decisions have plotted another attempt at stirring up resentment among Russian citizens regarding decisions by the Russian authorities,” Lavrov said.
The State Department maintained that it was necessitated by Putin’s retaliation against U.S.-imposed sanctions. “Due to the Russian government-imposed cap on U.S. diplomatic personnel in Russia, all nonimmigrant visa operations across Russia will be suspended on August 23. Operations will resume in Moscow on September 1; visa operations at the U.S. consulates will remain suspended indefinitely,” the embassy announced. “Currently scheduled appointments will be cancelled and applicants will be provided instructions on how to reschedule.”
That bulletin is one of the most substantive responses to the Russian order for the United States to withdraw 755 diplomatic personnel from the country. That move came in retaliation against a new law that imposes broad sanctions on Russia, as well as former President Barack Obama’s more limited punishment for the 2016 election interference. The sanctions are designed to punish Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria, in addition to the cyberattacks against the Democratic party. Putin’s team denies any wrongdoing, insisting instead that they are simply victims of Russophobic American politicians.
“The issue of Russia’s meddling in the election process has become a favorite media story and an obsession in the United States,” Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, said last week. “This story has been adopted by anti-Russia propagandists.”
President Trump has hesitated to blame Russia for the cyberattacks, calling the storyline a Democratic excuse for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, but his national security team is unanimous about the subject.
“I am confident that the Russians meddled in this election, as is the entire intelligence community,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in July. “I hope I didn’t stop at 2008 [for when he says Russian began interfering in U.S. elections]. You can go back to the ’70s. My point was simply this: This threat is real. The U.S. government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, has to figure out a way to fight back against it and defeat it. And we’re intent upon doing that.”
