Russian officials pulled three U.S. diplomats off a train in the vicinity of a suspected nuclear accident in northern Russia, according to local reports.
“The American diplomats were on official travel and had properly notified Russian authorities of their travel,” a State Department spokesman told the Washington Examiner when asked about the diplomats being pulled off the train.
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U.S. officials didn’t provide any other details, but Russian reports add that the incident took place on Monday and involved three American embassy employees on a train near Severodvinsk, the home of a Russian military test site. That test site was the scene of an August accident that killed five employees of the Russian nuclear agency and coincided with a sharp increase in radiation in the area.
“This is work carried out in the military sphere, work on prospective weapon systems,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the accident. “According to the reports I have, everything is fine.”
Those comments failed to reassure Russian observers, after the residents of the region raced to purchase iodine, which protects the thyroid gland from radiation. “U.S. and Russian military experts can only speculate at length whether or not the tests were of a prototype for the Burevestnik nuclear-powered intercontinental cruise missile,” The Moscow Times noted in August.
