Russian diplomats and their families climbed aboard buses and left their embassy in Washington on Saturday while across the Atlantic, American envoys took down the flag from outside the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg, loaded up boxes, closed the office down and headed home.
The moves were the latest in a spy poisoning case that has escalated East-West tensions, with both sides expelling more than 150 of each other’s diplomats from two dozen countries.
Britain has insisted that the Russian government was behind the nerve agent poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter March 4 in the English city of Salisbury, a charge the Russians vehemently deny.
The Tass news agency says all of the 60 Russian diplomats ordered out of the United States were heading for a homebound flight Saturday night.
In St. Petersburg, workers at the U.S. consulate hurried to meet the Saturday deadline to close the consulate, imposed by Russia just two days earlier. U.S. Consul-General Thomas Leary said “we are ready to leave.”
British officials, meanwhile, are considering Russia’s request for access to the daughter of the former Russian double agent.