Russia expelled six British diplomats on Friday, accusing them of espionage.
News of the expulsions came just hours before British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington to discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine, among other issues.
The U.K.’s Foreign Office confirmed that Moscow withdrew the diplomatic accreditations of six of its diplomats last month. But it dismissed Russia’s accusations as “completely baseless.”
The Russian security service FSB said in a statement that Russian authorities received “documentary materials confirming London’s coordination of the escalation of the international military-political situation.”
According to the FSB, the documents show that the six diplomats who worked in the political department of the British Embassy in Moscow took actions that showed signs of “conducting intelligence and subversive work.”
They wrote that the Foreign Office section in London responsible for Eastern Europe and Central Asia had become “a special service whose main task is to inflict a strategic defeat” on Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the actions of the British diplomats were aimed at “causing harm” to the Russian people and that they “went far beyond the limits set by the Vienna Convention,” without specifying what was meant by that.
