US says two Russian officials expelled after US diplomat attacked

The United States has expelled two Russian officials over an attack on a US diplomat in Moscow last month by a policeman, the State Department said.

The news comes after complaints from Washington about what it deemed a mounting campaign of harassment and intimidation of American diplomats and their families in the Russian capital.

“On June 17, we expelled two Russian officials from the United States to respond to this attack,” department spokesman John Kirby said.

Kirby said that on June 6, a Russian policeman attacked an accredited US diplomat entering the US embassy compound, after the US official identified himself.

“The action was unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee. The Russian claim that the policeman was protecting the embassy from an unidentified individual is simply untrue,” Kirby told reporters.

The spokesman said that Russian security services had “intensified their harassment against US personnel in an effort to disrupt our diplomatic and consular operations.”

Kirby said that Washington had privately “urged” Moscow to stop such harassment.

He refused to comment further on the condition of the diplomat who was attacked.

Last month, The Washington Post described a series of actions by Russian security and intelligence services, including following diplomats and their family members, appearing at social functions uninvited and paying for negative media stories.

Some diplomats said intruders had broken into their homes at night to rearrange furniture, turn on lights and even defecate on a living room carpet, the newspaper reported, citing officials as saying Russian intelligence officers once broke into the US defense attache’s Moscow house and killed his dog.

Moscow in turn accuses the United States of harassing its own diplomats and says it takes reciprocal measures only in response — claims that Washington says have no basis in fact.