moscow
\nRussia on Monday kicked out a British diplomat over allegations he was working as a spy \u2014 charges rejected by London as \u201ccomplete nonsense\u201d.
\nMoscow and London have each expelled multiple embassy staff over the last decade, trading accusations of espionage.
\nExpulsions from one side have typically been followed by a tit-for-tat response from the other.
\nThe diplomat, named as 29-year-old embassy secretary Albertus Gerhardus Janse Van Rensburg, was expelled for engaging in \u201csubversive intelligence activities that threaten Russia\u2019s security\u201d, Russia\u2019s FSB security service said.
\n\u201cA decision was made to strip Janse Van Rensburg of his accreditation, and he was ordered to leave Russia within two weeks,\u201d it added.
\nThe Russian foreign ministry said it had summoned Britain\u2019s charge d\u2019affaires over the incident and warned the United Kingdom not to retaliate.
\nBritain accused Russia of waging an \u201caggressive and coordinated campaign of harassment\u201d.
\n\u201cThe accusations made today by Russia against our diplomats are complete nonsense,\u201d a foreign ministry spokesperson said, adding Russia was \u201cpumping out malicious and completely baseless accusations about their work\u201d.
\nRelations between London and Moscow, currently at a low point over the Ukraine war, have been strained by spying allegations for decades.
\nIn 2006, former FSB officer and Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London, poisoned by polonium in what British investigators said was a hit by the Russian secret service.
\nIn 2018, the UK said Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in the British cathedral city of Salisbury.
\nOne member of the public was killed after handling the delivery device, a discarded perfume bottle, triggering the largest Western expulsion in decades of Russian diplomats alleged to be spies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
moscow Russia on Monday kicked out a British diplomat over allegations he was working as a spy \u2014 charges rejected by London as \u201ccomplete nonsense\u201d. Moscow and London have each expelled multiple embassy staff over the last decade, trading accusations of espionage. Expulsions from one side have typically been followed by a tit-for-tat response from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95668,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95653\/revisions\/95668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}