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MOSCOW: Russia on Monday expelled a British diplomat it accused of espionage, a charge Britain rejected as “complete nonsense” while accusing the Kremlin of orchestrating an intimidation campaign against its embassy staff.
Russia’s FSB security service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said it had discovered that second secretary Albertus Gerhardus Janse van Rensburg was “carrying out intelligence and subversive activities that threaten the security of the Russian Federation”. The diplomat was ordered to leave Russia within two weeks, the FSB said.
A spokesperson for Britain’s foreign ministry called the accusations “completely unacceptable” and part of a pattern of harassment.
“The accusations made today by Russia against our diplomats are complete nonsense,” the spokesperson said, adding that Russia was “pumping out malicious and completely baseless accusations about their work”.
