TWENTY-three Russian government officials are to be kicked out of the UK in one of the biggest diplomatic rows since the Cold War.
The decision to expel the “undeclared intelligence officers” came as the Prime Minister said there was now no “alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable for the attempted murder” of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
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Skripal, a former Soviet soldier turned MI6 informant, was found poisoned 11 days ago in Salisbury in Wiltshire.
The substance used against the pair has been identified as Novichok, a Soviet-era chemical weapon used by the Russian military.
On Monday, May gave Moscow 36 hours to explain how the nerve agent had come to be used in an assassination attempt on the streets of Britain.
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The Prime Minister said Russia needed to either confess to pulling off a deliberate attack, or admit that they had lost some or all of their stock of nerve agent.
The Russians declined to respond officially to May’s ultimatum.
The Tory leader told MPs, that the refusal to answer meant there was now “no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr Skripal and his daughter, and for threatening the lives of other British citizens in Salisbury”.
The expulsion of the spies would, the Prime Minister added, “fundamentally degrade Russian intelligence capability in the UK for years to come”.
When Alexander Litvenko was killed with radioactive polonium in 2006, the government kicked out just four diplomats.
In 1985, Margaret Thatcher ordered 31 spies be deported, following the defection of double agent Oleg Gordievsky.
May told MPs that the government would also suspend high-level contacts with Russia, and that no member of the government and no Royal would attend the World Cup.
And she said Russian state assets will be frozen “wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents”.
This would include the creation of a “Magnitsky” amendment to legislation currently going through Parliament to create powers to target the assets of those responsible for human rights violations.
The Prime Minister said: “Led by the National Crime Agency, we will continue to bring all the capabilities of UK law enforcement to bear against serious criminals and corrupt elites.
“There is no place for these people - or their money - in our country.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came in for pelters from the Tories when he seemed to suggest Russia might not be culpable of the attack.
He asked if May had responded to requests from the Kremlin for a sample of the nerve agent used in the attack so it could run its own tests, and called on the government to retain “a robust dialogue with Russia”.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford however, committed the party to working with the Tories, describing the attack as an “abuse of state power” by the Russians.
“There has to be a robust response to the use of terror on our streets,” he said.
“We must act in a measured way to show that we will simply not tolerate this behaviour”.
Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to the UK said British diplomats would be expelled from Moscow in retaliation.
He told Sky News the British actions were “absolutely unacceptable”.
Yakovenko said the sanctions constituted “an unprecedented, flagrant provocation that undermines the foundations of normal dialogue between our countries.”
While there was support for the UK from Germany and the US, the French were a little more cautious.
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