The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Russia responded to the appeals of the US senators to send 300 Russian diplomats from the country. This is reported by TASS.
The department responded that there was no such number of Russian diplomats in Washington. Or, they suggested there, the congressmen were counted also working in post procurement for the UN of Russian diplomatic staff, “not possessing relevant knowledge in international relations.”
300 diplomats
An open letter to President Joe Bidenu with a request to send Russian diplomats to the American senators both from the democratic and republican parties. In particular, they demanded that the American leader put in Russia with ultimatum: Moscow should expand the US Embassy, or from Washington will send 300 Russian diplomats.
The authors of the appeal were considered unacceptable disproportionality of diplomatic representation. In their opinion, the Russian side should give enough visas to approach parity between the number of American diplomats working in its territory, and the number of Russian diplomats working in the United States.
In August with a similar statement, Ambassador of the United States was performed in Russia John Sullivan. In particular, he drew attention to a greater imbalance in the number of diplomats in two states. Thus, Russia employs 123 embassy employees, and in the USA – 400 Russian diplomats distributed between the embassy, two consulates and post prunes under the UN. “The numbers speak for themselves,” he concluded.
At the same time, in September, the Deputy Head of the Foreign Ministry of Russia Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow offered Washington to “reset” the situation with diplomats. According to him, the United States “nothing prevents” to send so many employees to Russia as they consider it necessary, within the established limit of 455 people. “Instead, they rolled consular services, visas are not issued,” he reminded.
Visa containment
The head of the Russian diplomission in Houston Alexander Zakharov and at all, in the event that the United States continues the policy of “visa containment”, by the end of the year the state of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Houston will decrease to two people. According to him, the United States continues to introduce new restrictions on the complete set of Russian dipmissions, as new diplomats do not receive a visa.
Before that, Russia demanded to relieve restrictions from a number of diplomats in exchange for the issuance of a visa to the US Deputy Secretary of State on the political issues of Victoria Nuland, which is prohibited by the court to the territory of the Russian Federation. In particular, it was about the specialist of the Department of Non-Proliferation and Control of Arms of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia Konstantine Vorontsov, as well as several Russian diplomats, representatives of Roskosmos and the Ministry of Defense.