Russia has expelled six UK diplomats over spying accusations, the country’s FSB security service said on Friday, ahead of talks between UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden on the war in Ukraine.
The FSB claimed it had documents showing that the UK Foreign Office department responsible for eastern Europe and central Asia was involved in the “co-ordination of escalation of international military-political situation” aimed at the “strategic defeat” of Russia.
The accreditation of the diplomats whose actions showed “signs of reconnaissance and subversive work” is to be revoked, the FSB said.
The expelled diplomats include British Embassy staff members Jessica Davenport, Grace Elvin, Andrew Daft Callum, Catherine MacDonald, Thomas John Hickson and Blake Pattel, the Russia-24 state-owned TV channel reported. The FSB has not yet confirmed their identities.
The UK Foreign Office did not immediately comment on the Russian move, whose timing will be seen in London as a diplomatic warning shot by President Vladimir Putin.
Starmer will meet Biden in Washington later on Friday to discuss western support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Top of the agenda will be whether to allow Ukraine to use western-made weapons for strikes deep inside Russia, after Putin warned that such a move could unleash a war with Nato. Britain has supported the use of such weapons but their use requires US approval.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been lobbying western allies for permission to use the Army Tactical Missile System and Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia.
The UK has long taken a more permissive approach to how the weapons it supplies are deployed by Ukraine.
Less than a week after becoming UK prime minister in July, Starmer said the arsenal of weapons contributed by the UK must be “used in accordance with international humanitarian law” and for “defensive purposes”, but added: “It is for Ukraine to decide how to deploy it for those defensive purposes.”
A month earlier Rishi Sunak, then UK prime minister, said: “How Ukraine uses the weapons that we provide is for them. Our job is to make sure we give them the capabilities that we can that they need.”
Britain was the first country to send long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine.