Russia has announced the expulsion of a British diplomat, accusing him of secretly working for the United Kingdom’s intelligence services.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs disclosed that it had summoned the UK’s chargé d’affaires to formally protest the presence of what it described as an intelligence operative within the British Embassy in Moscow. According to the ministry, Russian security agencies had identified one member of the embassy’s diplomatic staff as being affiliated with UK intelligence.
As a result, the diplomat’s credentials have been withdrawn, and he has been ordered to leave Russia within a two-week timeframe.
Diplomatic tensions between Moscow and London have frequently led to mutual expulsions over the past ten years, with both sides repeatedly accusing one another of espionage. Such actions have often triggered reciprocal measures.
Russia cautioned the British government against further escalation, warning that any retaliatory move would be met with an equivalent response.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) identified the expelled official as Gareth Samuel Davies. He is recorded in Russia’s official registry of accredited diplomats as the second secretary at the British Embassy.
The latest incident comes at a time when relations between the two countries are already severely strained, a situation that had deteriorated long before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Allegations of spying have long cast a shadow over UK–Russia relations. In 2006, former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko died in London after being poisoned with polonium, an act British authorities later attributed to Russian state agents. More than a decade later, in 2018, the United Kingdom accused Moscow of orchestrating the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal with a Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury.
That incident led to the death of a civilian who came into contact with a discarded perfume bottle containing the toxic substance and prompted the largest coordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western nations in recent history.
