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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Russia will not bow to ultimatums, FM tells envoys

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MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday welcomed back diplomats who had been expelled from the West over a spy poisoning row, telling them Russia would never “cave in to ultimatums”. More than 150 Russian diplomats were ordered out of the US, EU members, Nato countries and other nations in the wake of the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in England, a move that was met in kind by Moscow.


“As you know, we of course made an appropriate response, we will never cave in to ultimatums, you cannot talk with the Russian Federation using that kind of language,” Lavrov said at the briefing in Moscow.


He thanked the diplomats for their work abroad and repeated Moscow’s official line that the attack was an “unprecedented provocation” against Russia.


Konstantin Rogozin, who served in Russia’s embassy in Washington, said US authorities had behaved like “schoolchildren” over the affair.


“The ordinary, decent people (in the US) treated us very well, those in power are very distant from the people,” he said.


Relations between London and the West have plumbed new depths following the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.


The conditions of the Skripals has continued to improve this week, with the ex-spy no longer in critical condition, the hospital treating him said. His daughter said her strength was “growing daily”, in a statement issued on Thursday.


Britain and its Western allies have blamed the attack on Moscow, accusing it of targeting the pair with a Soviet-made military-grade nerve agent, known as Novichok.


Meanwhile, Russia’s deputy prosecutor general on Monday accused Britain of refusing to cooperate on the investigation into the killing of a former spy, at a briefing on the deaths of other Russians in the UK.


Saak Karapetyan said the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter was a pretext for an “anti-Russian campaign” as he drew parallels with the killing of spy Alexander Litvinenko and the death of oligarch Boris Berezovsky.


“In the three cases, British authorities... refused any cooperation with Russia and kept secret the result of their own inquiry,” he said.


. — AFP


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