Russia expelled a British diplomat on Monday over accusations he was working as a spy, accusations rejected by London as “complete nonsense.”
Moscow and London have expelled several staff from their embassies over the past decade, trading accusations of espionage.
Expulsions from one side have generally been followed by a tit-for-tat response from the other.
The diplomat, identified as embassy secretary Albertus Gerhardus Janse Van Rensburg, 29, was expelled for engaging in “subversive intelligence activities that threaten the security of Russia,” the Russian security service FSB said.
“A decision was made to withdraw Janse Van Rensburg's accreditation and he was ordered to leave Russia within two weeks,” he added.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Britain's chargé d'affaires over the incident and warned the UK not to retaliate.
Britain accused Russia of carrying out an “aggressive and coordinated campaign of harassment.”
“The accusations made today by Russia against our diplomats are complete nonsense,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, adding that Russia was “making malicious and completely unfounded accusations about their work.”
Relations between London and Moscow, currently at a low point over the Ukraine war, have been strained by spying accusations for decades.
In 2006, former FSB officer and Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London, poisoned with polonium in what British investigators said was an attack by the Russian secret service.
In 2018, the United Kingdom said that Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in the British cathedral city of Salisbury.
A member of the public died after tampering with the delivery device, a discarded perfume bottle, prompting the biggest Western expulsion in decades of Russian diplomats alleged to be spies.
