Russia ‘to retaliate diplomat expulsions in due course’

Russia has reaffirmed its determination to retaliate against the expulsion of scores of its diplomats by Western countries but has stressed that the door to dialog “remains open.”

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow was resolved to retaliate the expulsions in kind but will do so at the appropriate time.

Peskov did not elaborate on the nature of the countermeasures. He only said Russia’s response would correspond to the country’s national interests.

He hoped that the states that have expelled Russian diplomats would look hard at the information that Britain claims is evidence of Russia’s involvement in the incident.

The Kremlin spokesman added that despite the hostilities, Russia was still open to dialog and that the possibility of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had not been ruled out as of yet.

“At the moment, we have no information against the backdrop of the decisions [to expel Russian diplomats] on whether the US is ready to put into practice the statements made by President Trump [on a meeting with President Putin],” he said. “That depends on our American counterparts. The Russian side remains open, of course.”

Separately, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said British authorities were “manipulating” the world public opinion.

“This is [British Prime Minister] Theresa May’s fail. The largest manipulation of the world public opinion has been revealed, and British authorities are involved in it,” Zakharova said, Sputnik reported on Wednesday.

Earlier, Zakharova had told Russia’s NTV Channel that London and Washington had both ignored Moscow’s request to hand over a printed document pertaining to the case.

Also on Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow would assess the levels of hostility from Washington and London before retaliating the expulsion of Russian diplomats, the Interfax news agency reported.

SS