The United States expelled Russia’s second-highest ranking diplomat in Washington in retaliation for the earlier expulsion of the No. 2 diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Minister Counselor Sergey Trepelkov, who is currently the No. 2 Russian diplomat in the U.S. under Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, was expelled after the State Department notified the Russian Embassy of the decision on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.
A senior State Department official told the AP on Thursday that the step was “as a direct response to the unprovoked Russian expulsion of our deputy chief of mission.”
The State Department official told the AP it would remain important “to facilitate communication between our governments” but added that the removal of Deputy Chief of Mission Bart Gorman could not “go without a response.”
Gorman, the second-highest ranking diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, was expelled in mid-February. At the time of that announcement, Russia did not provide reasoning for his removal.
“We consider this an escalatory step and are considering our response,” a State Department spokesperson said at the time.
While the announcement of Trepelkov’s removal came around the same time as Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the decision to expel Trepelkov was unrelated to the attack.
Instead, it was due to a long-term argument over staffing at the embassy. Those issues began around 2017, when the outgoing Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats and closed Russian diplomatic missions in the U.S. due to Russian election interference in the 2016 election.