Expulsions of Russian Diplomats: Some Precedents
Washington's expulsion of 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives has several precedents in the United States and around the world.
Here are the main ones:
- Across the Iron Curtain -
- October 1986: The United States under president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union engage in a war of diplomats, carrying out tit-for-tat expulsions over several weeks.
They include the ejection of 80 Soviet diplomats posted to Washington and U.N. headquarters in New York.
- April 1987: France turfs out six Soviet diplomats accused of spying on the Ariane rocket. Moscow retaliates by expelling six French diplomats.
- June 1988: Canada expels, or declares personae non gratae, 19 Soviets. Moscow takes similar measures against 13 Canadian diplomats.
- May, 1989: Britain expels 14 Soviets, and Moscow ripostes by throwing out the same number of Britons.
- October 1991: Norway ejects eight Soviet diplomats accused of "activities incompatible with their status", the term usually used for spying.
- Spies survive Soviet collapse -
- March 2001: Washington throws out 50 Russian diplomats, four of whom are declared personae non gratae. The move follows the arrest of Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence expert who spied for Moscow for fifteen years as one of its most valuable-ever agents.
Russia retaliates by expelling a similar number of Americans.
- July 9, 2010: Russia and the United States carry out their biggest spy swap since the Cold War at Vienna airport, exchanging 10 agents deported by the U.S. authorities for four freed by Russia.
- Massive expulsions elsewhere -
Outside the United States, several other countries have previously carried out massive expulsions of Russian or Soviet diplomats accused of spying.
- September 1971: Britain expels 105 Soviets. Two weeks later, Moscow kicks out 18 Britons.
- April 198: France throws out 47 Soviet diplomats in the midst of the so-called Farewell Affair, the code name of Soviet spy Vladimir Vetrov, an engineer posted to Moscow's trade mission in Paris from 1965 to 1970.
