Washington’s hopes of reversing years of heightening tension with Russia suffered a setback on Thursday when the Kremlin reacted furiously to the expulsion of two Russian diplomats from NATO headquarters in Brussels over allegations of spying.
One of the two diplomats is the son of Vladimir Chizhov, the Russian ambassador to the EU in Brussels who previously served as deputy foreign minister. The second diplomat was a man named Viktor Kochukov.
EU officials declined to comment on the incident and whether it would affect EU-Russia negotiations on a new strategic partnership, which are being conducted on the Russian side by Chizhov.
Moscow swiftly denounced the expulsions as an act of provocation. Dmitry Rogozin, Russian ambassador to NATO, promised that Moscow’s response would be “harsh and decisive.”
“NATO officials should be aware that these diplomats were not involved in any activity incompatible with their professional status,” Rogozin said.
The accusations were “invented, irresponsible, and provocative,” he said.
The decision to expel the two diplomats came after Russian and NATO ambassadors met on Wednesday for the first time since the NATO-Russia council, a consultative body, was suspended in response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia last summer.
Wednesday’s meeting was to prepare for a meeting of NATO and Russian foreign ministers on May 19, but the talks could now be called off. The expulsions were also linked with what is being seen as Moscow’s biggest intelligence coup inside the Western military alliance since the end of the cold war.
A former Estonian police chief, Herman Simm, was sentenced to 12 years in jail earlier this year for spying for the Russians for 13 years. He moved from being police chief to head of security at the defense ministry of Estonia, which joined NATO in 2004. He had access to reams of classified NATO documents, thousands of which are believed to have been passed to the Russians.
The information passed to Moscow is said to have compromised data security, computer networks and defense and security policy planning at NATO headquarters in Brussels and among the alliance’s member states.
“It was a very bad case, did a lot of damage,” said a senior diplomat from one of the three NATO Baltic states.
As a result of the Simm case, NATO states are scrambling to discover whether his “handler” from the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, recruited other agents in the West. The Russian handler had been living for years in the EU under an alias as a Portuguese citizen. Although Thursday’s expulsions appear calculated to send a signal to the Kremlin, officials said the two diplomats were not directly involved in the Estonian spy scandal.
Relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated in the past few years as Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister and former president, has asserted Russian power.
Friction has grown over NATO enlargement, the Pentagon’s missile shield plans in central Europe, disruptions of Russian energy supplies to Europe and issues involving Georgia and Ukraine.
US President Barack Obama came into office in the US pledging to press the “reset button” on relations, hoping for an improvement with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and seeking to restart arms control talks and nuclear weapons cuts largely ignored under the administration of former US president George W. Bush.
While Russia’s talks with the US on a pact to slash nuclear warheads and with NATO over conventional forces in Europe are said to be going well, if at an early stage, Medvedev delivered a strong denunciation of Washington and NATO yesterday ahead of Western military exercises planned in Georgia next week.
The bad-tempered exchanges were reinforced by Western criticism of Moscow’s move this week to take control of borders in the two breakaway parts of Georgia, strengthening Russia’s clout in the country.
Medvedev condemned the planned NATO military exercises in Georgia as an “open provocation.”
The Kremlin is vehemently opposed to Georgia and Ukraine becoming NATO members, although NATO’s larger powers have also gone cool on the idea.
Ahead of the maneuvers, Moscow signed an agreement with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, breakaway regions of Georgia, awarding Russia direct control of both regions’ borders. The accord flatly contradicted ceasefire deals mediated by the French and the EU last year.
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