MOSCOW — Russia will close the American consulate in St. Petersburg and kick out 60 U.S. diplomats in response to Monday’s coordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats from the United States and a number of European countries, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.
The move continues an ongoing escalation of tit-for-tat between Moscow and the West that began in early March with the alleged poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil with a Soviet-designed nerve agent.
Lavrov said that U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman has been asked to appear at the Foreign Ministry — “where my deputy minister Sergei Ryabkov will lay out for him the content of these retaliatory measures against the United States,” he said.