UK decries ‘baseless’ spy charge as Russia expels diplomat

MOSCOW: Russia on Monday expelled a British diplomat it accused of espionage, a charge Britain rejected as “complete nonsense” while accusing the Kremlin of orchestrating an intimidation campaign against its embassy staff.

Russia’s FSB security service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said it had discovered that second secretary Albertus Gerhardus Janse van Rensburg was “carrying out intelligence and subversive activities that threaten the security of the Russian Federation”. The diplomat was ordered to leave Russia within two weeks, the FSB said.

A spokesperson for Britain’s foreign ministry called the accusations “completely unacceptable” and part of a pattern of harassment.

“The accusations made today by Russia against our diplomats are complete nonsense,” the spokesperson said, adding that Russia was “pumping out malicious and completely baseless accusations about their work”.

British official given two weeks to leave

The Russian foreign ministry said it had summoned Britain’s charge d’affaires over the incident and warned London not to retaliate. The move is the latest in a series of diplomatic clashes as relations between the two countries have reached a low point over the war in Ukraine.

Moscow and London have each expelled multiple embassy staff over the last decade, with expulsions from one side typically followed by a tit-for-tat response from the other.

Moscow has accused Britain of pursuing espionage aimed at sowing discord within Russia. The FSB said Janse van Rensburg had attempted to “obtain sensitive information during informal meetings with Russian experts in the field of economics.”

In a stark warning, the FSB also recommended that Russian citizens “refrain from holding meetings with British diplomats” to avoid “negative consequences, including criminal liability.” Britain said the step amounted to intimidation.

“The UK does not stand for intimidation of British embassy staff and their families,” the British spokesperson added.

Russian state television aired videos that it said showed Janse van Rensburg meeting contacts in Moscow restaurants and cross-country skiing beside what it described as a special defence ministry building. State TV said he was the 16th British diplomat to be expelled from Moscow in two years.

Britain, which supports Ukraine with money and weapons, sees Russia as its biggest immediate threat. Relations have been strained by spying allegations for decades, long predating the current conflict.

In 2006, former FSB officer and Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London, poisoned by polonium in what British investigators said was a hit by the Russian secret service. In 2018, the UK said Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2026