In March, the Trump Administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats after the poisoning in Great Britain of Sergei Skripal, who was a former Russian spy, and his daughter, who is a Russian citizen. Now it appears that some of the Russians who were expelled were agents of the Russian government assigned with tracking Russians who had emigrated to the United States and were intimate with details of Vladimir Putin’s regime.
In at least one instance, suspected Russian spies were believed to be casing someone who was part of a CIA program that provided new identities to protect resettled Russians, the officials said. That episode and other US intelligence raised concerns that the Russians were preparing to target Russian émigrés in the US labeled by the Kremlin as traitors or enemies, law enforcement and intelligence officials said.
On Wednesday, U.S. inspectors swept the Russian consulate in Seattle, which the Trump administration had ordered vacated. The Russian embassy’s Twitter account posted a video of the “intruders” as Russia claimed that the action was a “break-in,” but they were actually given extra time to close the embassy, which was originally to be vacated by April 1. The U.S. then extended the deadline until 11:59 p.m. local time on Tuesday, April 24. As ABC News noted, “The U.S. withdrew its consent for Russia’s consulate, however, as every country has the right to do under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.”
Earlier this year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported on the suspicious deaths of at least 24 critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin during his time in power. The report added that Russian security services are suspected in many of the deaths, and cited a Russian law passed “in July 2006 that permits the assassination of ‘enemies of the Russian regime’ who live abroad.”
H/T HotAir