Tit-for-tat in US-Russia spat

Moscow: Russia war ned Wednesday that a number of U.S. diplomats will have to leave Russia before the end of next month, the latest salvo in a diplomatic tug-of-war between Moscow and Washington.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said those U.S. Embassy personnel who would have spent more than three years in Russia would have to leave Russia by Jan. 31. The Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said last week that 27 Russian diplomats will have to leave by Jan. 30, followed by an equal number half a year later. He rejected the U.S. State Department’s argument that the Russian diplomats will have to leave because their visas are expiring. Russia and the U.S. have exchanged several rounds of diplomats’ expulsions and took other steps restricting the activities of their respective diplomatic missions over the past years as relations sank to postCold War lows over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, its interference in U.S. elections, its hacking attacks and other irritants. -(AP)