Moscow — Russian officials vowed to "adequately respond" to a U.S. decision to expel 50 Russian diplomats, indicating that an equivalent number of American diplomats could soon be ordered to leave Moscow.
"We will easily find" U.S. diplomats to be expelled "in a more painful form to the U.S. than it was in our case," Sergei Ivanov, chief of Russia's influential Security Council, said on Polish state television during a visit to Warsaw.
"We have time to think, to carefully pick from among more than 1,000 U.S. diplomats in Russia, to choose those 46 who are most precious to the Americans," he was quoted as saying through an interpreter.
Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov also warned of U.S. expulsions and called the U.S. move a groundless, "political" act reminiscent of the Cold War.
"Naturally, as it has before, Russia will firmly and steadfastly defend its national interests and will adequately respond to this unfriendly step by the United States," Ivanov said, somberly reading a statement on government-controlled ORT television.
"At the same time, the Russian leadership assumes that in Washington, the policy and logic of those who try to push mankind and the United States (back) into the epoch of the Cold War and confrontation won't prevail."
Asked later on the U.S. network NBC if an "adequate" response meant an equal number of expulsions from Russia, Ivanov replied, "I think yes. ... I think that you won't have to wait long for our response."
Ivanov said there were no grounds for the imminent expulsion of six Russian diplomats and the forced departure of 46 more by July, and he expressed regret that Washington had not used its "special channels" with Moscow to quietly address its concerns. "Unfortunately, Washington has chosen another way, so this step cannot be regarded as anything but a political one," Ivanov said.
U.S. officials said that four Russian diplomats had been directly implicated in the case of Robert Hanssen, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who was arrested last month and charged with passing secrets to Moscow for the past 15 years. Two other diplomats allegedly involved in the case departed the United States recently.
The U.S. government demanded the departure of 46 others as a gesture of concern over Russia's alleged stepping-up of intelligence operations in the United States over the past four years, U.S. officials said.
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