LONDON, February 9. /TASS/. The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom has not recovered from its severe shortage of diplomatic staff since the expulsion of envoys in 2018, Ambassador to London Andrey Kelin told TASS on the eve of Diplomats’ Day, which is celebrated on February 10.

"No, this is continuing, we still have complicated visa exchanges," the ambassador said, replying to a question about whether the problem of visa issuance to diplomatic staff persists. "There hasn't been such an exchange for a long time, about six months. But hopefully, it will happen and a new batch of personnel will be able to come in. We have parity in that," Kelin noted.

"We have about 30 diplomats working for us now, that number has not changed in recent years. Before the expulsion, there were more than 50. Both for us and the British. We remain within these parameters," the diplomat said.

According to London, former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergey Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for the United Kingdom and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4, 2018. Claiming that the substance used in the episode had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident.

Moscow rejected all of the accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had any programs for developing this agent. London expelled 23 Russian diplomats without providing any evidence and stated that other anti-Russian measures would follow, after which Moscow took retaliatory measures by ejecting the same number of British embassy staff members and ordering the closure of the UK’s consulate general in St. Petersburg, in addition to terminating the activity of the British Council in Russia.