MOSCOW, September 13. /TASS/. Six British diplomats have been expelled from Russia as their spy activity in the country has gotten out of control, an anonymous representative of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) stated on air of the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
The news piece named six UK embassy employees in Moscow who were stripped of their accreditation in Russia, three men and three women: Jessica Davenport, Grace Elvin, Callum Andrew Duff, Katharine Mcdonnell, Thomas John Hickson and Blake Patel.
"Frankly speaking, we've had enough of this circus, running around Moscow's Third Ring Road in the rain, dashing through parks, taking day trips from the capital to neighboring cities just to spend a few hours freezing on a bench, or constantly switching between public transport and taxis in order to hide from security services while going to one of their meetings with NGO foreign agents engaged in lobbying for migrants’ interests," the FSB official said.
"London sends spies disguised as the spouses of diplomats, even using young children to cover for their espionage. In other words, any diplomatic etiquette has been thrown completely out the window," he emphasized.
"Yes, this is classic British espionage. It’s amusing to watch, but it cannot continue any longer. The British are not picking up on our hints that this practice needs to stop. That is why we decided to begin with expelling these six," the FSB official said.
Mi-6 branch
Photos and video of Jessica Davenport's meetings with Andrey Lipsky, editor of Novaya Gazeta (recognized as a foreign agent NGO in Russia), and with Evgeny Yastrebov, the functionary of Grazhdanskoye Sodeistviye (Public Co-Action, recognized as a foreign agent NGO in Russia), were shown in the news piece.
As noted, the British began turning their Foreign Office into an intelligence branch long before the start of the special military operation. It was back in 2014, after Crimea’s reunification with Russia. "After February 2022, they went completely off the rails and accelerated the reorganization to exert actual external management of the conflict, maintaining it through actions like sabotaging the signing of peace treaties or provoking escalation by initiating the supply of more serious weapons," the FSB official said.
He drew attention to the Eastern Europe and Central Asia directorate of the British Foreign Office. According to the FSB official, its structure is "nothing but a focal point for destabilizing the international situation by dragging all the leading world players into the global conflict." "As for the personnel composition, one sees a lot of familiar faces here in the directorate, among others are former employees of Mi-6 intelligence base in Moscow, now housed in the British Embassy," he explained. As noted, the Foreign Office sends "diplomats with special training" to Russia through this directorate.