WASHINGTON, October 5. /TASS/. Anatoly Antonov has concluded his tenure as the Russian Ambassador to the United States and will fly back to Moscow in the next few hours, the Russian Embassy in Washington told TASS.

"The flight [carrying Antonov] departs at 3:00 p.m. (local time, or 7:00 p.m. GMT - TASS) today," the diplomatic mission specified.

Antonov, 69, has served as Russia’s Ambassador to the US since 2017. He headed the embassy during the most turbulent period in the history of Moscow-Washington relations. The past few years have seen quite an unprecedented worsening of bilateral ties which Russia blames on the United States. At that, Washington has imposed restrictions on Russian diplomats working in the US. In 2017, it closed Russia’s Consulate General in San Francisco, California, and ordered the closure of the Russian diplomatic mission in Seattle, Washington, in 2018.