MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/. Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov returned home after his term of office in the capacity of the country’s top diplomatic envoy to the United States had expired, a TASS correspondent reported on Sunday.

"He has arrived in Moscow," the correspondent reported adding that Antonov’s aircraft landed at the Vnukovo airport in the Russian capital.

According to earlier reports, Antonov had concluded his tenure as the Russian Ambassador to the United States. The Russian Embassy in Washington announced to TASS on October 5 that Antonov had concluded his tenure as the Russian Ambassador to the United States and would take a flight to Moscow in the coming hours.

Antonov, 69, has served as Russia’s Ambassador to the United States since 2017. He headed the Russian 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 United States. 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.