President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin ordered to reduce the US embassy staff from the American Diplomatic Mission in Moscow, according to the New York Times. The order will come into effect on September, 1. It seemed that Putin had not dropped the idea of the better relations with the US.
When did it start?
Last December, President Barack Obama removed the 35 Russian diplomats from the administration. But, Putin did not show any similar response to it and shocked everyone. After seven months, he took an unpredictable strict revenge, which is very grievous and if it would not be stopped then it would remove the US diplomats from Russia.
Nevertheless, Putin's decision caused the qualitative confusions. According to a source from the Russian capital, only 455 people employed at the US missions could stay, no matter if they are staff or political workers. On the other hand, on Sunday Vladimir Putin claimed that he had ordered that 755 employees must leave their working places. Russian President added that he made such decision after the Congressional approval for the new sanctions against Russia. Putin stressed that he does not want to leave the sanctions without any response.
The US reaction
The US embassy gave no comments about Putin's decision. According to the 2013 internal report into the Russian mission, the Russian state department hired 934 workers locally for staff positions and deployed 301 diplomats.
The US embassy was ordered by the Kremlin to remove the 60 percent of its diplomatic staff, but many of them will be Russian citizens.
The US ambassador to Russia John Tefft showed his intense disappointment towards Putin's action to cut the workers from the US embassy in Moscow on Friday. According to the Russian diplomatic mission in the US, the embassy of the US hires hundreds of Russians for various jobs like translation, cooking, driving, processing visa applications, etc.
Vladimir Frolov (a foreign affairs analyst) said, “they will have to fire the Russian citizens,”
Further negotiations will start soon, as Russia's main aim is to make the US take more Russian diplomats to work in the US. It is possible if new Russian diplomats get visas to the US, Putin will cancel or change his rough order. It is clear that Russia itself will suffer from this decision.
“Russian citizens will be hit hardest by smaller US staff at the embassy. Wait time for a visa to travel to the US will increase dramatically,” tweeted former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. It is evident that no matter how hard Donald Trump tries to settle good relations with Russa, the situation only becomes worse.
