(EDM) Moscow announced last week (March 29) that 60 American diplomats would be expelled, delivering a “mirror” response to every Western country that had sanctioned Russia in solidarity with the United Kingdom (see EDM, March 29). What appeared to be a tit-for-tat response in a diplomatic row was in fact an escalation of the crisis, sparked a few weeks ago by an attempted assassination on British soil with the use of a weaponized chemical agent. This escalation has manifested itself, first of all, in the sharp and aggressive language used by the official representatives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, March 28). Some mainstream Russian experts tried to defuse the tensions and argue that the traditional punishment of severing diplomatic ties makes little sense when more communication is urgently needed (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 28). But their voices were lost in the furious assertions that Russia—which has a new arsenal of nuclear missiles, described in much detail during President Vladimir Putin’s address to the parliament last month—would not tolerate any censure (Newsru.com, March 22). […]
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