Russia announced Thursday that it will expel 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, and close the United States Consulate in St. Petersburg. The move comes after Western nations banded together in solidarity with the U.K. over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in southern England earlier this month.
The 60 expelled American diplomats are a tit-for-tat response to the 60 Russian diplomats Washington has expelled, The New York Times reports. Likewise, the White House had ordered the closure of Russia's consulate in Seattle.
Russia has maintained that it is not behind the poisoning, despite the toxin used on the Skripals belonging to a nerve agent class developed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.