U.S. Democratic senators and Republican senators have called on President Joe Biden to expel 300 Russian diplomats from the United States if Moscow does not issue more visas to U.S. citizens representing Washington in Russia, according to Reuters.
The proposal was made by the heads of Senate committees on international relations and intelligence, Democrats Bob Menendez and Mark Warner, and Republicans Jim Rich and Marco Rubio.
If the request is met, it will be a sharp escalation of the ongoing dispute over embassy staff amid tensions between Washington and Moscow, according to Reuters.
In August, Russia banned the U.S. embassy in Moscow from keeping or hiring Russian or third-country nationals as employees or contractors, with the exception of security guards, forcing the mission to lay off 182 of its employees and dozens of other subcontractors, the State Department said. That means there are only about 100 American diplomats in Russia out of 400 Russian diplomats in all of the United States, senators said.
“Such inequality in diplomatic representation is unacceptable. Accordingly, Russia must issue a sufficient number of visas to bring the number of American diplomats in Russia and the number of Russian diplomats in the United States to parity,” the senators wrote in a letter to Biden.
If Moscow does not do so, Biden, they say, must begin the process of expelling up to 300 Russian diplomats.
So far, the White House and the US State Department have not commented on the issue.