WASHINGTON (AP) – The Trump administration has notified Congress that it intends to close the last two U.S. consulates in Russia.
The State Department told lawmakers last week that it would permanently close the consulate in the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok and temporarily suspend operations at the consulate in Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural Mountains.
The notice was sent to Congress on December 10, but received little attention at the time. This schedule predates three days by the public appearance of news about an alleged Russian intrusion of equipment into U.S. government and private computer systems that has sparked serious fears of cybersecurity.
The department’s notification to Congress, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, said the closures were due to limits set by Russian authorities in 2017 on the number of U.S. diplomats allowed to work in the country.
The moves are “in response to the ongoing personnel challenges of the U.S. mission to Russia as a result of the personnel limit imposed by Russia on the 2017 U.S. mission and the deadlock with Russia on diplomatic visas,” he said. .
After the closures, the only diplomatic facility the United States will have in Russia will be the embassy in Moscow. Russia ordered the closure of the US consulate in St. Petersburg in 2018 after the United States ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle in fortuitous actions for the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in Britain.
The Vladivostok consulate had been temporarily closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic and its officials had already begun removing equipment, documents and other sensitive items. Consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg employ a total of 10 U.S. diplomats and 33 local officials.
The exact timing of the closures has yet to be determined. U.S. personnel will be transferred to the Moscow embassy, while locals will be fired, according to the notice. The department estimated that the permanent closure of the Vladivostok consulate would save $ 3.2 million a year.
The closures will leave the United States without diplomatic representation in a wide strip of Russia (everywhere east of Moscow) and will present a major inconvenience for American travelers from Russia’s Far East, as well as for Russians. from the region seeking visas to come to the United States, as all consular services will be managed from the Moscow embassy.