The Atlantic

Diplomatic Expulsions Won't Deter Russia

To really punish Putin, Britain will have to crack down on his associates’ illicit funds.
Source: Sergei Chirkov / Reuters

In the span of a day, more than 100 Russian diplomats across North America and Europe were told that they’d be getting the boot—a mass expulsion coordinated by 23 countries in response to this month’s nerve-agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury. The move was a stunning show of international solidarity with the United Kingdom, which itself expelled 23 Russian diplomats last week, and was heralded by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as the “largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers ever.”

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