Putin decides not to hit back on Obama’s expulsion of Russian diplomats
Russian President Vladimir Putin decided against a tit-for-tat retaliation for outgoing President Barack Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US over cyberattacks allegedly backed by the Kremlin and aimed at interfering with the 2016 election campaign. "We won’t send anyone away," Putin said in a statement issued by the Kremlin after his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked him to approve a mirror expulsion of US diplomats in a televised meeting on Friday. Trump has said he wants to cooperate with Putin in fighting terrorism and may review sanctions that Obama imposed over Russia’s involvement in a conflict in Ukraine. Lavrov proposed the expulsion of 31 US diplomats in Moscow and four in St Petersburg, to match the 31 Russian embassy officials in Washington and four consular staff in San Francisco that were ordered to leave the country a day earlier. Grizzly Steppe Obama described the 35 Russians ejected from the US as intelligence operatives working under diplomatic ...
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