But there are other options available to the government, such as having Australian officials not to attend the month-long tournament starting in mid-June. Britain has already stated that its politicians and royal family members will stay away from the tournament, which ranks alongside the Olympics among most-watched international sporting contests. Iceland has joined the gesture by announcing it will not send officials. Other countries have said they are considering some form of boycott. Mr Turnbull said he expected Russia to expel Australian diplomats in retaliation for Canberra’s actions on Tuesday. He and Ms Bishop refused to give any details of the Russian spies being thrown out, citing intelligence grounds. The government has typically described the Kremlin’s involvement in the attack - which hospitalised former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia - as a credible allegation but on Tuesday Mr Turnbull abandoned such equivocal language.

“We have a government which has used a chemical weapon on the soil of another nation in an attempt to assassinate individuals … this is a shocking crime. It is a shocking infringement of the sovereignty of the United Kingdom,” he said. Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop on Tuesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Ms Bishop said she had told Russian ambassador Grigory Logvinov on Tuesday morning that she had declared two of the nation’s officials “persona non grata” under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and given them a week to leave Australia. Australia expels diplomats rarely - the last time being two Syrians in 2012 over their government’s use of chemical weapons against civilians. The timing was co-ordinated with the 23 other countries that are also expelling Russian diplomats in support of Britain.

Mr Turnbull said the chemical weapons attack - the first on European soil since World War II - came on top of a string of Russian provocations such as the downing of flight MH17, the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of Ukraine and the interference in United States and other countries’ elections. Loading “It reflects a pattern of recklessness and aggression by the Russian government … this latest incident demanded a response,” he said. “Russia is threatening the democratic world right around the world.” But he downplayed comparisons to the Cold War, saying that while the present day bore “some similarities” to the long post-war tensions between Russia and the West, it was better to focus on the "hard facts" of the incident.

He said the chemical attack in Salisbury on March 4 was “an attack on all of us” and every democratic nation that respected the rule of law. Ms Bishop told Coalition MPs on Tuesday morning that the expulsion was not something the Australian government did lightly but that it was acting in solidarity with the British government and other nations. She said British Prime Minister Theresa May had set out a "compelling case" about the role of the Russian government in the incident, putting hundreds of lives at risk. "She emphasised that we take seriously our role as a leader in the efforts to limit the spread of chemical weapons," a Coalition spokesman said after the private gathering of Liberal and Nationals MPs in Parliament House. "The Foreign Minister acknowledged she had no doubt there would be some retaliation and that Australian diplomats would likely be expelled from Russia, and our relationship was strained and tense, but we were in good company and doing the right thing," the spokesman said.