This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Russia’s ambassador to Australia has categorically denied the Kremlin has placed spies in its Australian embassies, six days before two of its diplomats will be ejected at the order of the prime minister.



Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, met with the ambassador, Grigory Logvinov, on Wednesday to condemn Russia for its alleged chemical weapons attack on UK soil that left a former spy and his daughter in a critical condition.

Earlier in the day, in a long and at times rambling press conference that touched on Russian casualties during the first and second world wars, ongoing issues with Nato, and Le Carré-esque hints of Australian intelligence agents interfering with Russian embassy staff, Logvinov said it was laughable to suggest that Russian spies were operating in Australia.

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Speaking from Russia’s embassy in Canberra, he said if he agreed the diplomats being expelled from Australia were spies, it “admits that all other Russian embassies are half-spy embassies”.

“Embassies are consisting of diplomats,” Logvinov said. “Some embassies, well, our embassy here, is quite small. It’s average, actually. We have embassies that are bigger in the US – well, [the US embassy] was big, now it is much smaller.”

That was a reference to US president Donald Trump’s decision this week to expel 60 Russia officials who Washington said were spies, including a dozen based at the United Nations.

Logvinov would not say what the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, thought of the Turnbull government’s decision to expel two officials, nor if it would lead to a permanent breach between the countries.

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But he condemned Australia for participating in a “well-orchestrated campaign” to discredit Russia, saying the coordinated move by more than 20 countries to expel more than 150 Russian officials was based on little evidence from Britain, and only served the US’s campaign to discredit Russia.

“All of these anti-Russian campaigns we’d consider as very rude, very primitive and incompetent provocations,” he said.

“It’s quite clear, the campaign about so-called Russian interference into domestic politics in the US … [has] turned out to be nothing.

“It’s up to the west to finally stop and understand that anti-Russian campaigns have no future.”

Malcolm Turnbull said this week that Russia’s alleged use of a chemical weapon to try to murder a former Russian intelligence official, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury on 4 March reflected a pattern of “aggression” by the Russian government that had to be stopped.

“It reflects a pattern of recklessness and aggression by the Russian government, including the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of eastern Ukraine, the downing of MH17, cyber attacks and efforts to manipulate western nations’ elections,” he said in the prime minister’s courtyard in Parliament House.

“There are credible reports that Russia was actively undermining the credibility of the Brexit referendum, last year’s presidential elections in France, and Catalonia’s referendum in Spain, and in the United States, one of the oldest and formidable democracies in the world, debate is raging about whether Russian intelligence operations may have tipped the presidential election.”

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But Logvinov questioned many of those charges on Wednesday, and cast doubt on the US and British version of those issues. He said British authorities were refusing to release evidence of Skripal’s poisoning, and he questioned why Russia would want to murder its own citizens.

“Now this Skripal case, who has seen this Skripal after the alleged poisoning?” he asked. “Who has seen any real medical reports … [showing] some alleged nerve agent?”

On Wednesday afternoon Logvinov attended a meeting with Bishop in which she dressed him down, explaining Australia had expelled “two diplomats we believe are undisclosed intelligence operatives” because it shared the “outrage that a chemical nerve agent would be deployed in any circumstances”.

Bishop demanded a “credible explanation” about how the Russian military-grade nerve agent could have been deployed.

Logvinov agreed it was a “very serious incident” and claimed Russia wanted a “proper investigation” under the auspices of the chemical weapons convention.