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Russia Says New U.S. Sanctions Forced It to Respond After Russia’s Retaliation, Embassy Workers Brace for a ‘Shock to the System’
(about 4 hours later)
MOSCOW — Even as it sought to punish the United States for imposing new sanctions by forcing the mass dismissal of employees from American diplomatic posts in Russia, the Kremlin left the door open on Monday for President Trump to avoid further escalation. MOSCOW — The last time the Kremlin forced a sweeping reduction of local staff at the American Embassy in Moscow, a young diplomat named Steven Pifer found himself working four days a week on arms control, as usual. But on the fifth day, he navigated the capital in a big truck to move furniture or haul mammoth grocery loads.
Without mentioning the American president directly, Moscow seemed to be appealing to him to resurrect his campaign promise to try to improve Russian-American relations. The entire staff of the embassy, except the ambassador, was assigned one day each week to grunt work called All Purpose Duty, Mr. Pifer recalled in an interview on Monday, when they shed their dark suits and polished loafers to mow the lawns, fix the plumbing, cook in the cafeteria and even clean the toilets.
“The will to normalize these relations should be placed on the record,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told reporters on Monday, and the “attempt at sanctions diktat” should be abandoned. That was a last hurrah for the Cold War in 1986, and although the embassy now functions on a far more complex scale, many current and former diplomats expect a similar effort in the wake of President Vladimir V. Putin’s announcement on Sunday that the United States diplomatic mission in Russia must shed 755 employees by Sept. 1.
The breadth of the dismissals demanded — 755 people, most of whom will be Russian employees — was stunning even by the standards of the Cold War playbook from which the move seemed copied. But Mr. Peskov suggested that Russia had been forced to respond to Congress, and that it was not the Kremlin that was making matters worse. “The attitude in the embassy was if they think that they will shut us down, we will show them,” said Mr. Pifer, who went on to become an American ambassador to Ukraine and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “I think the embassy will adapt this time, too.”
“Of course we’re not interested in those relations being subject to erosion,” Mr. Peskov said. “We’re interested in sustainable development of our relations and can only regret that, for now, we are far from this ideal.” Russia demanded that the United States reduce its diplomatic staff to equal the 455 Russian diplomats working in the United States, including at the mission to the United Nations. That means cutting about 60 percent of a work force estimated at 1,200 to 1,300 people, the vast majority of whom are Russians.
Mr. Putin, in the television interview during which he announced the retaliatory move, said that Russian patience with waiting for relations to improve was at an end. “That is a huge shock to the system,” said James F. Collins, the American ambassador to Russia from 1997 to 2001. “The American government will have to make the decision about who stays and who leaves.”
It was a major shift in tone from the beginning of this month, when Mr. Putin met Mr. Trump for the first time at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany. Given the continuing deterioration in relations between the two countries, core functions like political and military analysis will be preserved, along with espionage, experts said, while programs that involve cooperation on everything from trade to culture to science are likely to be reduced or eliminated.
Mr. Trump had talked during his campaign of improving ties with Russia and had praised Mr. Putin, and the Kremlin had expected the face-to-face meeting of the presidents to mark the start of a new era. The immediate assessment in Moscow was that the two had set the stage for better relations. Besides the State Department, a dizzying array of American government agencies have employees at the embassy, including the Departments of Agriculture and Cmmerce as well as NASA and the Library of Congress.
But then, in quick succession, came the expanded sanctions passed by Congress, Mr. Trump’s indication that he would sign them into law and Moscow’s forceful retaliation. The other area expected to take a heavy hit will be public services, like issuing visas to Russian travelers to the United States, which is likely to slow to a glacial pace.
In Washington, the State Department issued a statement saying that it was assessing the impact of the Russian measures and how it would respond. The United States Embassy in Moscow declined to comment. The Russian staff can be broken down into two broad categories: specialists who help individual departments in the embassy like public relations, and basic service workers employed as security guards, drivers, janitors, electricians and a host of other maintenance functions.
Just as in 2014, when Russia reacted to the first Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis by banning many Western food imports, it seems that ordinary Russians will bear the brunt of the latest decision. As of 2013, the latest year for which public records are available, there were 1,279 staff members working in the American Embassy in Moscow and in consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok, according to a report by the Inspector General’s Office. Of those, 934 were not Americans, including 652 basic service workers. The numbers are believed to have stayed roughly the same.
The bulk of the 755 people dismissed are likely to be Russian employees from the embassy in Moscow, as well as from the American consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok. It is not clear how many Americans might be expelled, if any. Russian staff members working in various departments like the political or economic section often provide the embassy’s institutional memory, because they stay on the job for years while American diplomats rotate every two or three years. (If the Russian employees stay for at least 15 years, they are eligible for special immigration visas to the United States and their salaries are high by Russian standards.)
A State Department inspector general’s report in 2013, the last concrete numbers publicly available, said there were 934 “locally employed” staff members at the Moscow Embassy and three consulates, out of a total staff of 1,279. That would leave roughly 345 Americans, many of whom report regular harassment by Russian officials. It is the Russians who tend to notice nuances in domestic news coverage or in Mr. Putin’s speeches, or who direct diplomats toward public events or responsible journalists. The Russian employees provide continuity, an American diplomat who recently left Moscow said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
In Moscow, locally hired staff members reached at the embassy said the mood inside the walls of the large compound on the Garden Ring, one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares, was stunned confusion. Gen. Bruce McClintock, the American Defense attaché from 2014 to 2016 and now a RAND Corporation analyst, said Russian employees were often more effective in organizing meetings with government officials, while experienced translators ensured that the positions of both sides were clear in often complex discussions.
“Everyone is worried, and there is no information,” said one. “There are so many rumors and no facts yet.” Russia had already chipped away at embassy programs, anyway, he noted. In 2013, it shuttered USAID, for example, and in 2014, in response to the West’s cutting off military cooperation after the Ukraine crisis, it closed the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
The measures were the harshest such diplomatic moves since a similar rupture in 1986, in the waning years of the Soviet Union. At that time, Moscow forced 261 local staff members to quit, leaving the embassy mostly devoid of secretaries, drivers and other support staff. Although the work continued, it was much harder to coordinate because its 10 employees had departed, said General McClintock.
“I heard from people who were here when that happened and how devastating it was at that time,” said the staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because embassy personnel are not authorized to talk to the news media. Russian nationals are not given the security clearances needed to work in the more clandestine branches of the embassy. Indeed, in the chancellery itself, no Russians worked above the fourth floor in the roughly 10-story building, former Russian employees said.
Mr. Peskov said it was up to the Americans to decide how to reduce their staff to 455, matching the size of Russia’s diplomatic staff in the United States, including those at the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York. The American Embassy, which held a staff meeting on Monday to confirm the news to its employees, refused to comment on the events, while in Washington the State Department would say only that it was studying the Russian government’s request.
Whereas the United States has long relied on local staff, the Russians tend to employ their own citizens as support staff. Mr. Peskov said the criterion was anyone considered to be on the staff, which would not include outsourced workers. The general hostility toward the United States means Moscow was already considered a hardship post for American diplomats, and the new measures will lower morale further, diplomats said.
He denied that giving the Americans until Sept. 1 to reduce their staff was a bargaining tactic. Russian employees are confused and do not yet understand how the changes will be carried out, a former Russian employee now working outside the country said, adding with dark humor that Stalin used to say there were no irreplaceable people.
“When there’s such a large-scale cut, it will be inhumane and inappropriate to demand it to be implemented within such a term that was given, for example, to our diplomats on the New Year’s Eve,” he said. Russian employees who worked for specialized departments feel especially vulnerable because they carry a certain stigma in Russia’s current nationalistic mood. Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who was the American ambassador from 2012 to 2014, remembered trying to help find work for 70 Russians who were let go when the Kremlin closed the USAID office.
In response to Russian hacking of the American election, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in late December, giving them 72 hours to leave the country, and he ordered the seizure of two diplomatic country estates, which the United States said had been used for espionage as well as for recreation. It was especially hard because “many Russian companies would not consider hiring these ‘tainted’ people,” he said in an email.
Mr. Putin did not respond at first, hoping for improved ties. But in this tit-for-tat response, Russia also blocked access starting Tuesday to a warehouse and a bucolic enclave along the Moscow River that the embassy has used for barbecues. In recent years, local employees have come under increasing pressure from the Russian security service, the F.S.B., according to current and former employees. Russians escorting delegations of American musicians around the country were harassed, for example, or some in Moscow returned home from work to find agents sitting in their living rooms, demanding that they inform on their employers, they said.
Congress passed the latest sanctions last week to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 election, including by releasing hacked emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The law forces Mr. Trump to seek congressional approval before removing any sanctions. Mr. Pifer said American diplomats who lived through the 1986 clampdown learned all kinds of things about Soviet life that they would not have otherwise.
Congress is also investigating the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has confirmed that he met with a Russian lawyer linked to the government who wanted to discuss removing an earlier round of sanctions. One of his colleagues, who had to navigate customs, wrote a slightly tongue-in-cheek diplomatic cable titled “The 29 Steps Needed to Clear a Container of Furniture,” detailing every stamp issued on every piece of paper. The cable was a huge hit back in Washington, he said.
Mr. Putin has denied any Russian interference in the American election, saying that anti-Russian sentiment in the United States was being used as a weapon in an internal political battle. In previous spats with the United States or the West in general, Mr. Putin often chose measures that hurt Russians the most, not least because Russia’s limited economic reach globally means it does not have many options.
At the very least, the order from the Kremlin was expected to set back some functions at the embassy, like processing visas, which both sides had already slowed. Angered over sanctions imposed by Congress under the Magnitsky Act in 2012, he banned Americans from adopting Russian children. When the West imposed economic and military sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, he barred a broad array of food imports, forcing up prices and limiting the options for Russian consumers.
Many of those emerging from the visa section of the embassy on Monday suggested that the latest measures could only make a bad situation worse. This time, hundreds of Russians will lose their jobs and Russian travelers hoping to visit the United States are likely to wait months for visas. Some 50 Russians were employed in the consular section that processes visas, according to the inspector general’s report.
Vladimir Kruglov, a retiree who said he enjoyed touring national parks in the United States, said that until recently the visa process had taken a maximum of 20 days, but that there were now all kinds of extra procedures, including a month’s wait for an interview. “I don’t think Mr. Putin is terribly worried about this,” Mr. Collins said, noting the presidential election looming in March. “As he is running for election, it is comfortable for him to show that he can stand up to the Americans and to protect Russian interests and that is what he is doing.”
Shavkat Butaev, 50, who works for a company that helps Russians get visas, said there had been a big leap in the number of rejections. Outside the embassy on Monday, many of those emerging from the visa section suggested the Russian measures could only make a bad situation worse. Anecdotal evidence suggested that on both sides, what used to take weeks had already slowed to months.
“It was never like this before: 50 to 60 people get rejected every day, most of them young women,” he said. “I look at who has a green paper in their hands and that means they got a no.” Shavkat Butaev, 50, who works for a company that helps Russians get visas, said rejections were way up, too. “It was never like this before. Fifty, 60 people get rejected every day,” he said.
Oleg Smirnov, an 18-year-old who has been studying in the United States to become a psychiatrist, said he had hoped Mr. Trump would improve relations and he was worried about how the tensions might affect immigration policy. Oleg Smirnov, an 18-year-old student studying in the United States to become a psychiatrist, said that he had hoped President Trump would improve relations and that he was worried about possible fallout on immigration policy.
“These mutual sanctions look like a game played with water guns,” he said.“These mutual sanctions look like a game played with water guns,” he said.