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Australia to Expel 2 Russian Envoys Over U.K. Nerve-Agent Attack

Australia to Expel 2 Russian Envoys Over U.K. Nerve-Agent Attack

(Bloomberg) -- Australia’s government ordered two Russian diplomats to leave the country, joining the U.S., European Union members and other nations in taking action in response to the nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter in the U.K.

The two diplomats, “identified as undeclared intelligence officers,” have been ordered to leave within seven days “for actions inconsistent with their status” under the Vienna Conventions, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s office said in a statement Tuesday.

The March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, “is part of a pattern of reckless and deliberate conduct by the Russian state that constitutes a growing threat to international security, global non-proliferation rules against the use of chemical weapons, the rights of other sovereign nations and the international rules-based order that underpins them,” Turnbull said in the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Edward Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edward Johnson at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net, Michael Heath

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