Russia says Britain must cut over 50 diplomats as spy crisis deepens

Russia said today that Britain had to reduce its diplomatic staff by more than 50 more people as a crisis in ties between Moscow and the West escalated over the nerve agent attack on a former spy.

The new measures came after 23 British diplomats left Russia earlier this month and are seen as Moscow's punishment after Britain's allies expelled Russian diplomats over the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in an English city.

"Russia suggested parity. The British side has more than 50 more people," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told AFP.

On Friday, Moscow summoned British ambassador Laurie Bristow, giving London a month to cut the number of diplomatic staff in Russia to the same number Russia has in Britain.

He was summoned along with the heads of diplomatic missions from 23 other countries who were told that some of their diplomats had to leave, in the biggest wave of tit-for-tat expulsions in recent memory.

Bristow had been handed a protest note over the "provocative and unfounded actions of the British side which instigated the unwarranted expulsion of Russian diplomats from a variety of states," the Russian foreign ministry said.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said on Saturday: "We are considering the implication of the measures announced yesterday by the Russian foreign ministry."