trump has zero reaction to putin / russia kicking out 755 diplomats....maybe he doesn't know or care

[spanone]

Putin slashing number of US diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a television interview that the U.S. must cut the size of its diplomatic force in his country by more than half, from about 1,210 to 455.

Putin said Sunday that the cut will make the size of the U.S. diplomatic mission in his country equal to that of Russia's diplomatic corps in the U.S.

"The personnel of the U.S. diplomatic missions in Russia will be cut by 755 people and will now equal the number of the Russian diplomatic personnel in the United States, 455 people on each side," Putin said in an interview on the Rossiya 1 network.

"Because over a thousand employees, diplomats and technical personnel have been working and are still working in Russia, and 755 of them will have to cease their work in the Russian Federation. It’s considerable," Putin said.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-slashing-number-us-diplomats-russia-755-people/story?id=48937036

[babylonsister]

1. WHY

were there so many Americans over there? Head-scratching... And I have read Putin greatly exaggerated that number, but still...

[spanone]

2. Russia's Retaliatory Move Is Single Largest Diplomatic Staff Expulsion Ever

....

However, it wasn’t the Russian’s tit-for-tat move that has gotten many Americans surprised. Rather, it was the mind-boggling huge number of diplomats under the U.S. government payroll. Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he was surprised by the target number – “When I was U.S. ambassador, we didn’t have that many Americans in Russia.”
Of course, not all of 1,210 employees presently working at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow were Americans. In 2013 alone, according to a State Department Inspector General’s report, the Moscow embassy and consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok employed 1,279 staff – included 867 “locally employed” staff and 333 U.S. “direct-hire” staff, from 35 U.S. government agencies.

Essentially, that breakdown from 2013 data suggested the actual number of Americans forced to leave Russia would be far less than 755. Still, the fact remains that the U.S. embassy and consulates employ a bloated 1,210 staffs. While McFaul said Russians should expect to wait weeks if not months to get visas to enter the U.S. with the Kremlin’s retaliation, there’s one thing he didn’t disclose.

Most of the staff employed, similar to Russia Embassy in the U.S., were working for the Intelligence Community – NSA, CIA and whatnot. Obviously, the U.S. employs more intelligence officers or spies in Russia than the Kremlin’s spy agencies Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) and GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye or simply Main Intelligence Agency) do.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/russias-retaliatory-move-single-largest-diplomatic-staff-expulsion-ever/ri20527

[babylonsister]

3. Thanks for that! Maybe Putin is doing us a favor. nt

[DK504]

4. Rexxon doesn't care or has no idea what this means.

He only cares about the oil fields in Russia.