Russia is recalling its ambassador to the United States for consultations, the foreign ministry said Wednesday without citing a specific reason.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
The move to bring Anatoly Antonov to Moscow comes amid rising tensions with US President Joe Biden's administration, which has imposed sanctions over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is now in prison.
It also comes on the heels of a declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to help former president Donald Trump in last November's presidential election, an allegation Russia described as "unfounded and unsubstantiated."
The report also cited efforts by Iran to undermine confidence in the vote and harm Trump's reelection prospects. Despite those threats, though, intelligence officials found "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 US elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process, including voter registration, ballot casting, vote tabulation, or reporting results."
Iran, the report found carried out its own influence campaign aimed at harming Trump's reelection bid, an effort US officials say was probably approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
One "highly targeted operation" – the subject of an October news conference by then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray – involved a flurry of emails to Democratic voters in battleground states that falsely purported to be from the far-right group Proud Boys and threatened the recipients if they didn't vote for Trump.
Iran's efforts, which officials say were more aggressive than in past elections and continued even after the contest was over, were focused on sowing discord in the US, likely because Tehran believed that would hurt Trump's re-election chances.
In a television interview aired on Wednesday, Biden was asked whether he thought Putin is a killer and said "I do."
"[Putin] will pay a price," Biden told ABC News in an interview broadcast on Wednesday. Asked what the consequences would be, he said, "You'll see shortly."
At the same time, Biden noted that "there's places where it's in our mutual interest to work together" such as renewing the START nuclear agreement, adding that the two leaders have a known history.
"I know [Putin] relatively well," Biden said, adding that "the most important thing dealing with foreign leaders in my experience ... is just know the other guy."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not cite specific reasons for Antonov's return but said that relations "are in a difficult state, which Washington has brought to a dead-end in recent years."
"We are interested in preventing their irreversible degradation, if the Americans are aware of the associated risks," she added.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: "We will be direct, we will speak out on areas where we have concerns, and it will certainly be, as the president said last night – certainly, the Russians will be held accountable for the actions that they have taken."
Consequently, the US on Wednesday also said it was tightening sanctions on some exports to Russia, partially excluding certain items such as those related to aviation and space.
The US Commerce Department, in a statement, said it "is committed to preventing Russia from accessing sensitive US technologies that might be diverted to its malign chemical weapons activities," it said.
