Russia is ready to expel a number of US diplomats and seize two USA properties here in a tit-for-tat response if no deal is reached at a meeting of senior diplomats of the two sides in Washington on Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday.
"The seized compounds have not been returned yet", Ms. Zakharova said, as translated by TASS, a state-owned newswire.
"Washington not only did not rescind the decision to expel our employees, but also refuses to issue visas to those who must travel as replacements", Zakharova said at a weekly briefing.
"If there is no progress, we will have to take retaliatory measures", she added.
Barack Obama, US president at the time, ordered the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies in December, along with the seizure of the two diplomatic compounds, over what he said was the hacking of US political groups during the 2016 presidential election, something Russia has flatly denied.
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The Washington Post later reported that the Obama administration struggled to find ways to retaliate against Moscow after the USA discovered that Putin was directly involved in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the United States presidential race over two years ago. "One of our options, apart from a tit-for-tat expulsion of Americans, would be to even out the numbers".
The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian state-sponsored hackers and propagandists interfered in last year's White House race by targeting Mr. Trump's former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
But Putin rejected the proposal, saying in a statement that Russian Federation reserved the right to retaliate depending on the future policy of the new U.S. President Donald Trump.
The compounds in question include facilities in Maryland's Eastern Shore and Long Island, New York.
At the same time, she also expressed hope that the US will adopt a more constructive approach to resolving the diplomatic property dispute after Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump met face-to-face for the first time last week.
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