Russian diplomats move into new building in Washington DC after Donald Trump closes annex

| 6:30 pm EDT September 8, 2017
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Just a week after Donald Trump ordered that a handful of Russian government properties in the United States be immediately closed, including one in Washington DC, it appears the Russian diplomats who have been displaced are simply moving into a different building. Trump ordered that the Russian chancery annex in DC be closed. Today, Russians were spotted moving into a building that had previously been unoccupied – suggesting the entire thing has been nothing more than a charade.

The saga began when Donald Trump ordered the closing of the Russian chancery annex in Washington DC on August 31st (link), along with other Russian properties in New York and San Francisco. This was a tepid and belated response to Vladimir Putin’s decision to expel hundreds of U.S. diplomats from Russia. As Palmer Report noted at the time, Trump didn’t actually expel any Russian diplomats, which suggested that they would simply resurface at different Russian properties. Sure enough, that is what’s now happening.

Vans with diplomatic license plates were spotted today moving furniture and boxes into what’s formally known as the “Information Office” (link), according to reporter Natasha Bertrand. She notes that the building in question was previously unoccupied. According to Foreign Policy, the Information Office has been in the hands of the Russian government since 1957 (link), but it’s described as being small. Then again, so is the annex that Trump just ordered closed.

In other words, after Donald Trump ordered the closing of the Russian annex, the Russian diplomats working there have simply moved around the corner to a new building already under their control. The Kremlin has only waited a week to make this move, suggesting that it’s not even trying to hide what it’s doing. There’s no way to know whether Trump knew the Russians would do this when he closed the annex. But by now expelling anyone, he clearly didn’t intend for them to leave the country.