Twitter is reacting to news that US and other countries will expel Russian diplomats, with many calling the move insensitive on a day when Russia is mourning the deaths of 64 people after a devastating shopping mall fire.
The Trump administration announced on Monday that, in addition to expelling 60 Russian diplomats from the US, it will also shutter the Russian consulate in Seattle in response to an alleged chemical attack in Britain which Prime Minister Theresa May has blamed on Moscow.
Journalists have criticized the US and EU for their insensitivity in coordinating the announcement of expulsions on a day when all of Russia is mourning after a devastating fire killed 64 people, many of them children, at a shopping center in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.
While some have applauded Trump’s decision, others have called out the US for the aggressive decision taken against Russia, despite the lack of evidence that would show Moscow was in fact behind the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in early March.
Some tweeters pointed out that Trump’s move to expel diplomats and close the Seattle consulate indicates that the president is not in fact “colluding” with Russia, despite months of accusations to that effect and ongoing investigation into those allegations.
There was also some concern that Trump’s decision would have negative consequences for ordinary Russian people living in the US. Closing the Seattle consulate will mean thousands of Russian citizens will be forced to make cross-country trips to carry out basic administrative tasks. The Russian consulate in San Francisco was shuttered by the Trump administration in October 2017.
Seemingly willing to make any piece of news fit their narrative, some members of the anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ managed to twist Trump’s latest anti-Russia action into yet more proof that their president is secretly colluding with the Russians — even going as far as suggesting that Trump received the go-ahead to expel Russian diplomats from Vladimir Putin himself.