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Two Russia-West ruptures in two days
Summary
A look back at how an FBI raid and a suspended NATO mission marked a tense moment in relations between Russia and the West.
What did the West's relationship with Russia look like on 19 October 2021? Two reports from that day and the one before it gave a sense of the strain.
On 19 October 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it had raided the Washington, D.C. house of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and ally of Vladimir Putin. The U.S. Treasury Department had sanctioned Deripaska in 2018.
A day earlier, on 18 October 2021, Russia announced that it would suspend its mission to NATO in Brussels as early as 1 November. Moscow said this was a response to the expulsion of eight diplomats from the mission earlier that month, who had been accused of espionage. Russia also said it would terminate the work of the NATO information bureau and the military liaison in Moscow.
Taken together, the two announcements showed contacts between Russia and Western institutions being cut back on one side, while law enforcement pressure on a sanctioned Russian figure was made public on the other.
