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Moscow and Washington: two diplomatic ruptures in October 2021
Summary
A look back at how Russia's NATO mission closure and an FBI raid on a sanctioned oligarch's home marked a tense week.
What did the week leading up to 22 October 2021 reveal about the state of ties between Russia and the West? Two announcements, made days apart, pointed to friction on both the diplomatic and the legal front.
On 18 October 2021, Russia announced that it would suspend its mission to NATO in Brussels as early as 1 November. The step was presented as a response to the expulsion earlier that month of eight diplomats accused of espionage from the mission. Moscow also said that the NATO information bureau and the alliance's military liaison office in Moscow would be terminated.
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 him in 2018.
Taken together, the two developments showed contact channels narrowing in Brussels and Moscow, while American law enforcement acted against a sanctioned Russian businessman at home. Both were announced within two days of each other, in the days before 22 October 2021.
