A convoy of vehicles left the British Embassy in Moscow on Friday ahead of a Russian deadline for 23 diplomats to leave the country, as several European Union countries said they plan to take measures against Russia over the poisoning of a former spy.
Russia expelled 23 British diplomats last Saturday in a carefully calibrated retaliatory move against London, which has accused the Kremlin of orchestrating the nerve toxin attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury earlier this month.
At a summit in Brussels, the 28 EU leaders agreed with Britain that it is "highly likely Russia is responsible" for the attack.
The bloc recalled its ambassador from Moscow for consultations over an incident it called "a grave challenge to our shared security." Its decision prompted the Kremlin to say it ‘regrets’ the move.
The president of Lithuania said Friday that individual EU countries plan to take their own actions against Russia within days. Dalia Grybauskaite said that "from the beginning of next week, a lot of countries, we will go for our national measures."
Grybauskaite has said Lithuania may expel Russian diplomats over the attack on the former double agent and his daughter.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said his country would conduct a security assessment of Russian diplomats with a view to possibly expelling those who are not legitimate.
"We will make that decision, I would say, in the early part of next week," he said.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said his country would also consider "whether we should take unilateral steps."
Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, the EU's power brokers, raised the prospect of further measures against Russia.
The EU leaders' statements came after a summit dinner where British Prime Minister Theresa May shared information about why the UK is convinced Moscow was behind the attack on the former spy, including the type of poison used — a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as Novichok — and intelligence that Russia has produced it within the past decade.
