British Council closes Russia offices to protect staff

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

LONDON (AFP) — Britain accused Russia of "reprehensible" conduct Thursday and announced it was closing offices of the British Council because of a Russian secret police crackdown against the cultural body.

"Our paramount consideration is the well-being of our staff and I feel we cannot continue our work without significant risk to them," chief executive Martin Davidson said in London.

"The Russian authorities have made it impossible for us to operate in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg so I have taken the decision to suspend operations in both cities."

The decision marked victory for Russia which ordered the British Council to close the two offices from January 1 in retaliation for the expulsion of Russian diplomats last year -- expulsions ordered in the wake...

Premium Content Partnership | MyWire provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works. MyWire

 

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Please add your comment:

  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  2.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)