Smoke seen pouring from Russian consulate in San Francisco
A day after the Trump administration ordered the shutdown amid escalating tensions between the United States and Russia, sharp black smoke rose from a chimney at the Russian consulate in San Francisco.
Firefighters who arrived on Friday were not allowed to enter the building.
An Associated Press reporter heard people coming from inside the building tell firefighters that there was no problem and that consulate officials were burning unidentified items in a fireplace.
Mindy Talamadge, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Fire Department, said the department received a call about the smoke and sent a crew to investigate, but found the smoke was coming from the chimney.
“They had a fire in their fireplace,” she said.
San Francisco firefighters speak to workers at the Russian consulate in San Francisco on Friday. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Talmadge said she didn’t know what burned them on a day when San Francisco’s normally cool temperatures had already climbed to 35 ° C by noon.
“It wasn’t accidental. You burned something in your fireplace,” she said.
Consulate staff are rushing to shut down one of the oldest Russian consulates in the US
The order to Russia to vacate the consulate and an official diplomatic residence in San Francisco escalated an already tense diplomatic standoff between Washington and Moscow.
The deadline for closing the consulate is Saturday.
Fire engines surrounded the Russian consulate general in San Francisco on Friday. (Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
The State Department also ordered Russia to shut down trade missions in branch offices in Washington and New York. By next week, Russia will only have three consulates in the US – in Washington, DC, Seattle and Houston – as many as the US has in Russia, said department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.
The lockdowns on both US coasts were perhaps the most drastic US diplomatic measure against Russia since 1986, when the nuclear powers expelled dozens of their diplomats.
American counterintelligence officials have long kept an eye on Russia’s San Francisco outpost over concerns that people posted to the consulate as diplomats are spying.
A building in Manhattan that houses a Russian Trade Mission office is shown on August 31. The US State Department ordered Russia to shut it down. (Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press)
Neighbors said they often wondered what type of equipment was housed in the sheds on the roof of the consulate, which has a clear view of sea movements across the bay.
In response to allegations that Russia interfered in the presidential election, the US kicked several Russian diplomats in San Francisco last December. This time the State Department did not expel any consulate officer from the United States. In addition to Consul Sergey Petrov, the consulate’s website showed 13 other Russian officials working at the San Francisco post.
Russia has a long history in the San Francisco Bay Area, where three Russian cathedrals mark the various facets of the Orthodox Church.
MEDIA! The Russian embassy had a fire alarm NO FIRE everything is fine and we are cleaning up Thank you pic.twitter.com/q3O9Knfa65
– @ sffdpio
The Bay Area has more than 75,000 Russian-speaking residents, including 300,000 Russian-speakers in the greater Sacramento, California area, about 145 kilometers northeast of San Francisco.
There are shops in the streets near the consulate aimed at the city’s large community of Russian emigrants. It’s a few blocks from the Presidio, which was a US military fort and the headquarters of the US 6th Army before it was inactivated.
“We will react hard”
Russia said Friday it would react harshly to US measures that could violate it.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s warning came when Russia said it was weighing a response to the US move that will force it to shut down two trade missions in the United States and the San Francisco consulate by September 2.
“We will react as soon as we have completed our analysis,” Lavrov told students in Moscow. “We will react harshly to things that harm us.”
Separately, a senior Kremlin adviser complained that the US move had pushed bilateral relations further into an impasse and fueled a spiral of retaliatory measures.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would “react harshly to things that harm us.” (Ivan Secretarev / Associated Press)
US President Donald Trump took office in January and said he wanted to improve relations between the US and Russia, which were at a low after the Cold War. But relations have since continued to be torn after US intelligence agencies said Russia interfered in the presidential election, which Moscow denies.
Trump, who himself fought allegations that his staff had colluded with Russia, reluctantly signed new sanctions against Moscow this month drawn up by Congress.
When it became clear that these measures would become law, Moscow ordered the United States to reduce its diplomatic and technical staff in Russia by more than half to 455 people.
The US embassy will be visited in Moscow on July 28th. Lavrov hinted on Friday that Russia could possibly order further staff cuts at the US embassy. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / Associated Press)
Lavrov hinted on Friday that Russia might consider further downsizing the US embassy, suggesting that Moscow was generous last time by allowing Washington to keep “more than 150” extra people .
He said Russia had adjusted the US numbers to match the number of Russian diplomats in the United States, but Moscow generously included more than 150 Russian employees working in the Russian mission to the United Nations in its census.
“We did not initiate tit-for-tat sanctions”
Lavrov said Moscow still hopes for better relations and blames Trump’s political enemies for the worsening situation.
“I want to say that we did not start this whole tit-for-tat exchange deal,” Lavrov said.
“It was started by the Obama administration to undermine US-Russia relations and not allow Trump to come up with constructive ideas or deliver on his pledges ahead of the election.”
Barack Obama, the outgoing president at the time, expelled 35 suspected Russian spies in December and confiscated two Russian diplomatic connections. President Vladimir Putin paused before replying, saying he would wait and see how Trump deals with Russia.
“We thought this government could use common sense, but unfortunately the Russophobes in Congress don’t allow it,” said Lavrov, who complained that the United States gave Moscow only 48 hours to meet its latest demands.
