The UK’s diplomatic flag is flown outside the British Embassy building in Moscow, Russia, 10 March 2025. Photo: EPA /Maxim Shipenkov
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has revoked the accreditation of a diplomat at the British Embassy in Moscow after the Federal Security Service (FSB) identified him as an undeclared intelligence agent, the FSB said on Thursday.
In a brief statement, Russia’s main domestic security agency said that a counterintelligence operation had established that 45-year old Gareth Samuel Davis had been sent to Russia “under the cover of the position of Second Secretary of the Administrative and Economic Department of the British Embassy”.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that Davis had been given two weeks to leave the country, and that the UK’s deputy head of mission to Russia, Danae Dholakia, had been summoned to the ministry in connection with the allegations.
The statement went on to say that Moscow would not tolerate undeclared UK security service operatives engaging in intelligence activities in Russia, and that “if London escalates the situation, Russia will give a decisive ‘mirror’ response”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that it had revoked Davis’s accreditation in accordance with the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which grants a recipient state the right to unilaterally declare any member of a foreign diplomatic corps “unacceptable” at any time.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw Moscow’s already strained relations with the UK worsen significantly, with multiple diplomatic expulsions on both sides over the past four years. Indeed, Russia has expelled at least nine British diplomats since 2024 alone, according to The Moscow Times, with the British government vowing to “respond appropriately” to each incident.
