Russian ambassador leaving US amid controversy: Report

Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak is reportedly preparing to leave the country after being caught at the center of an ongoing political firestorm involving President Donald Trump, according to a new report.

Although plans for Kislyak’s departure are said to have already been scheduled, Moscow is denying reports about his imminent departure.

The US-Russia Business Council in Washington announced Monday that it was going to host a farewell dinner for the envoy on July 11.

However, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied reports that there was going to be any “unplanned” change of Russian ambassadors in a major country.

“No unplanned replacement of Russian ambassadors is taking place," she told CNN.

“And if a decision is made to name a new ambassador to the United States … then Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, who has worked in the United States for nine years, will go down in the history of bilateral relations as a person who did everything to develop them even in the most complicated circumstances,” Zakharova further explained in a Facebook statement.

She also noted that such decisions need direct approval from President Vladimir Putin.

This is while Russian media reports confirm that the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lower House of the Russian Parliament has already approved Anatoly Antonov as Kislyak’s replacement.

According to reports, the change had been expected in Washington for some time now. Some even thought that he was the favorite to lead the UN counterterrorism office, a job that UN Secretary General António Guterres gave to Vladimir Voronkov, another Russian official.

BuzzFeed news reported Sunday that Kislyak was planning to return to Russia amid an ongoing investigation about his ties with Trump’s team before and after last year’s presidential election.

The Trump administration has been under scrutiny since his first day in the White House. A long-running investigation by the Senate and the FBI has seen the president lose his favorite National Security Adviser Mike Flynn over his meetings with Kislyak.

Flynn was fired after admitting to misleading the US intelligence community and Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his talks.

Trump’s Attorney General Ben Sessions also recused himself from overseeing the probe due to his meetings with Kislyak as a “Trump surrogate” during the campaign.

CNN reported in March that the US intelligence community deemed Kislyak as a top Russian spy -- a claim that Moscow has firmly denied.

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