An American envoy accused of endangering lives by breaking and stealing a railway sign from a busy train junction left Russia to return home to the US rather than face potential criminal action, officials in Moscow have said.
Speaking as part of an interview with a news program broadcast on YouTube on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explained that the Russian government had issued a protest to Washington over the incident, which took place last spring.
The Foreign Ministry had announced the day before that the authorities had evidence confirming that an employee of the US diplomatic mission in Moscow was behind the theft of a railway pointer signal from a junction outside a station in Ostashkov, near the Central Russian city of Tver. A video clip, made exclusively available to RT, shows the man alleged to be an American diplomat snapping off the indicator. Officials say it was a vital piece of infrastructure and its removal threatened the lives of train passengers.