MOSCOW-Russia demanded a meeting with a diplomat said to have defected from its United Nations mission last year and chided U.S. officials Wednesday for refusing.
Sergei Tretyakov, a first secretary at the mission in New York, quietly defected with his wife and other family members and remained in the United States, officials said Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Tretyakov “left his post in New York, along with his family, in unclear circumstances.”
U.S. officials had denied requests for Russian diplomats to visit Tretyakov, Yevgeny Voronin, deputy head of the ministry’s press and information department, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Russian officials wanted “to ascertain whether he or his family have been subjected to any duress and that nothing has happened to them,” Voronin said.
