Saturday was moving-out day for US diplomats assigned to the American consulate in St. Petersburg.

Moscow shut down the consulate and expelled 60 Americans in a tit-for-tat retaliation for the US expulsion of the same number of Russian diplomats and the closing of its Seattle consulate.

The Americans given the heave-ho by Vladimir Putin’s government are among more than 150 Western diplomats tossed out of the country.

The dispute followed the poisoning in England of a former Russian spy and his daughter.

The ex-secret agent, Sergei V. Skripal, is in critical, but stable, condition. His daughter, Yulia, is no longer in critical condition.

The weapon was a deadly nerve agent developed by Soviet scientists during the Cold War.