MOSCOW — The Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, a prominent figure in the controversy over Russia’s possible involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has ended his assignment in Washington. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak left the United States for Russia on Saturday after concluding his tour of service as ambassador to the US, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy said,

The move was part of a rotation that had been planned for some time, according to the embassy's deputy communications chief, Alexey Mosin. “A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post, this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions.These illegal leaks, like Comey’s, must stop!” The Washington Post reported late Friday that U.S. intelligence officials had collected information that Russia’s ambassador to the United States had told superiors that he had discussed campaign-related matters and policies important to Moscow last year with Jeff Sessions, then a senator who had endorsed Trump. "I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign," Sessions said in March when he announced that he would recuse himself from matters relating to the FBI probe of Russian interference in the election and any connections to the Trump campaign. Sessions, who is now attorney general, had initially failed to disclose his meetings with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation process; when they were made public in news reports, he insisted he had met with Kislyak only in his capacity as a senator and had not discussed campaign issues. However in a statement, a justice department spokeswoman told the paper: “Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that the Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me.”

In a separate development on Friday, the Senate judiciary committee said that next week it would interview the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and his former campaign chief Paul Manafort behind closed doors rather than in public testimony, as originally planned.
Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, who was cited in Washington Post reports yesterday that American intelligence overheard him telling Moscow about his election-related discussions with a Trump campaign official, ends his nine-year assignment and leaves the United States. In May 2017, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Antonov was approved as the next ambassador.