Putin tells U. S. to cut diplomatic staff by 755

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin announced Sunday that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia must reduce its staff by 755 employees, an aggressive response to the new U.S. sanctions that seemed ripped right from the Cold War playbook and sure to increase tensions between the two capitals.

In making the announcement, Putin said that Russia had shown restraint for long

enough and that the staff reduction was meant to cause real discomfort for Washington and its representatives in Moscow.

‘‘Over 1,000 employees — diplomats and technical workers — worked and continue to work today in Russia; 755 will have to stop this activity,’’ he said in an interview on state-run Rossiya 1 television, which published a Russian-language transcript on its website.

‘‘That is biting,’’ Putin said.

The measures were the harshest such diplomatic move since a similar rupture in 1986, in the waning days of the Soviet Union.

It was also a major reversal from just the beginning of this month, when Putin first met with President Donald Trump at the G-20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany. The Kremlin had anticipated that the face-to-face meeting of two presidents would be the start of the improved ties Trump talked about during his campaign, and the initial assessment in Moscow was that the two leaders had set the stage for better relations.

But Putin said Sunday that Russia had run out of patience waiting for relations with the United States to improve.

‘‘We waited for quite a long time that, perhaps, something will change for the better, we held out hope that the situation would somehow change,’’ Putin said in the interview. ‘‘But, judging by everything, if it changes, it will not be soon.’’

The initial response from Washington was muted. ‘‘This is a regrettable and uncalled for act,’’ the State Department said in a statement. ‘‘We are assessing the impact of such a limitation and how we will respond to it.’’

Although the reduction in U.S. diplomatic staff had been announced on Friday, in response to a law passed in Congress last week expanding sanctions against Russia, Putin’s statement was the first to confirm the large number of embassy personnel involved.

Congress passed the new sanctions to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 election, including releasing hacked emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Relations with Russia have been in a downward spiral, and Congress is also investigating the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., recently confirming that he met with a Russian lawyer linked to the government who wanted to discuss removing an earlier round of sanctions.

Putin has denied any Russian interference in the U.S. election, saying that anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S. was being used to drive an internal political battle.

He said it was important not to let actions like the new sanctions go unanswered.