German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said "we remain open to constructive dialogue with Russia, which remains necessary on many international issues."
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said on Monday that resources should be now focused on mending the widening rift between the East and the West. Meanwhile, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila told a separate press conference on the same day that the decision to expel a Russian diplomat was not easy for the country.
The coordinated actions were not merely a response to the poisoning attack, U.S. officials said. "It's also part of a broader set of actions that the Russians have taken for quite some time internationally: a steady drumbeat of destabilizing any aggressive actions."
Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, a U.S. think tank, told Xinhua that the number of Russian agents has been viewed with growing concern in the United States and allied countries.
The U.S. moves "are far more than symbolic as they are an attempt to hinder Russian intelligence gathering in these countries," he said.
Moscow has denied the accusation, calling the deportation of its diplomats "a provocative gesture."
The Trump administration has been under pressure from inside the country and the West. The mid-term elections urge it to "play tough" against Moscow, and Western allies have been disheartened by its reluctance to attack Moscow directly over the poisoning attack, as required by the NATO treaties, observers said.
The White House's ambiguity in dealing with Russia has also sparked rage and dissatisfaction inside the United States, where doubts of Trump' s "collusion" with Russia in the 2016 elections still linger.
Mahaffee said that it will continue to be a challenge for Trump to deal with Russia.
END OF TRANSATLANTICISM?
Since Trump took office, his "America First" policy has frequently collided with those of his European partners. He called NATO "obsolete," opposed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change, threatened to scrap the Iranian nuclear deal and announced moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
There has been increasing dissatisfaction in Europe towards the United States, with European mainstream media holding the view that even staunch Atlanticists can no longer deny the crisis in transatlantic relations and blaming Washington for posing threats to the common values shared across the Atlantic.
In the wake of Trump's announcement to impose a 25-percent tariff on steel imports and a 10-percent one on aluminum imports amid global opposition, the European Union (EU) planned "a whole arsenal" of countermeasures.
Europe "wants to avoid escalation" but "must keep the multilateral framework" because "protectionism is never the answer: protectionism is nationalism, nationalism is war and the war only makes losers," European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told a French television news channel earlier this month.
Trump has torn the mask off the U.S. face and shown the true face of an unscrupulous and self-reliant world power, German politician Rolf Mutzenich wrote in his article entitled "End of Transatlanticism?"
The apparent solidarity between the United States and its European allies in expelling Russian diplomats could not cover up their differences on strategies, interests and policies which has been tearing the two sides apart.
The poisoning incident is just a small issue Washington is taking advantage of to show solidarity with its allies amid the escalating rift, analysts said.
