Embassies are generally paragons of diplomacy, using language so measured it can often frustrate those not accustomed to the niceties of statesmanship. 

The decidedly undiplomatic tweet. Image: Twitter/@RussianEmbassy

But acrimony between the US Obama administration and its Russian counterpart has led to at least one Russian Embassy throwing diplomacy out the window.

Russia's UK Embassy yesterday tweeted a photo of a little duckling with the word 'LAME' superimposed on it, adding that "everybody, incl[ulding] [US] people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm[inistration]."

US President Barack Obama yesterday expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in retaliation to intelligence community reports that the Kremlin had sought to influence the US election through hacking. 

The 'lame duck' imagery, flag emoticons and liberal use of abbreviations in the Russian Embassy tweet had many Twitter users rubbing their eyes in disbelief. 

The Embassy's reference to a 'lame duck' echoes language used by the head of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, who told Interfax yesterday that Obama's retaliatory measures were "the agony not even of 'lame ducks', but of 'political corpses'."

The Russian Embassy's controversial tweet got 17,000 likes and almost 16,000 retweets, although Russia's local representatives were not among them. 

Instead, Russia's Maltese Embassy limited itself to retweeting a comment by its South African counterpart which mocked the Obama administration as "an angry group of foreign policy failures".