Britain has replaced the United States as Russia’s “villain of choice”, The Guardian wrote on Sunday, pointing out stepped-up efforts by the UK to become what Red Square now sees as the “main global warmonger”.
The tabloid noted that what chiefly frosted relations between the Kremlin and 10 Downing Street were accusations of planned drone strikes on Russian airfields, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, and directing “terrorist” raids on Russian territory,
Ukrainian state media Ukrinform pointed out that a new charge was added in the article: Russian authorities claimed that British intelligence had tried and failed to lure Russian pilots into defecting to the west.
“The FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] exposed all this in great detail,” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told reporters in Moscow, describing what he called a British-backed plot to lure a Russian pilot flying a Kinzhal missile-equipped jet to Romania, where, he claimed, it would be shot down by NATO forces.
“ ‘I do not know how the British will wash themselves clean of it, although their ability to play the role of goose coming out of the shower is well known,’ Lavrov added, using a Russian idiom that cast Britain as somehow always emerging spotless, despite its actions,” the paper quoted him as saying.
The Labour-leaning Guardian stressed (accurately, by all analyses) that Russia is seeking to mend relations with Donald Trump’s administration, and therefore the UK has assumed the role once reserved for the United States — as the Kremlin’s chief adversary.
“Russia regards itself as on a par with the United States. Now they can’t criticize Trump directly, so [whom] do you blame for your woes – for the losses in Ukraine, for a million casualties? You blame the closest thing, the British. It’s easy to portray us as the root of all Russia’s problems,” said Captain John Foreman, the UK’s former defense attaché to Moscow.
This year, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) declared: “London today, like on the eve of both world wars, is acting as the main global warmonger”.
The Guardian noted that rivalry between Russia and the United Kingdom has deep historical roots, dating back to the 19th century, when imperial Russia and Britain competed for influence in Central Asia, but Washington replaced London as the chief enemy after the US emerged as a global superpower after World War II.
Tensions grew exponentially between US John F Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev in the 1960s, and British leadership became an afterthought on the Kremlin’s political radar.
“During the cold war, the US was known in KGB parlance as the “main enemy”, with Britain a distant second. Although rivalry and mutual spying between the two never went away, in the minds of the Kremlin the threat from Britain was very much a subplot to the main battle between Moscow and Washington.”
Ukrinform noted that the UK’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE, Neil Holland, stated that the “peace terms” Russia is proposing to end its war against Ukraine would, “in fact, reward aggression, legitimize occupation, and grant the Kremlin veto power over Ukraine’s future.”