Starmer Overplays Trump in the Game Against Russia 🎭🇬🇧

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In recent years, Britain has become the villain of choice in Moscow’s eyes. It has been accused of plotting drone strikes on Russian airfields, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, directing “terrorist” raids inside Russia, and even abetting last year’s gruesome Islamic State concert attack in Moscow. 🎯💣

This week, a new charge was added to the pile: 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. 🦢🚿

London denies involvement in all these plots. ❌🇬🇧

As Moscow looks to rebuild ties with the Donald Trump administration, Britain has assumed the role once reserved for the US – the Kremlin’s chief adversary and favoured bogeyman in its propaganda war. 🧱🇷🇺

“Russia regards itself as on a par with the United States,” said Capt John Foreman, the UK’s former defence attaché to Moscow. ⚖️🇺🇸

“Now they can’t criticise Trump directly, so who 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.” 🧠🎯

This year, Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) said: “London today, like on the eve of both world wars, is acting as the main global warmonger”. 🌍🔥

Boris Johnson was one of the first western leaders to visit Kyiv after the invasion, arriving in early April 2022 just 10 days after Russian forces had withdrawn from positions around the capital. 🏛🇺🇦

It was February 2023 before Joe Biden made his own visit. US officials signed off on massive support for Ukraine, but they were wary of escalation, whereas Johnson frequently used bullish rhetoric about the defeat of Russia, which did not go unnoticed in Moscow. 📣🔥

#starmer #trump #soviet #putin #london #johnson

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Russian officials, including Putin, have repeatedly seized on claims that Johnson derailed a potential peace deal in the spring of 2022. 💥🕊

In Moscow’s telling, Kyiv was ready to agree to terms early in the war but pulled out on British orders – a version of events rejected by Zelensky but now embedded in Russian state media. 📰🧩

“Pockets of anglophobia really do exist within the security services, among people like [Nikolai] Patrushev, [Alexander] Bortnikov and [Sergei] Naryshkin,” said Foreman, referring to three of Russia’s most powerful siloviki, members of the security establishment. 🕴🔒

Among Russia’s ruling elite, the once-innocuous term “Anglo-Saxons” has been reborn as shorthand for the Kremlin’s deepest anxieties about the west. 🧠🧩

In the official lexicon, it no longer denotes an ancient people but a geopolitical cabal, led this time by London and accused of plotting to contain, humiliate and ultimately dismantle Russia. 🌍⚔️

The hostility has trickled down from the top. Russia’s television propagandists now compete to issue ever more lurid threats: one of Putin’s favoured hosts regularly boasts that Britain could be “sunk underwater” by Russia’s new nuclear torpedo. 💣🌊

Public opinion has followed suit. According to a Levada Centre poll this summer, 49% of Russians name Britain as one of their country’s main enemies, second only to Germany. 📊🇩🇪

But this hatred appears to have gone largely unnoticed in Britain itself, Foreman said. 🧐🇬🇧

“They care about us much more than we care about them,” he said. “It’s not a reciprocal relationship; the average Brit on the street has no idea this hate exists.” 🧍‍♂️🤷‍♀️

Adding to the confusion, Moscow’s messaging is often contradictory, depicting Britain as a fading colonial relic as well as a power with outsized sway over world affairs. 🏰🌐

“Soviet leaders then, and Russian leaders now, pay the UK an inverted compliment in professing to believe that London is behind every conspiracy against them,” Michael Clarke, a visiting professor of defence studies at King’s College London, wrote in a recent issue of the British Army Review. 🧠📚

The UK is not unique in accusing Moscow of conducting a far-reaching hybrid campaign on its territory. Across Europe, intelligence services have blamed Moscow for sabotage, arson and disinformation operations, part of what they describe as a coordinated campaign against the continent. 🌍🧨

But diplomatically, Moscow appears uniquely unwilling to engage with London, even through private channels. 📴🇷🇺

The FT reported this week that London has tried, without success, to establish a discreet line of communication, while the Kremlin has proved more receptive to Berlin and Paris. 📞🇫🇷🇩🇪

Clarke noted that Moscow’s hostility is sharpened by what it sees as Britain’s strategic vulnerability: a country aligned with Europe yet standing outside it, and increasingly isolated from it. 🇬🇧🧭

#starmer #trump #soviet #putin #london #johnson

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