As Trump thaws ties, Russia has a new public enemy No. 1: Britain

LONDON – Two British diplomats expelled in a spying row.

A blistering statement from Russia’s foreign intelligence service calling Britain “a warmonger”.

And a threat from a top ally of President Vladimir Putin to seize British assets inside Russia.

As the US under President Donald Trump seeks to reset ties with Moscow and broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, Britain has been granted the status of Russia’s public enemy No. 1. 

It is a mantle it has held on and off over the past two centuries.

“London today, like on the eve of both world wars of the last century, is acting as the main global ‘warmonger’,” Russia’s foreign intelligence service said in an unusually charged public statement on March 10.

It accused London of trying to derail Mr Trump’s efforts to broker peace in Ukraine.

“The time has come to expose them and send a clear message to ‘perfidious Albion’ (a pejorative reference to the British Empire) and its elites: You will not succeed,” the agency, known as the SVR, said.

It did not elaborate on its objections to Britain’s behaviour prior to the two world wars. 

While Moscow has singled out Britain for particularly severe opprobrium, it has ramped up its rhetoric against the European Union and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose talk of France’s nuclear arsenal as a counterpoint to a perceived Russian threat has angered the Kremlin.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022

has become Europe’s biggest and deadliest conflict since World War II. It has left hundreds of thousands dead and injured, displaced millions more, and triggered the sharpest confrontation between Moscow and the West in decades.

For most of the war, Russia lambasted Washington for its role in supplying aid to Kyiv.

With Mr Trump in office, that has changed. 

Three Russian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, said Britain was now regarded as Moscow’s main foe, with one fuming that London was “stoking chaos and war” in Ukraine. 

Another described Britain as the driving force in the West when it came to galvanising opposition to Russia. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s talk in March of putting British boots on the ground and planes in the air in Ukraine as part of a potential peacekeeping force has angered senior Russian politicians.

So did his hosting of a meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, as well as his in-person and phone lobbying of Mr Trump to support Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has cast Mr Starmer as fuelling tensions at the very moment that Mr Trump was trying to calm them.

British diplomats in Russia say they know what they are up against. Tit-for-tat expulsions have already shrunk the staff at Britain’s embassy by at least 10 diplomats since the start of the war. Neither Russia nor Britain has defence attaches in post.

Russia’s FSB security service on March 10 accused a British diplomat and the spouse of another diplomat of spying and expelled them – allegations London called “baseless”. 

Britain summoned Russia’s ambassador in London on March 12 and expelled a Russian diplomat and a diplomatic spouse in retaliation.  

“It is clear that the Russian state is actively seeking to drive the British Embassy in Moscow towards closure,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement on March 12.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry and the British Foreign Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hostile action

Russia, according to the head of Britain’s MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, has used “staggeringly reckless” sabotage on British and European soil. 

A London court this month found three Bulgarians guilty of being part of a Russian spy unit. In October, a British man admitted to a London court that he had carried out an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned warehouse in east London on behalf of Russia.

A British inquiry blamed Russia for the 2006 poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London with a radioactive substance. London also accused Moscow of the 2018 Salisbury poisoning that used the Novichok nerve agent. Moscow rejected those accusations.

Some Russian politicians have suggested, without providing evidence, that Britain helped Ukraine carry out sabotage operations on Russian targets such as on the bridge linking Crimea with mainland Russia, in which two people were killed in 2023.   

One of the three Russian officials said Mr Starmer, like Mr Boris Johnson before him, was using the Ukraine war to distract from domestic problems.

London says it wants to ensure Ukraine gets “a just peace” rather than being forced to capitulate.

The Englishwoman relieves herself

Nationalist commentators on Russian state TV have started telling Russians that London has been trying to undermine Moscow for centuries. 

Despite London’s popularity as a Russian investment destination after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, distrust of Britain traces its roots back to at least the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856, when it was part of an alliance that defeated the Russian Empire.

Britain’s more recent purported transgressions have had Russian politicians reaching for a 19th century phrase used to describe Britain’s hostile foreign policy towards Russia under Queen Victoria: “The Englishwoman relieves herself” on Russia, a saying meant to signify Britain’s alleged systematic efforts to act as a spoiler.

The new, souring anti-British mood, which has been accompanied by a marked and rapid softening of anti-US rhetoric in state media, could leave London more exposed.

As Russia enters a fourth year of war with its economy overheating, there is a sense in Moscow that Mr Trump’s new approach offers a chance for peace on terms favourable to Moscow.

Some lawmakers have said companies from “hostile” nations like Britain should not be allowed back even if Western sanctions are eased after an eventual peace deal with Ukraine, or given a much harder ride if they are.  

Mr Vyacheslav Volodin, a top Putin ally, this week spoke of the need to claw back money from Britain, a reference to interest accrued on frozen Russian assets in the UK worth around US$26 billion (S$34.6 billion) that London has been handing to Ukraine. 

British-Russia trade has shrunk to just over £2 billion (S$3.4 billion) in 2023 from over £16 billion in 2021, according to British government data, with oil company BP taking a hit of over US$20 billion to exit Russia in 2022.

Other British companies, such as British-Swedish pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, continue to do business there.

British locomotive

Some in Britain might be surprised by the global importance attributed to London’s intelligence services and special forces by Moscow. But one of the three Russian officials said London had shown it was able to lead by example on Ukraine.

“They’re the locomotive and pull others along with them,” the official said.

Britain, which offers training and finance to the Ukrainian military, was the first country to pledge Western-made main battle tanks to Ukraine and the first to deliver long-range cruise missiles at a time when other countries were hesitating. 

It deeply angered Russia.

“If today, Britain is hitting our territory with its missiles from Ukraine... I consider this a good reason for Britain to cease to exist,” Mr Andrei Gurulyov, a pro-Putin lawmaker and former military commander, told state TV in January.

Russia’s attempt to cast Britain as a warmonger echoes Mr Putin’s accusation that former British prime minister Johnson persuaded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to walk away from a potential peace deal in 2022, an assertion Mr Johnson and Mr Zelensky reject.

And though it would appear to weaken the charge that Britain poses a threat to Moscow, Russian politicians and commentators have been eager to point out the shrunken state of the British military, which currently has less than 75,000 full-time army soldiers.

Russia has an estimated 1.1 million active servicemen.

State TV anchor Yevgeny Kiselyov used his flagship show in March to quip that the entire British army could fit into London’s Wembley football stadium. REUTERS