London and Moscow’s rivalry stretches back to the imperial era, but the Ukraine war has brought relations to a new low
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.
