Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is framing the war in Ukraine as Britain’s long-delayed payback for a military failure from nearly two centuries ago, rather than a war Moscow itself launched in 2022.The claim was published by the Russian state-owned news media Ria Novosti, which pointed to Britain’s ongoing military and political support for Kyiv as evidence of a deeper, historically rooted motive behind London’s involvement.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.“The Ukrainian conflict in London is largely perceived as an attempt at revenge for the unrealized 19th-century project of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia,” the SVR’s statement reads.The origin of the grievanceThe specific historical episode being invoked is the Crimean War, fought between 1853 and 1856, when Britain joined forces with the Ottoman Empire to check Russian expansion in the Black Sea region. According to NEST Centre, a wave of hostility defined the era, with “enlightened England” turning into a battlefield aggressor, shelling the port city of Sevastopol and shocking the Russian public who had previously admired British culture and institutions. Cultural figures of the time, including writers and thinkers from Slavophile and conservative circles, reinforced the idea that Britain was a morally corrupt, materialist power destined for decline, feeding a narrative that persisted well beyond the war itself. In many ways, Russia still reflects the ideology from the Slavophile movement which originated in the 1840s and 1850s and argued that Western Europe was morally bankrupt and individualistic, whereas Russian society was bound together by “sobornost” (spiritual community, “togetherness”).