Why Britain has become the Kremlin's favorite enemy

In recent years, Britain has become Moscow's favorite villain. It has been accused of planning drone attacks on Russian military airfields, blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, leading "terrorist" incursions inside Russia, and even aiding in last year's horrific Islamic State attack on a Moscow concert.

This week, a new accusation was added: Russian authorities claim that British intelligence tried - and failed - to lure Russian pilots to defect to the West.

"The FSB has exposed all of this in great detail," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, describing what he called British support for a plot to lure a Russian pilot flying a plane equipped with a Dagger missile to Romania, where he claimed the plane would be shot down by NATO forces.

"I don't know how the British will wash themselves of this, although their ability to, like a goose that has been watered down, always come out clean is well known," Lavrov added, using a Russian proverb that portrays Britain as a country that, regardless of its actions, always evades responsibility.

London denies involvement in all these conspiracies.

As Moscow seeks to repair relations with the Donald Trump administration, Britain has taken on the role once reserved for the US - the Kremlin's chief adversary and a favorite spectre in its propaganda war.

“Russia sees itself as an equal to the United States,” said Lieutenant Colonel John Foreman, a former British military attaché in Moscow. “Now they can’t criticize Trump directly, so who are they going to blame for their troubles — for the losses in Ukraine, for the million victims? They blame the closest thing to them, the British. It’s easy to portray us as the root of all of Russia’s problems.”

This year, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said: “London today, as on the eve of both world wars, acts as the main global instigator.”

This is a role that Britain, in the Russian view, has played on and off for more than two centuries.

During the Cold War, the US was known in KGB jargon as the “main enemy,” with Britain a distant second. While the rivalry and mutual spying never disappeared, in the Kremlin’s eyes the threat from Britain was merely a side story to the main showdown between Moscow and Washington.

However, the rivalry between Russia and Britain has a long history, dating back to the “Great Game” of the 19th century, when imperial Russia and Britain fought for influence in Central Asia, where their empires came within just 20 miles of each other in some places.

There was a brief period when the empires were allies, but after the October Revolution of 1917, Britain once again became the main adversary, seen by the Marxist Bolsheviks as the leading force of the old capitalist and imperialist order.

The US was an afterthought at the time; the early Soviet foreign intelligence service covered the country from its British branch, “since it was an Anglo-Saxon country and because it didn’t bother us much anyway,” according to Georgy Agabekov, an intelligence officer who later defected.

However, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has brought relations to their lowest point ever.

Although the British budget and capabilities are much smaller than the American ones, the British have often been much more willing than their American partners to take risks and push the boundaries when it comes to military assistance to Ukraine and intelligence sharing.

"The British were one step ahead from day one," said a Ukrainian intelligence source.

Boris Johnson was one of the first Western leaders to visit Kiev after the invasion, arriving in early April 2022, just ten days after Russian forces withdrew from positions around the capital. Joe Biden did not arrive for the visit until February 2023.

US officials approved massive support for Ukraine but were wary of a possible escalation of the conflict, while Johnson often used combative rhetoric about Russia's defeat, which did not go unnoticed in Moscow.

Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly seized on claims that Johnson thwarted a possible peace deal in the spring of 2022. According to Moscow’s version, Kiev was ready to agree to terms early in the war but backed down at British behest. It’s a version of events that President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected but that has now taken root in Russian state media.

“Pockets of Anglophobia do exist within the security services, among people like (Nikolai) Patrushev, (Alexander) Bortnikov and (Sergei) Naryshkin,” Forman said, 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 revived as shorthand for the Kremlin’s deepest fears about the West. In the official lexicon, it no longer refers to an ancient people but to a geopolitical conspiratorial group, this time led by London, accused of trying to contain, humiliate, and ultimately destroy Russia.

Hostility has trickled down from the top. Propaganda men on Russian television now compete to make more bizarre threats: one of Putin's favorite presenters regularly boasts that Britain could be "sunk" by a new Russian nuclear torpedo.

Public opinion follows the same pattern. According to a Levada Center poll this summer, 49 percent of Russians cite Britain as one of their country's main enemies, second only to Germany.

But that hatred seems to go largely unnoticed in Britain itself, Forman said.

"They are much more concerned with us than we are with them," he said. "It is not a relationship based on reciprocity; the average Briton on the street has no idea that such hatred even exists."

Adding to the confusion is that Moscow's rhetoric is often contradictory, portraying Britain both as a fading colonial relic and as a power with a disproportionate influence on world affairs.

“Soviet leaders then, and Russian leaders now, pay the United Kingdom a kind of perverse compliment by claiming to believe that London is behind every plot against them,” wrote Michael Clarke, visiting professor of military studies at King’s College London, in a recent issue of the British Army Review.

"British intelligence remains a favorite target of Russian analysts," he added.

At the same time, as noted in a recent paper by the New Eurasian Strategies Research Institute, Britain is portrayed in Moscow “as a weakened power, a puppet of the United States, and a society in moral and social degradation.”

Britain, however, is not alone in the Kremlin's gallery of enemies. Since Trump's election, Europe as a whole has joined the list - no longer as a loyal follower of Washington, but, according to Moscow's narrative, as the real source of Western aggression and instability.

Yet the United Kingdom seems to occupy a special place.

"They don't like Europe, but they really hate the British, that's the message that comes through all the time when you talk to the Russians," said one senior European diplomat in Moscow, who requested anonymity so he could speak freely.

What Britain's enemy status specifically means for Russian policy towards the United Kingdom is difficult to assess.

Among Russia's ruling elite, the once innocuous term "Anglo-Saxons" has been revived as shorthand for the Kremlin's deepest fears about the West. In the official lexicon, it no longer refers to an ancient people but to a geopolitical conspiratorial group, this time led by London, accused of trying to contain, humiliate and ultimately destroy Russia.

The United Kingdom is not alone in accusing Moscow of waging a broad hybrid campaign on its territory. Across Europe, intelligence agencies are blaming Moscow for sabotage, arson and disinformation operations as part of what they describe as a coordinated campaign against the continent.

But on the diplomatic front, Moscow seems singularly reluctant to engage with London, even through private channels. The Financial Times reported this week that London has tried, but failed, to establish a discreet line of communication, while the Kremlin has been much more open to Berlin and Paris.

Pavel Baev, a research professor at the Oslo Peace Research Institute, suggested that the reason could be that military support for Ukraine enjoys broad support from the British public and across the political spectrum, while it is much more controversial in other European countries.

"As a result, Moscow is now focusing more on Germany and France as potential channels for undermining European rearmament plans," Baev said.

Clark noted that Moscow's hostility is further exacerbated by what Russia sees as Britain's strategic vulnerability: a country aligned with Europe but standing outside it, and increasingly isolated from it.

"Moscow believes that the United Kingdom has isolated itself from its European partners during the Brexit process and that it will need time to regain the political position it has lost among the major European powers," he said.

At the same time, Clark wrote, Britain struggled to maintain a renewed strategic partnership with the United States, as it found it difficult to maintain close relations with both the Trump and Biden administrations.

"So, from Moscow's perspective, the United Kingdom is more isolated than at any time since 1914 and can be easily singled out as a vulnerable target."

Translation: A.Š.