Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Britain should no longer be called Great Britain because, as he said, it is the only country in the world that is officially called "great", Reuters reports.
"I think Britain should be called simply Britain, because 'Great Britain' is the only example of a state that calls itself 'great,'" Lavrov told reporters, referring to colonialism after comments about Greenland.
His spokeswoman then gave the floor to Ivor Bennett, a correspondent for Britain's Sky News. "No offense," Lavrov added.
Lavrov said that another example of a state that called itself "great" was the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya," ruled by Muammar Gaddafi.
"But she doesn't exist anymore."
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is usually called "Great Britain" in Russian, or Great Britain, according to Reuters.
While the United States under Donald Trump seeks to reset relations with Moscow and mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine, Britain has been assigned the status of Russia's public enemy number one.
On Russian state television, "Insidious Albion," a term often used by presenters, is portrayed as a cunning global intelligence force that plots behind the scenes, from Washington to Iran, in a duplicitous attempt to undermine Russian interests around the world, Reuters writes.
Britain claims Russia is a threat to Europe. Amid the war in Ukraine, Russia and the West have repeatedly accused each other of conducting espionage campaigns of an intensity not seen since the deepest days of the Cold War.
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