Russians are being taught to hate Britain with a warped prime-time history lesson from Vladimir Putin’s leading TV propagandist. Dredging deep into the past, the UK is portrayed as a “completely satanic state” with daily paranoid attacks on London and its spy services, which are seen as the main drivers of Ukraine’s resistance in the war.
The latest deranged attack goes back to Queen Elizabeth I refusing to marry notorious Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible. “Britain has always hated us, simply because Ivan the Terrible once proposed to marry that *****,” propagandist-in-chief Vladimir Solovyov told Russian viewers on state TV, referring to the tsar’s failed overtures in 1569-71. “A completely satanic state.” He then turned his attack towards King George V, Winston Churchill and Sir Keir Starmer.
Moving on to the 19th century, he insisted: “Let me remind you that the Crimean War [1853-56] was Britain’s fault.
“Let me remind you that intervention was Britain’s fault,” Solovyov said. Next, he picked out King George V’s refusal to give a safe haven to his lookalike, the deposed last tsar of Russia in 1917-18, amid fears that anti-monarchist revolutionary fervour could grip Britain.
“The betrayal of Nicholas II’s family by his dear cousin – they were spitting images – was Britain’s fault,” he said. “Britain has always betrayed us.”
In World War 2, when Britain and the USSR were allies against Hitler, Solovyov said: “Who was the biggest loser in World War II? Britain.
“Who, by and large, was Britain’s most unsuccessful Prime Minister? Churchill,” he added. “But then […] the legend is completely different. Completely different…”
Later, the Americans outplayed Britain and “fooled them in no time”, Solovyov claimed. “That is, America seized the initiative and after that, de facto destroyed Britain. So, of course, now that we look at all this, they have colossal hatred for us.”
Despite this, Russia’s foreign spy service – the SVR – is warning its agents have uncovered a clandestine plot by Britain’s 007s to “carry out an attack on a Ukrainian Navy ship or a foreign civilian vessel in a European port”. This will be an operation by “a group of traitorous Russians fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces” who “have already arrived in the UK for sabotage training”, according to the bizarre version.
Putin’s SVR spy service – led by conspiracy theorist Sergey Naryshkin, 70 – said: “After the terrorists are ‘discovered’, the plan is to claim they were acting on ‘Moscow’s instructions’. London is counting on the fact that the Russophobic European political elite will happily swallow the fake story about ‘malicious Kremlin agents’ to justify the need to further increase military aid to Ukraine and the militarisation of ‘united Europe’ to combat ‘Russian aggression’.”
The saboteurs will be “equipped with Chinese-made underwater equipment” and this will be presented as “iron proof of Beijing’s support for Russia’s so-called armed aggression against Ukraine”.
The SVR stated: “Surprisingly, in Britain, once rightly called ‘Perfidious Albion’, they believe such a crude charade will deceive so many experienced politicians. Apparently, London’s rapid descent into the backwaters of world history has also affected the strategic thinking of the British intelligence services and those in power.
“The tools remain the same: pitting the world’s largest players against each other. However, in today’s geopolitical conditions, it no longer works.”
But London “is furious that long-standing British efforts to achieve a ‘strategic defeat’ of Russia and turn it into a pariah state are failing,” the SVR claimed. “[Sir Keir] Starmer’s cabinet and its intelligence agencies are preparing to respond to Russia’s successes in the Ukrainian theatre of military operations with yet another vile provocation.”
