Britain historically most hostile state to Russia – former defense minister

The UK is the most hostile Western state in terms of its policy toward Moscow, former Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov claimed on Monday.

Speaking at the presentation of a new book, ‘Nazi genocide of the people of the USSR’, Ivanov was asked whether the Nazi idea of “clearing” Russia of its population is still alive in Europe today. The “‘idea,’ if you can call it that, is several hundred years old,” he answered.

“I believe that the most hostile state to Russia is Great Britain, which has been at the same thing for 300-400 years: attempting to limit Russia, limit its influence, limit its economic power – to do everything to make Russia exist on the European periphery,” added Ivanov, who is a permanent member of the Russian Security Council.

“It doesn’t matter whether the policy is aimed at the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation – it remains the same.”

Similarly, the Baltic states are among the “leading” Western countries in terms of their hatred of Russia, Ivanov claimed. The only thing standing in the way of Western plans for Moscow are the “Russian Army and Navy,” he argued.

The UK has emerged as the third largest donor to Ukraine amid Kiev’s conflict with Moscow, providing almost $10 billion in military aid since February 2022. In January, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps predicted a possible war with Russia within the next five years as he called for military spending to be ramped up across NATO.

The UK also stifled a potential peace deal between Moscow and Kiev early on in the conflict, according to the head of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s parliamentary bloc, David Arakhamia, who served as his country’s top negotiator in the 2022 talks in Istanbul. Then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pressured the Zelensky administration to pull out of the discussions, Arakhamia alleged – a claim which Johnson later denied.

Russia maintains that the tens of billions of dollars of foreign military aid being funneled into Ukraine means that the West is waging a de facto proxy war. 

Moscow remains ready for peace talks but sees no willingness for them on the part of the US and its allies, who are still seeking to inflict a battlefield defeat on Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated last week.

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