Ready or Not, Here They Come: Kremlin Hurls Fresh Accusations at London

In a further sign of the growing international tension stemming from the war in Ukraine, Russia has paired fresh accusations against the United Kingdom over its alleged role in various incidents with the threat that “Britain will not go unpunished.”Specifically, the Kremlin has claimed that Britain orchestrated a recent attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet that threw a grain export deal into jeopardy, as well as accusing London of sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in September. Moscow on Tuesday said it was considering what “further steps” it would take in response to its claims, without mentioning what any initial “steps” may already have been taken, or possibly shelved. At London, a spokesman for the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said, “Obviously, we’re carefully monitoring the situation, but it is right to not be drawn into these sorts of distractions which is part of the Russian playbook.”Good luck, says your correspondent.That playbook is now in overdrive. In a statement last week, Russia’s ministry of defense said that “our intelligence services have data indicating that British military specialists took part in the planning and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year — blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.” The British ministry of defense called the claim a “fiction.” That did not stop the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, from telling reporters on Tuesday that “of course, we will think about further steps. It definitely cannot be left like this.”With respect to Mr. Peskov’s claim that “Russian special services have information showing that British military advisers have managed and coordinated the attacks on the Black Sea fleet” at Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea on Saturday, the British defense ministry called those “false statements of an epic scale.”Mr. Peskov also invited “European countries to analyze information from Russia on London’s role in the … attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.” Many Western countries have firmly implicated Russia in the pipeline sabotage, but investigations are ongoing and complicated given that all the damage done is far under the surface.The acrimonious exchanges between Moscow and London did not spring out of nowhere. Some British newspapers have been putting forward that Russia has already declared hybrid war on Britain. Case in point: the hacking of Liz Truss’s personal mobile phone by agents of the Kremlin. A source told the Daily Mail that the former premier’s phone was so heavily compromised that it has been placed in a locked safe inside a secure British government location. The Daily Mail also reported that “messages which fell into foreign hands included criticisms Ms. Truss and her future chancellor [Kwasi] Kwarteng made of Boris Johnson, leading to the potential risk of blackmail.”The phone hack has led to a thickening of the plot, because Russia also claims that Ms. Truss sent a text message to Secretary Blinken after the Nord Stream explosions on September 26 saying, “It’s done.” The veracity as well as the timing of that message are in doubt, because Ms. Truss may still have been serving as foreign secretary during the time when the phone hack became known to British officials. The Kremlin has predictably pounced, with Komsomolskaya Pravda reporting that the Russian foreign ministry’s firebrand spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, is “waiting for an official response from London” about the alleged text message. One thing that is not in doubt is Britain’s staunch support for Ukraine, which comes in the form of both military aid and intelligence sharing, and that more than anything else is what rankles Moscow. For London, Russian ire is par for the course. Yet the Kremlin’s anti-British rhetoric has ratcheted up at a time of great political volatility in Britain. Mr. Sunak has retained as defense minister Ben Wallace, who was initially appointed by Boris Johnson, and he is arguably the man who knows the situation in Ukraine better than any Western diplomat. Given the pace and volatility of events in Ukraine, separating Russian bluster from new hybrid threats is something that the new occupant of Downing Street will likely henceforth have to take seriously.

Ready or Not, Here They Come: Kremlin Hurls Fresh Accusations at London

More from the New York Sun

The Cloisters Embraces the Ancient Americas, With Uneven Results

Hunter Biden Claims Dad Was Pushed Out of Presidential Race Because He Was Not Part of the ‘Epstein Class’

More from the New York Sun

The Cloisters Embraces the Ancient Americas, With Uneven Results

Hunter Biden Claims Dad Was Pushed Out of Presidential Race Because He Was Not Part of the ‘Epstein Class’

Colbert Marks the End of ‘The Late Show’ With Performance by Paul McCartney, but No Explicit Reference to Trump

The Cultural Significance of Nicki Minaj’s Conservatism

News Aggregators Reinforcing Political Ignorance, Especially for Young Americans

‘Whites-Only’ Community Sued After Rejecting Woman Over Her Jewish Ancestry, Black Husband

Trump’s Tariffs Are Fueling Voters’ Frustration Over Affordability

Newsom Suggests Universal Basic Capital as Solution to AI-Driven Unemployment