In recent years, Britain has become Moscow's preferred villain. It has been accused of plotting drone strikes on Russian airfields, blowing up the “Nord Stream“ gas pipeline, organizing “terrorist” attacks in Russia and even aiding last year's brutal attack by “Islamic State” at a concert in Moscow, write Pyotr Sauer and Sean Walker for The Guardian.
This week, a new allegation was added to the list of accusations: Russian authorities claim that British intelligence tried but failed to lure Russian pilots to defect to the West.
“The FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service] has revealed all this in detail,“ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, describing what he called a British-backed plot to lure a Russian pilot flying a jet equipped with “Dagger” missiles to Romania, where he said he would be shot down by NATO forces.
“I don't know how the British will get away with this, although their ability to play the role of a goose out of water is well known,“ added Lavrov, using a Russian idiom that represents Britain as a country that always comes out unblemished, despite its actions.
London denies any involvement in any of these plots.
As Moscow tries to repair its ties with the Donald Trump administration, Britain has taken on the role previously reserved for the United States - the Kremlin's chief adversary and a favorite bogeyman in its propaganda war.
“Russia is seen as an equal to the United States“, commented Captain John Foreman, a former British military attaché in Moscow. “Now they can't criticize Trump directly, so who can they blame for their misfortunes - the losses in Ukraine, the million casualties? They blame their closest neighbors, the British. It is easy to portray us as the root of all of Russia's problems.
This year, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said: "Today, London, as on the eve of the two world wars, acts as the main global warmonger".
According to Russia, this is a role that Britain has played intermittently for more than two centuries.
During the Cold War, the United States was known in KGB jargon as the "main enemy", with Britain a distant second. Although the rivalry and mutual espionage between the two countries never disappeared, in the Kremlin's mind the threat from Britain was rather secondary to the main battle between Moscow and Washington.
But the rivalry between Russia and Britain has a long history, dating back to the "Great Game" in the 19th century, when Imperial Russia and Great Britain vied for influence in Central Asia, where their empires were within 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, Great Britain again became the main antagonist, perceived by the Marxist Bolsheviks as the leading power representing the old capitalist and imperialist order.
The United States was at this time only a secondary factor; the early Soviet foreign intelligence service covered the country from its British branch, "because it was an Anglo-Saxon country and because we didn't care much anyway", in the words of Georges Agabekov, an intelligence officer who later defected.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, brought relations to a new low.
Although Britain's budget and capabilities are much smaller than those of the United States, the British have often been much more willing than their American counterparts to take risks and cross borders when it comes to military aid to Ukraine and sharing intelligence.
"The British were one step ahead from the start," a Ukrainian intelligence source said.
Boris Johnson was one of the first Western leaders to visit Kiev after the invasion, arriving in early April 2022, just 10 days after Russian forces withdrew from their positions around the capital. Joe Biden did not visit the country until February 2023. US officials approved massive support for Ukraine but were wary of escalation, while Johnson often used optimistic rhetoric about Russia's defeat, which did not go unnoticed in Moscow.
Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly claimed that Johnson botched a potential peace deal in the spring of 2022. According to Moscow, Kiev was ready to agree to terms at the start of the war but backed down on British orders - a version of events that has been rejected by President Volodymyr Zelensky but is now being promoted in Russian state media.
"There are indeed pockets of Anglophobia in the security services, among people like [Nikolai] Patrushev, [Alexander] Bortnikov and [Sergei] Naryshkin," Forman said, referring to three of Russia's most powerful security officials.
Among the Russian ruling elite, the once innocuous term "Anglo-Saxons" has been reborn as shorthand for the Kremlin's deepest anxieties about the West. In the official dictionary, it no longer refers to an ancient people, but to a geopolitical clique, this time led by London and accused of plotting to contain, humiliate and ultimately disintegrate Russia.
The hostility has seeped from the top. Russian television propagandists now compete to make increasingly ominous threats: one of Putin’s favorite presenters regularly boasts that Britain could be "sunk underwater" by Russia’s new nuclear torpedo.
Public opinion has followed suit. According to a Levada Center poll this summer, 49 percent of Russians named Britain as one of their country’s main enemies, second only to Germany.
But this hatred seems to have gone largely unnoticed in Britain itself, Forman said.
“They care about us much more than we care about them,“ he said. “It’s not a mutual relationship; the average Briton on the street has no idea that this hatred exists.
Adding to the confusion is Moscow's often contradictory message, which presents Britain both as a fading colonial relic and as a power with enormous influence in world affairs.
"Soviet leaders then, and now Russian leaders, pay Britain a backhanded compliment by claiming to believe that London is behind every conspiracy against them," writes Michael Clarke, visiting professor of defense studies at King's College London, in a recent issue of the British Army Review.
"British intelligence remains a favorite black sheep for analysts in Russia," he adds.
At the same time, as a recent article by the New Eurasian Strategies Research Center points out, Britain presents itself to Moscow "as a weakened power, a puppet of the United States and a society in moral and social decline“.
The UK is not alone in the Kremlin's enemies' gallery. Since Trump's election, all of Europe has joined their ranks – no longer as a loyal follower of Washington, but, according to Moscow, as the real source of Western aggression and instability.
However, the UK seems to occupy a special place.
"They don't like Europe, but they really hate the British – "That's the message you hear when you talk to the Russians," said a senior European diplomat in Moscow, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
It is difficult to gauge what Britain's enemy status means for Russia's actual policy towards the UK.
The UK is not the only country to accuse Moscow of waging a large-scale hybrid campaign on its soil. Across Europe, intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of sabotage, arson and disinformation operations, part of what they describe as a coordinated campaign against the continent.
But diplomatically, Moscow seems uniquely reluctant to engage with London, even through private channels. The Financial Times reported this week that London has tried unsuccessfully to establish a discreet line of communication, while the Kremlin has been more responsive to Berlin and Paris.
Pavel Baev, a research professor at the Oslo Peace Research Institute, suggests this may be because military support for Ukraine enjoys broad support among the British public and across the political spectrum, while in other European countries it is more contested.
“As a result”, Baev says, “Moscow is focusing more on Germany and France as potential conduits for thwarting European rearmament plans“.
Clark notes that Moscow’s hostility is fueled by what it perceives as Britain’s strategic vulnerability: a country that is allied with Europe but stands outside it and increasingly isolated from it.
"Moscow perceives that Britain is isolating itself from its European partners in the Brexit process and will take some time to regain the political standing it has lost among the major European powers," he points out.
At the same time, Clark writes, Britain is struggling to maintain a renewed strategic partnership with the United States, finding it difficult to maintain close ties under the Trump and Biden administrations.
"So from Moscow's perspective, Britain is more isolated than at any time since 1914 and could be eliminated.“