Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Andrei Kelin provided his first major newspaper interview since his appointment a year ago, published by the Daily Mail on Tuesday evening, Aug. 4. He poured cold water on the latest charges from Westminster’s “Intelligence and Security Committee” (ISC) on Russian interference and spying in Brexit, coronavirus research, etc. Kelin hit the British Empire where it hurts: The Mail quotes him as saying: “I feel that Britain exaggerates, very much, its place in Russian thinking. The scope and place of Great Britain in Russian politics is not that big. We have other problems of much larger magnitude.” Regarding accusation of hacking the emails of a British politician (sound familiar?), Kelin replied, “These are senseless accusations which we do not understand.” In the transcript on the Russian Embassy website, the Mail asked if Russia had any mind to change “the way it goes about things?” to which Kelin responded: “We cannot change that because from time to time British press is launching groundless accusations. I would say there is a lot of mud being thrown in our direction. This type of attitude does not provide much of an appetite in Moscow for improving dialogue and the relationship.”The U.K. had thrown ‘a lot of mud… in our direction… This type of attitude does not provoke much of an appetite for improving dialogue or relations in Moscow. ... We are not in a hurry, we are patient and we will be prepared for a better relationship when the British government will be itself.”
He addressed the ISC’s charges that Russian oligarchs in London might be doing the Kremlin’s bidding in undermining the U.K.: “Oligarchs mean rich people that can influence the president. The last one was about 20 years ago [before Putin]… [T]hose wealthy people living here , the bulk of these people simply escaped Russia because they were being pursued for tax evasion, fraud and other criminal activities. All of them have left the country just to escape prosecution. If British authorities will decide to provide us information about these people or decide to be positive on our demands for extradition, we will only greet this, salute this.”
