While clarifying that severing diplomatic ties with the UK would be an “extreme measure,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told RT that the move cannot be ruled out. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s comment to RT came in response to the news agency reaching out to the government agency on their reaction to a report in the Wall Street Journal which said that British military forces were operating near the front lines in Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “UK special forces from the British Army’s SAS and SRR regiments and the Navy’s SBS units are operating very close to the front lines” in Ukraine. British personnel are not directly involved in the fighting with Russian troops, “but their guiding influence on Ukrainian special-forces activity is evident in the sabotage operations Ukraine has conducted against Russian railway, airfield, fuel and other logistical nodes,” the WSJ claimed.
When asked by RT to verify the claims in the WSJ article, the Russian Foreign Ministry replied on Friday that it was “well aware of consistent efforts by London aimed at providing military assistance to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.”
RT goes on to say that the UK’s support includes the supply of domestically produced and foreign military hardware to Ukraine, the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, intelligence sharing, consulting support and “likely participation in the operational-tactical planning by the [Ukrainian] military, including sabotage, other operations, direct provision of cyber-security, [and] deployment of mercenaries,” the statement from the ministry read.
“We can’t rule out that the British participated in the planning, organization and support of terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime on the territory of Russia, including through the provision of intelligence information,” it added.
The ministry noted it had summoned British Ambassador to Moscow Deborah Bronnert last autumn, following the Ukrainian naval drone attack on Russian vessels in the Crimean port of Sevastopol last autumn. Russian diplomats voiced a “strong protest” to Bronnert over the “active participation of British military specialists in the training and supply of units of Ukraine’s special operations forces, including for carrying out sabotage operations at sea,” the statement said, according to RT.
Russia reserves the right to respond to such conduct by the UK at a time and place of its choosing, the ministry added, asserting that “all responsibility for the consequences of London’s destructive activities rests entirely with the masterminds and perpetrators of those reckless acts.”
Regarding the possible severing of diplomatic relations with London, “this is obviously an extreme measure that can’t be ruled out when taking into account the totality of all factors,” the ministry warned.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s warning to cut diplomatic ties with the UK should be a clear message to the United States—however, were Russia to cut diplomatic ties with the United States, the fuse for WWIII would then be negligible in length. It is up to the citizens of the US to cut the ties that bound it as the “cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war.”
