Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large on the Kiev Regime’s War Crimes, told Izvestia, which published it in English on Feb. 27: “The peculiarity of the U.K. is that it does many things not openly, but underground. She has serious levers of influence over the Ukrainian special services and military units, which she uses to ideally disrupt the dialogue between Moscow and Washington…. London is always much more comfortable when there is a wall of misunderstanding between the Russian Federation and the United States,” he said.
Miroshnik is among some Russian government officials who are now fingering Britain more openly about its initiating, directing, and attempting to prolong the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. In Miroshnik’s reference to Britain’s “levers of influence over the Ukrainian special services and military units,” it is likely he has in mind, among other things, Britain’s Operation Orbital. Britain started this program in 2015, one year after the Maidan coup, and by the year 2020, according to Operation Orbital’s website, Britain had trained 18,000 Ukrainian soldiers in “counter-improvised explosive devices; reconnaissance course training; artillery; staff officers training; survival, evasion, resistance and escape training; infantry training,” and so forth.
Sir Gordon Messenger, OBE, commanded Operation Orbital while serving as Vice Chief of the British Defense Staff. Thus, by 2020, Britain was in full gear carrying this operation, two years before Russia began its special military operation in February 2022.
Miroshnik was a member of the Russian negotiating team of the Minsk accords, and was formerly a member of the Lugansk People’s Republic’s leadership.