Vladimir Putin’s officials have claimed there is a “crisis of power” brewing in the UK right now, in a retaliation to the British criticism over the Russian election.
Foreign secretary David Cameron condemned the outcome of the Russian vote, saying it was “not democracy” because Moscow tried to “silence any opposition” to the Ukraine war.
Putin claimed the sham election as a democratic victory earlier this week, after securing his fifth term in office – and the Kremlin seem determined to hit back at the UK after being called out for its concerning practices.
Why is Russia angry at the UK?
The Russian foreign ministry officially complained to the UK on Tuesday about supposed “unacceptable propaganda publications by British diplomatic missions in our country during the election for Russian president”.
It summoned the British deputy head of mission, Tom Dodd, to the Russian foreign ministry over these accusations of interference.
The officials claimed the UK had “presented in a poster style and geared toward disrupting the electoral process in Russia’s new territories”.
The angry response came after the UK’s consul general in Yekaterinburg, Ameer Kotecha, reminded the public that these are occupied parts of Ukraine and “holding elections here will not make these territories Russian”.
The Russian officials claimed: “We stressed the absolute inadmissibility of such activities, which are seen as interference in Russia’s domestic affairs and a hostile attempt at exerting pressure on the independent electoral system in our country and influencing the election results.
“Despite the West’s aggressive attempts to discredit the presidential election in Russia, its outcome vividly demonstrated the unprecedented union of the Russian people who support the incumbent head of state and his policy.”
Then, the Russian ministry added: “It was recommended that the embassy should better focus on the situation in the United Kingdom where a crisis of power is clearly brewing.”
What ‘crisis of power’?
It’s not entirely clear exactly what Moscow was referring to.
It could have been an allusion to the upcoming general election in the UK, the date of which is yet to be confirmed by the government.
PM Rishi Sunak has been widely accused of being “scared” to sending the public to the polls as the Conservatives are expected to lose by a wide margin.
The rebuke from Moscow also comes after the Russian foreign ministry official Maria Zakharova posted about the revelation that the Princess of Wales had photoshopped her Mother’s Day image with her children.
This led some to assume the ministry’s dig was about the royals.
Zakharova said: “It turned out that previous photographs of the English royal family are also photomontages.
“Do you now understand how the whole story with the Skripals was concocted in London?”
Former GRU agent Sergei Skripal, spied for the UK and then moved to Salisbury to live in exile with his daughter Yulia.
Both were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2018, but survived – although another member of the public, Dawn Sturgess, died after coming into contact with the toxin.
The UK has repeatedly said this poisoning was carried out by Russian agents.
Russian media was also found to be behind the fake social media rumours that King Charles had died on St Patrick’s Day recently.
The rumour spread far and wide, until Buckingham Palace had to step in and tell Russian state news agency Tass: “We are happy to confirm that the King is continuing with official and private business.”