🎙Russian MFA Spox Maria Zakharova on Russia-UK relations 💬 Russia-UK relations have been in a deep crisis for a long time. Political dialogue is frozen, there are no intergovernmental contacts, and diplomatic communication is limited to technical and routine matters. Economic ties have been almost entirely severed, as have cultural and academic exchanges. All of this is compounded by anti-Russian rhetoric from the British side, including through the British media. The British side is solely responsible for this state of affairs. For a number of years – or, rather, decades – London has deliberately taken destructive steps and has itself been loudly advertising them. This includes the illegitimate campaign to impose sanctions, launched well before 2022; the dismantling in 2024, amid the European security crisis, of military-diplomatic channels of communication through the expulsion of our defence attaché on a contrived pretext; and the launch in 2025 of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which introduced a discriminatory enhanced-tier regime for those seeking to engage with the Russian state. All this has been accompanied by an entirely destructive policy on Ukraine, pursued at the cost of Ukrainian lives and the interests of British citizens [...] By continuing along its current course, the United Kingdom is widening and deepening the conflict, acting in breach of its international legal obligations and contributing to the spread of dangerous military technologies across the continent and around the world. Read in full