Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why Putin is pointing the finger at Britain

(Credit: Getty images)

Perfidious Albion is, we are told, at it again. In the course of a wide-ranging and often quite surreal speech at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin accused Britain of being behind attempted nuclear terrorism, rhetorically asking whether the government was ‘trying to provoke us into retaliating against Ukrainian atomic power stations’ or whether the British Prime Minister even ‘knows what his secret services are doing in Ukraine?’

Needless to say, no evidence is forthcoming to support Putin’s claims that a number of Ukrainian ‘saboteurs’ had been intercepted and detailed by Russia’s Federal Security Service on their way to break the power lines at an unnamed Russian nuclear power station. He continued that, ‘during interrogation, they admitted that they had been trained under the guidance of British instructors.’

Even Putin seemed to accept that this might be a hard case to make

In case anyone might be a little sceptical, he added that he assured everyone ‘that this is the complete, absolute, pure truth.’

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Mark Galeotti
Written by
Mark Galeotti

Mark Galeotti heads the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and is honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the author of some 30 books on Russia. His latest, Forged in War: a military history of Russia from its beginnings to today, is out now.

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