Valery Zalushny\u00a0(right)<\/p>\n
For discerning observers, there was an obvious attempt this week by Britain to poison a delicate stage in peace negotiations for ending the conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The sabotage effort was as vivid as, well, how should we put it?, as vivid as a brightly colored dart frog from the South American rainforests.<\/p>\n
Five European governments signed a joint statement<\/a> this week that dramatically claimed that Russian opposition figure Sergey Navalny was murdered two years ago in a Siberian prison by poisoning.<\/p>\n The scripted drama and media orchestration always betray a psychological operation intended for public consumption, which warrants the rapid prescription of healthy scepticism as an antidote.<\/p>\n The intergovernmental report claimed that the lethal toxin allegedly used on Navalny was \u201cepibatidine,\u201d which is naturally produced in the skin of the dart frog. Without any evidence, Britain and four other European governments \u2013 France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden \u2013 asserted that Navalny was murdered by the Russian authorities. Oh, those evil, dastardly Russians\u2026 cue the theme music from a James Bond movie!<\/p>\n Moscow rejected the latest claim as \u201cfeeblemindedness of fabulists\u201d and condemned the European governments and media for engaging in \u201cnecro-propaganda\u201d. Russia claims that Navalny (47) died of natural causes while serving a 19-year prison sentence for extremism and corruption. He was thought to be suffering from congenital ill health and on various medications before he began his penal sentence.<\/p>\n The joint European government statement on Navalny\u2019s alleged poisoning is suspect for several reasons. For a start, it provides no verifiable data on the supposed toxicological analysis or how biomedical samples were obtained two years after Navalny\u2019s death. The timing is also suspicious, coinciding with the Munich Security Conference last weekend and the second anniversary of Navalny\u2019s demise on February 16, 2024, suggesting that the announcement was timed to maximize media attention.<\/p>\n Moreover, this week saw another round of trilateral negotiations between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia on finding a political settlement to the four-year conflict in Ukraine. The talks are at a tricky stage with little traction or trust between Kiev and Moscow.<\/p>\n The exotic frog story seems conveniently loaded to poison the atmosphere in the negotiations.<\/p>\n Tellingly, it is the British government that is the main protagonist in instigating the \u201cnecro-propaganda\u201d.<\/p>\n This is true to form. It was the British who confabulated the Novichok poison story about double agent Sergey Skripal in 2018, and the polonium radioactive poisoning of another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in a hotel in London in 2006. The Sun tabloid has today dredged up<\/a> the latter story on the back of the Navalny case. This all speaks of British intel-media orchestration.<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> for the BBC state broadcaster, Britain\u2019s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that the alleged poisoning of Navalny showed that the Cold War is not over and that \u201cwe need to be ready for Russian aggression continuing towards Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n She said that Europe must impose more sanctions on Russia and supply more weapons to Ukraine. Hardly conducive to negotiations.<\/p>\n It is remarkable, too, how Britain is not a member of the European Union, yet London appears entitled to define foreign relations with Russia for the 27-member bloc.<\/p>\n It is also significant that the Americans did not seem to be involved in creating the latest twist in the Navalny narrative. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared<\/a> to be blindsided by the development, saying, \u201cWe don\u2019t have reason to question it,\u201d but he disclosed that the U.S. had not been involved. \u201cThese countries came to that conclusion. They coordinated that\u2026 it wasn\u2019t our endeavor. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing based on the intelligence [sic] they gathered.\u201d<\/p>\n This has all the hallmarks of Britain\u2019s endeavor, and to be more accurate, it wasn\u2019t based on factual intelligence. It was based on a concocted black propaganda to demonize Russia and derail the peace diplomacy.<\/p>\n Another significant development was that during the trilateral talks in Geneva, Britain\u2019s National Security Advisor, Jonathan Powell, showed up<\/a> unexpectedly at the venue in the Intercontinental Hotel, where he held unofficial sideline talks with the Americans and Ukrainians. Powell\u2019s visit was unannounced by the British government. He wasn\u2019t formally invited to attend. Why was a senior British intelligence figure hanging around a venue for private trilateral discussions?<\/p>\n Britain has a malicious record of sabotaging peace diplomacy in Ukraine. In April 2022, just when the Ukrainian and Russian sides had worked out an early end to the conflict that erupted in February, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suddenly intervened to persuade the Kiev regime to fight on, with promises of more NATO weapons. The baleful result has been a four-year war, a slaughterhouse, with over one million Ukrainian soldiers dead and a large number of Russians.<\/p>\n The Trump administration wants to extricate itself from the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. Washington seems to recognize that the gambit for \u201cstrategic defeat\u201d of Russia is a dead-end.<\/p>\n Not so the Europeans, who, for various reasons, are still fixated on prosecuting the proxy war. The European political class seems to be more infected by Russophobia and is incapable of rational thinking or diplomatic engagement with Moscow.<\/p>\n The has-been empire that is Britain is taking a lead role in galvanizing the hostility in Europe towards Russia. It is to that end that London is the main protagonist in the so-called coalition of the willing, along with that other has-been empire, France. The proposal to deploy British and French troops to Ukraine as a \u201csecurity guarantee\u201d in the event of a peace deal is intended to act as a deal-breaker since Moscow has repeatedly stated that deployment of any NATO troops in Ukraine is unacceptable and non-negotiable.<\/p>\n Britain appears to be taking an increasing role in the covert mentoring of the Ukrainian regime. This week, the British Foreign Office announced<\/a> the opening of a new embassy office in Lvov, in western Ukraine, which is a stronghold for anti-Russian nationalists and NATO weapons supplies. London said the new office in Lvov was to \u201cexpand the UK\u2019s diplomatic [sic] presence in Ukraine as the two countries deepen their relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s former top military commander, Valery Zalushny, was appointed the ambassador to London in 2024. The \u201cIron General\u201d is an admirer of Nazi figure Stepan Bandera, and is considered to be a strong contender to replace Vladimir Zelensky, no doubt under British tutelage.<\/p>\n Continuing the war in Europe gives the British state a political purpose and standing among the Europeans. For petty self-aggrandizement, London is exploiting Russophobia.<\/p>\n Concocting propaganda is part of Britain\u2019s toxic agenda. The history of London\u2019s incitement of wars in Europe \u2013 not least its sinister role in precipitating World Wars I and II \u2013 is consistent with the latest maneuvers to keep fueling the conflict in Ukraine<\/p>\n