London Demands Escalation Against Russia, No Matter What

The Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the British monarchy’s choice foreign policy think tank, published an article May 10, calling on the U.K. to go full steam ahead in confronting Russia. “Backing down in the face of Russian threats is the worst option”, writes the Institute’s Senior Consulting Fellow Keir Giles, it’s better to join France in its policy of “strategic ambiguity.”

Giles welcomes the statements made by Foreign Secretary David Cameron during a recent visit to Kyiv, where he said that Ukraine had the right to strike Russian territory with weapons provided by Britain, and that it was up to the Ukrainian government to decide to do so or not. London’s position, he boasts, “is a sharp contrast to that of the U.S. which has consistently forbidden Ukraine from using the weapons it supplies to hit targets in Russia.” But “sadly”, Giles adds, Cameron undermined the effect of his excellent proposal by ruling out the presence of Western troops in Ukraine.

Washington and Berlin, in his view, have been duped by a Russian “con trick” into believing that provision of more sophisticated weapons to Kyiv will lead to escalation. Instead, he asserts, European leaders should follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s lead (who has advocated on several occasions for sending NATO troops to Ukraine to fight Russia). Even if the Kremlin uses its extended network of “proxies” to attack the U.K. and other European nations, possibly even with terrorism against key cities, Europe “must not be just a passive victim”. What Keir Giles does not explain, is that the purpose of defeating Russia is to ensure the survival of the Anglo-American “unipolar order”.

What do the Russians think of all this? For one, the Foreign Ministry has summoned both the French and the British ambassadors to file protests over the threats of their respective countries. According to a report in TASS, the spokeswoman for the ministry, Maria Zakharova, described “Cameron’s remark that London considered it legitimate for the Kiev regime to use British weapons for strikes on Russian territory as ‘something absolutely insane. …. If such a scenario is implemented, our country, Russia, reserves the right to respond accordingly, that is, to regard as targets British facilities located both in Ukraine and outside its borders: military facilities, weapons and so on.’” The same reality was made clear to the French ambassador.

Apparently, the Ukrainian government is ready to play London’s game. The spokesman for its Defense Ministry Dmytro Lazutkin warned on May 12 that the new laws to enforce military conscription on nearly all Ukrainian men will mean a massive shift in the lives of Ukrainians. The entirety of society, he made clear, will need to make sacrifices and forget about living peaceful lives in order to defeat the enemy.