Russia has mocked Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary for appearing to suggest the Baltic States are located on the Black Sea, suggesting the world needs to be saved from “the stupidity and ignorance of Anglo-Saxon politicians.”
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pounced on Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, a former Liberal Democrat and Remain campaigner who has since managed to win over a chunk of her party’s grassroots by reinventing herself as a “Get Brexit Done” believer and posing on top of a tank like the late Margaret Thatcher, when she said the British government was “supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea” amid ongoing tensions.
“I would like to point out that a better way to deliver extra support to the Baltic allies would be across the Baltic Sea. These states are known as Baltic because they are located on the Baltic, not the Black, Sea,” Zakharova sarcastically observed in a social media post.
“I am afraid to even imagine the UK Foreign Secretary changing a tank for an aircraft carrier to save the Baltic allies on the Black Sea. Will she be moving covertly across the Celtic Sea into the Mediterranean and on via the Bosporus and the Kerch Strait, trying to avoid Russia’s attention as she enters the Volga-Baltic Waterway?” she quipped, facetiously advising that “Another option for British diplomats is to reach the Baltic Sea from the Black Sea via the Arctic Ocean.”
“A question is forming on the sand of the Black Baltic Sea. Where did Ms Truss study, and how well did she act in her previous ministerial positions with her ‘highly likely’ education?” the Russian official pressed on, suggesting that “What we really need to do is save the world from the incompetent and poorly educated Anglo-Saxon politicians.”
Speaking to Sky News, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, was equally scathing of British foreign policy, telling the broadcaster that “There is always room for diplomacy but, frankly, we don’t trust British diplomacy. I think in recent years British diplomacy has shown that it is absolutely worthless.
“I really don’t want to offend anybody, especially my good friends, British diplomats, but really the results are nothing to boast about,” he added.
Britain has arguably not acquitted itself particularly well in recent years even in dealings with supposed allies. For example, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been accused of selling out British fishermen to the European Union and allowing the EU to turn Northern Ireland into a kind of economic colony for the purposes of customs and regulation in exchange for little beyond a trade deal covering goods, where the EU has the balance of trade advantage, but not services, where Britain had the advantage.
Prime Minister Johnson and predecessor Theresa May have also failed to stop illegal migrants pouring across the English Channel in ever-increasing numbers for several years now, taking the view that they cannot act without the permission of the French, who are not only unwilling to agree a returns deal but are actively and publicly excoriating the British as being the ones responsible for the situation.
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