The new scheme will serve to hinder the restoration of Russian-British relations if and when the time comes, and is designed to distract ordinary Britons from “depressing” news, like cuts to social benefits and rising electricity costs, the Russian Embassy in London said.
The Embassy called the scheme “another discriminatory barrier to the long-term restoration of Russian-British relations…erected out of thin air,” and accused the Starmer government of squandering the chance to abandon “the Tories’ failed confrontational course” against Russia.
«The motives behind the decision taken by UK authorities are clear to us. It is primarily due to the awareness of the approaching collapse of the ‘Ukrainian project’, to London’s obvious disappointment, as the desired coalition of European ‘volunteers’ fails to materialize to help it,» the Embassy added.
The UK announced a two-tier Foreign Influence Registration Scheme April 1 requiring anyone alleged to be working with or for a foreign state to register, on penalty of up to five years in prison.
The scheme can target everything from as “the transfer of funds from an individual abroad to an individual in the UK or vice versa” to a social media post aimed at individuals in the UK, “even if it is posted by an individual overseas.”
Russia and Iran have been placed in the scheme’s “enhanced tier” of threats.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova asked whether the new law would require British vets who got medals from Russia for participation in the WWII Arctic convoys to register and hand them in, and whether the UK’s National Space Center would now be listed as a Russian Aerospace Forces base due to past Soviet-British cooperation in space.
