Kremlin Hits Back at Burnham: Britain Is Fostering 'Total Russophobia'
Moscow answered the Prime Minister’s United Nations speech within hours. Dmitry Peskov said Mr Burnham “said nothing new”, then went further: “stoking anti-Russian sentiment and fostering an atmosphere of total Russophobia is what Britain is doing”, with Germany, France and others “presumably in unison”. He called it “an utterly short-sighted policy” that brings no de-escalation in Europe. Mr Burnham had accused the Kremlin of spending £1.3bn a year manipulating information and announced a National Centre for Information Defence.
A response this fast, and this personal, is itself a data point: the speech landed. The Prime Minister’s charge was specific — forged branding of 28 British organisations including the BBC, and evidence of interference in the 2019 general election — and specificity is what Moscow finds hardest to wave away, hence the pivot to a general complaint about European attitudes. Mr Peskov paired it with a colder line for Kyiv, saying there are no prerequisites for a peaceful negotiating track. Britain now has to build the institution it announced, with powers to attribute and disrupt that will need a statute. Watch for the centre’s remit and who oversees it.