History · Intelligence · michelerovatti.com
Russophobia: How Britain Learned to Hate Russia and Never Stopped
From Lord Palmerston to the Salisbury poisoning, from the Great Game to hybrid warfare — the longest undeclared conflict in modern history. The Second World War, as John le Carré observed, was merely a distraction.
230
Years of rivalry
3
Assassination attempts on UK soil since 2006
150+
Russian diplomats expelled since 2018
1
Death from Novichok on UK soil
The thesis — stated in 1963, confirmed by history
"To the hard-liners of East and West the Second World War was a distraction. Now it was over, they could get on with the real war that had started with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and had been running under different flags and disguises ever since."
— John le Carré, Afterword to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963/2013)
1791–1917
The Deep Root: Russophobia as British State Policy
Lord Palmerston, the Great Game, and the invention of an enemy
The origin — Ochakov Crisis, 1791
Britain and Russia have been rivals for 230 years. The Cold War was not an aberration. It was the default.
Anglo-Russian tensions began in the last quarter of the 18th century, primarily over the Black Sea region. The Ochakov Crisis of 1791 — when Prime Minister Pitt considered war with Russia over Ottoman territory — established the template: Britain feared Russian expansion toward the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India. What followed was two centuries of strategic competition that le Carré's characters understood better than the politicians who directed them. Russia was not an enemy Britain discovered in 1917. It was one it had been cultivating for a hundred years before.
1830s–1850s
Lord Palmerston
Russophobia becomes British foreign policy doctrine
Lord Palmerston — Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister across three decades — made anti-Russian policy the cornerstone of British diplomacy. As Russia suppressed Polish, Hungarian, and other revolts across Eastern Europe, British opinion hardened from strategic rivalry into ideological hostility. As David Fromkin wrote in Foreign Affairs (1980): "The Russophobia soon outgrew the particular political differences between the two countries, and became a cause in its own right." Queen Victoria declared: "It is a question of Russian or British supremacy in the world." The framing has not substantially changed in 170 years.
1853–1856
Crimean War
Britain fights Russia in Crimea — the first time
Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire fight Russia in Crimea to prevent Russian expansion toward the Mediterranean. 21,000 British soldiers die — more from disease than combat. The war is the direct military expression of Palmerston's Russophobia, prosecuted on the same peninsula that Russia would seize from Ukraine in 2014. The geography of Anglo-Russian rivalry has not moved in 170 years either.
1830–1895
The Great Game
Intelligence war across Central Asia — the template for everything that follows
Britain and Russia fight a shadow war across Afghanistan, Persia, and Central Asia for six decades. British agents, disguised as explorers and merchants, map Russian positions and cultivate local rulers. Russian agents do the same. As historian Lawrence James wrote in The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1994): "Russophobia infected the minds of nearly every nineteenth-century British statesman, diplomat and strategist, and was strongly felt among all classes and shades of political opinion." The Great Game ends formally in 1895 — but its methods, its paranoia, and its institutional memory survive into MI6 and the FSB. Le Carré's George Smiley is the Great Game's last practitioner.
1917–1920
British Intervention
Britain intervenes in the Russian Civil War — backing the Whites against the Bolsheviks
Following the 1917 Revolution, Britain sends troops to Russia to support the White Army against the Bolsheviks. Operations run at Archangel, Murmansk, and in support of the Baltic states. The intervention fails. The Bolsheviks win the Civil War. But the choice is made: Britain will not coexist with a communist Russia if it can prevent it. Le Carré's "real war" begins here — not in 1947, but in 1917, when the ideological dimension is added to the strategic one that had existed since Palmerston.
1945–1991
The Cold War — Britain's Special Obsession
MI6, GCHQ, defectors, and the Cambridge Five
1951
Espionage
Cambridge Five exposed — British intelligence penetrated at its core
Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross — all recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s, all working for Soviet intelligence while serving in MI6, MI5, and the Foreign Office. Philby was head of MI6's anti-Soviet section. The penetration of British intelligence by Soviet agents was the deepest and most consequential espionage operation of the Cold War. Le Carré's Bill Haydon in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is Philby — the insider, the beloved colleague, the mole at the top.
1956
Intelligence
Operation GOLD — the Berlin tunnel blown before it was dug
MI6 and the CIA construct a quarter-mile tunnel under East Berlin to tap Soviet communications cables. The operation — costing millions and taking years — is compromised by George Blake, an MI6 officer working for the KGB, before the first spade enters the ground. The Soviets allow communications to flow normally for almost a year to protect Blake. Britain's anti-Soviet intelligence architecture is penetrated from the inside. Le Carré describes this in the afterword to *The Spy Who Came in from the Cold* with barely concealed disgust.
1971
Expulsion
Operation FOOT — Britain expels 105 Soviet intelligence officers
The largest single expulsion of Soviet intelligence personnel in Western history. Britain identifies and expels 105 Soviet officials — KGB and GRU officers operating under diplomatic cover — in a single operation. The action follows the defection of Oleg Lyalin, a KGB officer who revealed the scale of Soviet intelligence operations in the UK. Moscow retaliates but cannot match the expulsion. The operation demonstrates that Britain's counter-intelligence capability, despite the Cambridge Five, remains formidable.
1991–2006
The False Peace
Oligarchs, London as a laundromat, and the first signs of what was coming
1990s
Financial
London becomes the global hub for Russian oligarch money
Following the Soviet collapse, London actively courts Russian capital. "Londongrad" — the concentration of Russian oligarch wealth in London real estate, legal services, PR, and political connections — becomes the defining feature of post-Cold War UK-Russia relations. The City of London processes billions in Russian money; English libel law is used to silence Russian journalists and critics; Russian oligarchs fund both political parties. Britain's financial openness to Russian money is not naive — it is a deliberate policy choice that will prove catastrophically difficult to reverse.
1999
Kosovo
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia — Russia's first post-Cold War humiliation
Britain is the most enthusiastic advocate within NATO for bombing Serbia over Kosovo — over Russian objections and without a UN Security Council mandate. Russian troops race to Pristina airport in a dramatic gesture of defiance. General Wesley Clark orders British General Mike Jackson to block the Russians; Jackson refuses, telling Clark he is "not going to start World War Three." The incident encapsulates the post-Cold War dynamic: Western action over Russian objection, Russia humiliated but unable to stop it. Putin notes the lesson.
2003
Defectors
London as a base for Putin's enemies — Berezovsky, Litvinenko, Zakayev
Boris Berezovsky — once the most powerful oligarch in Russia, who helped bring Putin to power — flees to London after falling out with Putin and is granted asylum. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who has publicly accused the FSB of murder and corruption, also arrives in London. Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen leader wanted by Russia, is granted political asylum. London becomes the operational base for the most prominent critics of Putin's regime. Moscow views this as deliberate British state policy. It is correct.
2006–2018
Murder on British Soil
Polonium, Novichok, and the message Moscow sends to defectors
Pattern — Russian state assassination on allied territory
Russia does not just silence its enemies. It does so in ways designed to be seen — and to demonstrate that no Western government can protect you.
The use of polonium-210 and Novichok — both substances that are unmistakably state-produced, impossible to acquire commercially, and that leave a radioactive or chemical signature traceable to Russia — is not operationally necessary. A professional assassination could be achieved with untraceable means. The choice of these substances is a message: we did this, we know you know we did this, and we are doing it anyway. The message is directed not at the British government, but at every Russian who might be considering cooperation with Western intelligence.
Nov 2006
Assassination
Alexander Litvinenko — polonium-210 in a teacup
Former FSB officer and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko meets two Russian agents — Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun — at the Pine Bar of London's Millennium Hotel. His tea is laced with polonium-210. He dies 22 days later in University College Hospital, becoming the first person in history to be killed by deliberate polonium poisoning. His last words publicly accuse Putin of ordering his murder. A 2016 British inquiry concludes the killing was "probably approved" by Putin and FSB director Patrushev. The ECHR formally found Russia responsible in 2021. No extradition ever occurs.
2007
Retaliation
Britain expels 4 Russian diplomats — Russia expels 4 British
The British government's response to the Litvinenko murder: the expulsion of four Russian diplomats. The response is widely described, including by Chatham House, as "late, lame, and lamentable." Theresa May, as Home Secretary, delays the public inquiry into Litvinenko's death for years. Russian money continues flowing into London. The oligarch infrastructure is left intact. The message to Moscow: the financial relationship takes priority over the murder of a British citizen on British soil.
Mar 2018
Assassination attempt
Sergei and Yulia Skripal — Novichok in Salisbury
Former GRU officer and MI6 asset Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury, England. They have been poisoned with Novichok — a Soviet-era military-grade nerve agent. Three GRU officers are identified as the perpetrators. Both Skripals survive. Dawn Sturgess, a local woman who finds a discarded Novichok-laced perfume bottle, does not. A British policeman is also seriously affected. Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary, calls it "the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II." The UK expels 23 Russian diplomats. Western allies expel over 150 more in solidarity. Russia retaliates in kind.
2018–2020
Pattern
The longer list — Russian deaths in the UK
Between 2012 and 2020, at least 14 Russians with connections to the Kremlin or Russian intelligence died in the UK under circumstances that British coroners recorded as suicide, accident, or undetermined. Boris Berezovsky — found hanged in 2013, a coroner recording an open verdict. Nikolai Glushkov — found strangled in 2018 in New Malden, days after the Salisbury attack. The pattern, noted by multiple analysts, is of deaths that are individually explainable and collectively improbable.
2014–2026
Hybrid Warfare — The Undeclared War Becomes Visible
Disinformation, cyber, election interference, and the Havana syndrome question
2014–2016
Disinformation
Brexit — Russian interference and the limits of proof
The UK's Intelligence and Security Committee 2020 Russia Report concludes that the government "did not try to find out" whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum — not that it had investigated and found nothing, but that it had chosen not to investigate. The report identifies systematic Russian influence operations targeting UK politics, including social media amplification of divisive content, funding connections to pro-Brexit campaigns, and disinformation. The report is suppressed until after the 2019 general election. The government that suppresses it benefits from the outcome it refuses to investigate.
2017
Cyber
WannaCry ransomware — NHS attacked
The WannaCry ransomware attack, attributed by the UK and its allies to North Korea acting in coordination with Russian cyber infrastructure, devastates the NHS. 80 NHS trusts affected, 19,000 appointments cancelled, ambulances diverted. The attack demonstrates the vulnerability of critical national infrastructure to state-backed cyber operations. Russia denies involvement. The attribution is contested but the damage is real: £92 million in direct costs to the NHS, reputational damage to UK health security.
2020–2024
Havana Syndrome
Havana Syndrome — directed energy weapons targeting Western intelligence officers
Beginning in Havana in 2016 and spreading to dozens of locations worldwide including London, over 1,500 US government personnel report sudden onset of intense ear pain, pressure, tinnitus, cognitive difficulties, and neurological symptoms — now classified as "Anomalous Health Incidents." A 2024 investigation by US and European media attributes the weapons to Unit 29155 of the GRU — Russian military intelligence. The UK has not officially confirmed cases on British soil, but intelligence sources acknowledge they exist. The use of directed energy weapons against allied intelligence officers on allied territory represents a significant escalation of the undeclared war.
2022–2026
Ukraine war
Britain becomes Ukraine's most committed Western backer
Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Britain positions itself as Ukraine's most hawkish supporter — providing Storm Shadow cruise missiles before other European allies, training Ukrainian forces, supplying depleted uranium ammunition, and advocating most strongly for Ukraine's right to strike Russian territory. Prime Ministers Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and Starmer each visit Kyiv in shows of solidarity. Russia explicitly names Britain as a co-belligerent. Whether this reflects genuine commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty, institutional Russophobia hardwired into British foreign policy since Palmerston, or both simultaneously — is left as an exercise for the reader.
2023–2026
Escalation
Russia formally designates UK as "unfriendly state" — reciprocal measures continue
Russia's list of "unfriendly states" includes the UK prominently. Russian state media regularly identifies Britain — alongside the US and occasionally ahead of it — as the primary instigator of Western hostility. The framing in Moscow is consistent: the US acts from strategic interest, but Britain acts from historical hatred. This may be propaganda. It may also be an accurate reading of an institutional culture that dates to Palmerston, survived two world wars, and has been running under different flags and disguises — exactly as le Carré said — ever since 1917.
Sources
le Carré quote from the Afterword to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Harper's Magazine, April 2013. Palmerston and Great Game sources: Foreign Affairs (March 1980), World History Encyclopedia, Russophobia in Palmerston's Political Activities (Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University, 2017). Litvinenko: European Court of Human Rights ruling, September 2021; UK Public Inquiry, January 2016. Skripal: UK Government attribution, March 2018; OPCW confirmation. Havana Syndrome: joint investigation by Insider, Der Spiegel, and CBS 60 Minutes, 2024. Russia Report: Intelligence and Security Committee, July 2020. All figures current as of August 2026.
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