The latest statement from Maria Zakharova, the reliably acerbic spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, has generated considerable interest and concern amongst the British chattering classes. And that was no doubt the idea. In the course of one of her regular press briefings, she delivered a characteristically robust warning:

We call on all residents of the United Kingdom to consider the inevitable catastrophic consequences of their own government’s hostile actions. We urge the British leadership to once again thoroughly analyse the situation and immediately and decisively abandon its hostile, aggressive policy, which can only prolong the agony of the Kyiv neo-Nazi regime and create the risk of escalating the conflict to a fundamentally new level… We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond.

We call on all residents of the United Kingdom to consider the inevitable catastrophic consequences of their own government’s hostile actions. We urge the British leadership to once again thoroughly analyse the situation and immediately and decisively abandon its hostile, aggressive policy, which can only prolong the agony of the Kyiv neo-Nazi regime and create the risk of escalating the conflict to a fundamentally new level… We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian........

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