- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
The Russian establishment has shown little excitement over Liz Truss becoming the new prime minister of Britain and said chances are slim of the two countries’ relations getting better during her stint.
On Wednesday (7), Moscow went a step forward to slam Truss’s appointment as the premier with its foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova telling the state-run TASS news agency that the woman leader’s appointment is a symptom of the UK’s crisis of democracy. She said this on the sidelines of the ongoing Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
“Perhaps the problem lies in the crisis of British democracy, because this ‘result’ has nothing to do with a direct choice by Britons, as long as the indirect election system predominates in the two Anglo-Saxon countries,” Zakharova said when asked if she thought the new British prime minister would spell trouble for the UK.
Truss became the prime minister defeating former British finance minister Rishi Sunak in a Conservative Party contest that last four weeks after former prime minister Boris Johnson stepped down in July following an implosion in his government for various reasons. She took over on Tuesday (6).
A day before, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in a press conference following talks with Thailand’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister Don Pramudwinai in Moscow that Truss harbours a pre-existing negative attitude towards Russia and yet under the current conditions, it would be more important for London to sort out relations with its closest neighbours, including Paris.
“I believe that Liz Truss still has a higher priority: before she finally formulates her attitude to Russia, which is patently negative, she will have to sort out relations with the [UK’s] near neighbors, for one, to make up her mind about who French President, Emmanuel Macron, is – a friend or a foe. This question is still up in the air. It remains unanswered. I believe that it would be more important for the two neighbors to deal with this first, than to cast their eyes far beyond their borders,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by TASS.
“She (Truss) has her own principles, primarily, adherence to a hard line in defending Britain’s interests without any wish to take into account the position of others or to make any compromises,” Lavrov said.
“I don’t think that this will help to maintain or strengthen that country’s stance on the international stage, which has clearly been dented after Brexit. Now London has for a long time been actively trying to compensate for this loss of identity and of influence in the European Union by taking quite drastic steps, including aggressive actions regarding the situation that has developed around Ukraine. We all know this.”
