Аbout the negotiations between the Russian and British defence ministers

The visit of British Defence Minister Ben Wallace to Moscow is of interest, if only because the last time the heads of the military departments of the Russian Federation and Britain met was in 2014. At the same time, British Foreign Minister Liz Truss has just left Moscow, having enriched herself with valuable knowledge of geography.

There is intense diplomatic activity in London, which, obviously, is part of the implementation of the concept of "Global Britain". The vision of the world outlined in this document is based on the claim to a new role for the country in the global world after leaving the EU.

The question itself is not new, since London, after the collapse of its colonial empire, actively uses the British Commonwealth as an element of soft power and control over the political elites of third world countries. However, the recent steps of the United Kingdom are poorly correlated with the concept of soft power. After all, we are no longer talking about diplomacy, but about military-strategic initiatives, where London claims key roles.

Britain sees itself as the "main headquarters" in the newly created anti-Chinese AUKUS bloc, and in relation to the hypothetical UKPOLUK bloc (Britain, Poland, Ukraine), which the Baltic countries are planning to join, it is hatching hegemonic plans at all.

Another thread of British ambitions stretches through Turkey to Central Asia, to continue the "big game" aimed at squeezing Russia out of this region.

All these military-strategic games are quite expensive and dangerous events. Why does London need all this and to what extent does it correspond to British national interests?

On the one hand, there are quite obvious internal reasons for this activity on the external circuit. The United Kingdom is a very unstable state entity, the collapse of which can take place almost at any moment. The crisis in Northern Ireland has not been resolved. Scotland has not given up on moving towards independence, sooner or later there will be a new referendum - this time under the slogan of joining the European Union, which can put both London and Brussels in an extremely ambiguous situation.

Against this background, the feverish international activity of the British authorities looks like a last attempt to rally the nation in the face of external threats - no matter real or imaginary - and prevent the collapse of the country.

By the way, the colonial past is perhaps the only thing that unites England and Scotland (there were disproportionately many Scots among the officials of the British Colonial Empire), which historically are completely different and self-sufficient countries.

On the other hand, Britain's desire to become the new "gendarme of Europe" by constructing an aggressive anti-Russian bloc at the borders of the Russian Federation, generally corresponds to the interests of transnational financial capital.

The period of Donald Trump's rule has shown that the globalist financial circles can no longer afford to rely only on the American geopolitical resource. And Britain's new course in this context should be seen as a kind of backup scenario in case isolationists who do not want to participate in military conflicts around the world come to power in the United States.

Thus, Britain's intervention in the Ukrainian crisis is actually a "breakdown of strength" in its new role. And here there is a fork in two possibilities.

On the one hand, Britain can bet on an escalation - it is no coincidence that British military instructors in Ukraine, in fact, were preparing for a "partisan war" there. In other words, sabotage actions, which include the organisation of all kinds of provocations. There is no doubt that if Kiev decides to fabricate a large-scale fake about a Russian invasion, then the British "James Bonds" will definitely put their hand to it.

The experience of Syria, where it was these gentlemen who supervised the notorious "White Helmets" who regularly spread staged videos about the "use of chemical weapons" by government troops, is quite indicative.

On the other hand, a different scenario of London's behaviour is also possible. After all, if Britain really wants to restore its global role, it needs to prove that it is capable of being an effective mediator in crisis situations. Given the close connection of the regime of Vladimir Zelensky with London, the British side could do a lot to dissuade the Kiev "strategists" from an escapade in Donbass.

The relatively adequate and sane rhetoric of the British minister of war after negotiations with Sergey Shoigu shows that both options are possible today. And against the background of what has been happening with the collective West over the past month, such variability is already some progress.

Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute