As ties with US thaw, Moscow has new public enemy No. 1 — Britain

Two British diplomats expelled in a spying row.

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A blistering statement from Russia's foreign intelligence service calling Britain "a warmonger".

And a threat from a top ally of President Vladimir Putin to seize British assets inside Russia.

As the US under President Donald Trump seeks to reset ties with Moscow and broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, Britain has been granted the status of Russia's public enemy No. 1.

It is a mantle it has held on and off over the past two centuries.

"London today, like on the eve of both world wars of the last century, is acting as the main global 'warmonger'," Russia's foreign intelligence service said in an unusually charged public statement on March 10.

It accused London of trying to derail Mr Trump's efforts to broker peace in Ukraine.

"The time has come to expose them and send a clear message to 'perfidious Albion' (a pejorative reference to the British Empire) and its elites: You will not succeed," the agency, known as the SVR, said.

It did not elaborate on its objections to Britain's behaviour prior to the two world wars.

While Moscow has singled out Britain for particularly severe opprobrium, it has ramped up its rhetoric against the European Union and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose talk of France's nuclear arsenal as a counterpoint to a perceived Russian threat has angered the Kremlin.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has become Europe's biggest and deadliest conflict since World War II. It has left hundreds of thousands dead and injured, displaced millions more, and triggered the sharpest confrontation between Moscow and the West in decades.

For most of the war, Russia lambasted Washington for its role in supplying aid to Kyiv.

With Mr Trump in office, that has changed.