Daily Times

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday mocked the “intellectual capacities” of Britain’s army chief for calling Russia a bigger threat than the Islamic State group.

“In regards to the words from Britain’s chief of the general staff, we can’t stop someone from showing what his intellectual capacities are,” Lavrov said through an interpreter at a media conference in Portugal.

“I’ve already heard a lot of statements like this from the United Kingdom’s defence minister,” he said. “We can’t influence British government decisions on the people tasked with running their armed forces.” Lavrov’s acerbity was in response to General Mark Carleton-Smith, the head of Britain’s army, telling the Daily Telegraph newspaper: “Russia today indisputably represents a far greater threat to our national security than Islamic extremist threats such as Al-Qaeda and (IS).”

Carleton-Smith said that “Russia has embarked on a systematic effort to explore and exploit Western vulnerabilities, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas of cyber, space, undersea warfare.” Lavrov, speaking after a meeting with Portugal’s president, said such criticisms were not “original”.

He claimed that former US president Barack Obama had “placed Russia on the same level as the Ebola virus” in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

Published in Daily Times, November 25^th 2018.