Mar 03, 2026
Given the premise, it becomes easy to treat disparate events as mutually reinforcing confirmation of it, often yielding elaborate conspiracy theories. The standard Russophobe narrative runs roughly as follows:
- Russia invaded Georgia in 2008.
- Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
- Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
- The United Kingdom is fighting for the freedom and security of Europe.
- The safety of the international order depends on resisting the destructive acts of autocracies.
- Ukraine must be given the tools to “finish the job” — that is, to drive out Russian forces.
- Failing that, Mr Putin’s forces will resort to even greater acts of depravity.
- Putin islike Hitler; Russia poses the same threat to European freedom as Germany did in the 1930s.
- Any negotiated settlement in Ukraine would not make the world safer. On the contrary, it would convince the Kremlin of its own invincibility and embolden further aggression.
- A Ukrainian victory is the precondition for European security.
Historically, Russophobia has succeeded an earlier Germanophobia. One recalls the Daily Mail’s 1909 series alleging that Germany was “deliberately preparing to destroy the British Empire.” For the newly emerging mass-circulation dailies, bad news sold copies. Newspapers were structurally incentivised to amplify alarm and inflame national feeling. Today, what was once called the Yellow Press has spread upwards into what used to be called the ‘quality’ newspapers like The Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph
Recent examples of British paranoid thinking:
The Times, 24 February 2026
- Armed Forces Minister Alistair Cairns reportedly compared the threat posed by Russia to Europe with that posed by Germany in the 1930s.
- Tom Tugendhat stated, formerly security minister “The Epstein files suggest a network of hostile states at the heart of our own government that demands action to protect the King, the country and our government.”
The Daily Telegraph, 25 February 2026
- “Russia tunnels immigrants into Europe… as part of its hybrid war on the West.”
Spy narratives also proliferate:
- On 2 February, the Daily Mail reported that pupils at the Russian School of London — run by the Russian embassy for diplomats’ children — were receiving drone instruction as part of a programme titled “Fundamentals of Security and Protection of the Motherland.”
- On the same day, the Daily Telegraph speculated that Jeffrey Epstein may have been a Russian agent.
- In the House of Commons (4 February), Ed Davey asked Sir Keir Starmer whether Peter Mandelson might have leaked state secrets not only to an American financier convicted of paedophilia, but also to a Russian agent.
People are drawn to spy stories. In a climate primed by geopolitical confrontation, such stories are easily woven into a larger narrative of infiltration, subversion and encirclement — even when the underlying events are unrelated.
May I also recommend the review in the London Review of Books (5 March 2026), where Jackson Lears reviews Edward Luce’s Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Cold War Prophet. In many ways, the polish born achitectb of Russophobia.
Robert Skidelsky 