Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Boris Johnson, Top U.K. Diplomat, Likens Russia World Cup to ’36 Olympics

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of Britain said Wednesday that Russia would use this year’s World Cup soccer tournament as a propaganda tool.Credit...Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

Britain’s top diplomat, Boris Johnson, told Parliament on Wednesday that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, would use the World Cup this summer as a propaganda tool much as Hitler used the 1936 Olympic Games to glorify Nazi Germany.

The provocative comparison drew an enraged reaction from Moscow — which has often stoked nationalist pride around the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II — and was a striking example of the diplomatic clash between the two countries following the poisoning of a Russian former spy, Sergei V. Skripal, and his daughter earlier this month.

In testimony before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, Mr. Johnson, the foreign secretary, said that ensuring the safety of British soccer fans who travel to the World Cup was a crucial concern.

“Across government, we are considering what further steps we need to take to get the Russians to guarantee the safety of our fans,” he said, citing Russia’s obligations under the contract with FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, to look after all fans.

Mr. Johnson said that only 24,000 Britons had bought tickets to the soccer matches, compared with 94,000 at the same point before the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. He also said that the British diplomat responsible for coordinating the visits to Russia by British fans had been expelled from Russia as part of the tit-for-tat expulsions following the poisoning.

The comparison to Nazi Germany came after Ian Austin, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, suggested that Britain pull out of the World Cup altogether, citing the fear that the tournament would serve as propaganda.

“Putin is going to use it in the way Hitler used the 1936 Olympics,” Mr. Austin said.

Mr. Johnson replied: “I think that your characterization of what is going to happen in Moscow, the World Cup, in all the venues — yes, I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right.” However, he said, barring British athletes from playing would not be fair to them or their fans. “I think it would be a pity for them,” he said.

He also rejected the assertion by Russia that it had nothing to do with the attack on Mr. Skripal and his daughter on March 4.

He said, “No matter how exactly it came to be done, the pathway, the chain of responsibility seems to me to go back to the Russian state and those at the top.”

Asked why Moscow would feel it could carry out such an attack, Mr. Johnson said: “It was a sign that President Putin, or the Russian state, wanted to give to potential defectors in their own agencies that this is what happens to you if you decide that you support a country with a different set of values such as our own: You can expect to be assassinated.

“I think the reason that they picked the United Kingdom is very simple: It’s because this is a country that does have that particular set of values, it does believe in freedom and in democracy and in the rule of law, and has time and again called out Russia over its abuses of those values.”

Mr. Johnson’s remarks drew anger in Moscow, where Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, said in a statement: “There isn’t the slightest doubt now that all of London’s actions in terms of Russia are aimed at creating an image of an enemy. Even the most absurd tools are used to do that.

She added: “If there is no clarity with the poisoning of the Skripals, it is clear what happened with Boris Johnson: he was poisoned by the hatred and anger, unprofessionalism and, therefore, rudeness.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the ministry took the extraordinary step of summoning representatives from every foreign diplomatic mission in Moscow to hear a long, public diatribe — the latest attempt to rebut British accusations that Russia used a weapons-grade nerve agent in the poisoning in Salisbury, England.

Speaking in a stiff, scolding tone, Vladimir Yermakov, the head of the ministry’s department of arms control and nonproliferation, called the attack on the Skripals a terrorist act that could have been staged by the British government to discredit Russia.

“Either the British authorities are unable to protect against a terrorist attack on their territory or staged the attack against the Russian citizen themselves, directly or otherwise,” Mr. Yermakov told dozens of foreign envoys during the two-hour meeting, which was broadcast live on Russian state television. “All facts are being intentionally hidden, and the real evidence may have already disappeared.”

The British government directly blamed Russia, and even Mr. Putin, for the chemical attack, expelled 23 Russian diplomats and promised to take other retaliatory measures. The Kremlin responded by expelling 23 British diplomats.

Russian authorities have said repeatedly that the episode was a ruse to put the Kremlin in a bad light ahead of the presidential election last Sunday, which Mr. Putin won easily.

Mr. Yermakov, however, went even further this time by painting the Salisbury attack as only the latest chapter in a long-running, elaborate conspiracy against Russia and its allies. He dredged up numerous past accusations against the West, including some related to the war in Iraq.

In recent years, Russia has developed something of a standard operating procedure in the face of accusations from the West: proposing a number of competing theories, apparently in an attempt to muddy the waters about what actually happened. On Wednesday, this included trying to link the Salisbury poisoning to the war in Syria.

Follow Ivan Nechepurenko @INechepurenko and Maya Salam @Maya__Salam on Twitter.


Sewell Chan contributed reporting.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT