Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr Lavrov asserted: “I think that Britain should be called simply Britain because ‘Great Britain’ is the only example of a country which calls itself ‘Great’.” <\/p>\n
His remarks, made during a discussion on colonialism following earlier comments regarding Greenland<\/a>, were delivered to reporters.<\/p>\n Mr Lavrov’s spokeswoman then offered a question to Ivor Bennett, a correspondent from Britain’s Sky News, with the minister adding, “No offence.” <\/p>\n He cited the “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” led by Muammar Gaddafi, as another historical instance of a country adopting the “great” moniker.<\/p>\n “But it no longer exists.”<\/p>\n The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is usually called “Velikobritaniya”, or Great Britain, in Russian.<\/p>\n As the U.S. under Donald Trump seeks to reset ties with Moscow and broker peace between Russia and Ukraine<\/a>, Britain has been granted the status of Russia’s public enemy number one.<\/p>\n On Russian state television, “Perfidious Albion”, a term used frequently by news anchors, is cast as a scheming global intelligence power that is meddling behind the scenes from Washington to Iran in a duplicitous bid to undermine Russian interests across the world.<\/p>\n Britain says Russia is a threat to Europe<\/a>. Amid the war in Ukraine, Russia and the West have repeatedly accused each other of unfurling espionage campaigns of an intensity not seen since the depths of the Cold War.<\/p>\n At the same news conference, Lavrov said that Greenland<\/a> was not “a natural part” of Denmark and that the problem of former colonial territories was becoming more acute.<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> has said he wants full U.S. control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, for national security reasons. On Saturday he announced tariffs on imports from European allies<\/a> that oppose a potential U.S. takeover.<\/p>\n Russia has reacted gleefully to the growing U.S.-Europe divide over Greenland, but has bristled at Trump’s suggestion that Moscow is also seeking control over the island.<\/p>\n Lavrov said Russia had no interest in interfering in Greenland’s affairs and that Washington knew that Moscow itself had no plans to take control of the island.<\/p>\n “In principle, Greenland is not a natural part of Denmark, is it?” Lavrov said.<\/p>\n “It was neither a natural part of Norway nor a natural part of Denmark. It is a colonial conquest. The fact that the inhabitants are now accustomed to it and feel comfortable is another matter.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-380358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Russian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/RUSSIA-DIPLOMACY-21rmaqip.jpeg\")
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov delivers his annual end-of-year press conference at the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters in Moscow. (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n