Luton: A list of 11 countries that Russia considers the axis of evil

The Swiss newspaper Le Temps says that the Kremlin has drawn up a list of "enemy states", which will be "updated regularly" depending on the circumstances, and that the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergey Lavrov, expects "worse" relations than they were during the Cold War.

The newspaper stated

that the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the creation of a list of "enemy countries", led by the United States.

This list was not officially released, but the daily Isvestia, which is very close to the Kremlin, published the names of 11 countries, which were immediately reported by TV channels close to the government.

The Russian list includes, in addition to America, countries that the Kremlin usually considers "affiliated with Washington", that is, Britain, Canada and Australia, as well as 6 countries in Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, which recently accused Russia of planning to destroy an arms depot on its territory in 2014, and Poland, Prussia has troubled relations for decades, not to mention the three Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia.

Worse than the Cold War

Lavrov said that he did not think that they should wait any longer for the publication of the list, which would be amended periodically, adding that this was not a "dead, meaning final" document, noting that he had set "clear criteria" for placing countries on this list.

He indicated that if relations between Washington and Moscow did not improve, the two countries would live in conditions "similar to the period of the Cold War, or even worse."

Weeks ago, the Kremlin protested against US President Joe Biden's description of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as a "murderer". A date or place for a meeting between the two heads of state has not yet been decided.

Lawton said that the Russian initiative appears to be a response, nearly two decades later, to the famous "axis of evil" denounced by former US President George W. Bush in 2002 (and by which he meant at the time Iraq, Iran and North Korea), and is also a response to Recent US sanctions targeting Russian individuals suspected of committing cyber attacks.

An unprecedented wave

The newspaper adds that Lavrov's statements are punctuated by a series of unprecedented expulsions of diplomats at the initiative of Western countries, as the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats, and Moscow responded by expelling 20 Czech diplomats.

On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced again the expulsion of 4 diplomats from the Baltic states and 3 Slovaks.

Lavrov took the opportunity to attack Russian "liberals" (a term that includes opponents of confrontational policy), likening them to spoiled children frustrated by their inability to eat Parmesan cheese, banned since 2014 following Putin's counter-sanctions decision.

Luton concluded her report by saying that the Russian verbal escalation went further among the defenders of Russian domestic policy, as the Speaker of the State Duma (Parliament) Vyacheslav Volodin on Tuesday demanded compensation from Americans for the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that the virus is an American industry.