Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Britain should drop the “Great” from its official name, arguing it is the only nation to formally give itself such a title.
Speaking 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’.”
His remarks, made during a discussion on colonialism following earlier comments regarding Greenland, were delivered to reporters.
Mr Lavrov’s spokeswoman then offered a question to Ivor Bennett, a correspondent from Britain’s Sky News, with the minister adding, “No offence.”
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.
“But it no longer exists.”
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is usually called “Velikobritaniya”, or Great Britain, in Russian.
As the U.S. under Donald Trump seeks to reset ties with Moscow and broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, Britain has been granted the status of Russia’s public enemy number one.
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.
Britain says Russia is a threat to Europe. 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.
