Philip Hammond: Russia’s “increasingly aggressive” stance showed that attempts to draw the nation into the international fold since the Cold War had failed. “We are now faced with a Russian leader bent not on joining the international rules-based system which which keeps the peace between nations, but on subverting it.”
Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, said Russia under Mr Putin represented the “single greatest threat” to UK security, in some of the strongest comments yet made by a minister for the Government since the start of the Ukraine crisis. He said Russia’s “increasingly aggressive” stance showed that attempts to draw the nation into the international fold since the Cold War had failed. “We are now faced with a Russian leader bent not on joining the international rules-based system which which keeps the peace between nations, but on subverting it,” he said. Vladimir Putin says he only ordered the annexation of Crimea to Russia because an 'unofficial survey' told him to do so Tuesday March 10 th , 2015 at 6:48 PM - Europe RSS Feed 1 Share Vladimir Putin has claimed that the decision to annex Crimea to the Russian Federation was only made after officials carried out an “unofficial survey” of the people living there.