Britain accuses Russia of trying to install pro-russia regime in Ukraine

Britain accuses the Kremlin of wanting to install a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine is deeply concerning, a National Security Council spokeswoman said late Saturday.

Emily Horne said that the Ukrainian people have the right to decide their own future, and we stand with our democratically-elected partners in Ukraine.

She said that this kind of plotting is deeply concerning.

The country's Foreign Office made a statement late Saturday that Russia was trying to install a pro-Kremlin leader in Ukraine. Russia's intelligence officers had been in touch with a number of former Ukrainian politicians as part of plans for an invasion, it said.

The statement said that Ukrainian lawmaker Yevheniy Murayev was considered a potential candidate to lead and that he named several other Ukrainian politicians it said had links with Russian intelligence services.

They included Mykola Azarov, a former prime minister under Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president who was ousted in a 2014 uprising. After three months of protests against his rule, Yanukovich fled to Russia and was sentenced in absentia to 13 years in jail in 2019 on treason charges.

Andriy Kluyev and Serhiy Arbuzov, who both served as deputy prime minister under Yanukovych, were named along with Vladimir Sivkovich, former deputy head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, who was this week named as the subject of U.S. sanctions for allegedly working with Russian intelligence.

The U.K. Foreign Office hasn't provided any evidence to back up its accusations, which come at a time of high tensions over Russia's mass deployment of troops near its border with Ukraine.

Moscow has insisted it has no plans to invade, and Russia s Foreign Ministry dismissed the British claims as disinformation. The British Foreign Office should stop provocative activities after accusing the U.K. and NATO of escalating tensions. Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine's ambassador to the U.K, said that he did not believe the British claims, because Russia had tried to install a pro-Moscow leader in recent times.

Ukraine was prepared to fight, he told British broadcaster Sky News, adding that his country was not well-equipped for a prolonged battle. He said that the issue would be whether there would be a full scale invasion or smaller things that would annoy us and the rest of the world. The parent company of NBC News, Comcast, owns Sky News. In comments to Britain's Observer newspaper, Murayev dismissed Britain's claims that Russia wants to install him as Ukraine's leader. He said on Sunday that he wanted to see an end to dividing Ukraine into pro-Western and pro-Russian politicians.

The British claims came after talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov failed to make a major breakthrough, although they agreed to keep talking.

President Vladimir Putin had issued several demands to the West, including a permanent prohibition on Ukrainian membership in NATO and the removal of most of the U.S. and allied military presence in eastern Europe.

The U.S. says that is a nonstarter.