Russia blasts 'paranoid' UK over foreign influence register

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday that Britain's elite had shown its paranoia and intellectual inferiority by proposing to place anyone working for the Russian state on the highest tier of its upcoming foreign influence registration scheme.

British security minister Dan Jarvis said President Vladimir Putin, government agencies, the armed forces, intelligence services and a number of political parties would be required to register under the scheme, which will begin on July 1.

"The intellectual inferiority afflicting the ruling class (of Britain) has reached its apogee," Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, adding that London's move showed Britain's "paranoid schizophrenia".

"The heirs of the great British representatives of past eras, soldiers who fought against Nazism and veterans of the Second World War, are now digging in the mud, hysterically looking for connections with Russia."

Western European leaders have repeatedly warned that Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows that Russia might one day attack a NATO member, and Western intelligence services say Moscow's spies are involved in a global sabotage effort.

Russia says such claims are lies, that it has no intention of ever attacking a NATO member and that Western European powers are stoking blatantly racist anti-Russian hysteria in an attempt to distract from their own failures.

As the United States under Donald Trump seeks to reset ties with Moscow and broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, Britain has supplanted it in the discourse of Russian politicians as Moscow's public enemy number one.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)