You only have to hear the words of Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President and Vladimir Putin’s long term chief sidekick, to realise just how far Russia has propelled itself from the circle of civilised nations.

Putin’s Russia not only uses state assassinations as an instrument of policy, but jokes and boasts about it too

Dmitry Medvedev has recently made a habit of outdoing even his boss in blood curdling rhetoric. His latest outburst is typical: a direct threat to the lives of British officials. Britain, he declared, is waging an ‘undeclared war’ on Russia through its support for Ukraine, and because of that all British officials have now become ‘legitimate targets’.

Dmitry Medvedev’s chilling words may be no idle threat. Russia has a long history of assassinating – or attempting to assassinate – both its own dissidents living abroad in exile or foreign residents who have dared to displease the men in the Kremlin.

In fact, just as the former president issued his threat, the pro-Putin TV propagandist Olga Skabeyeva, nicknamed the ‘Iron Doll’ for her support for the war, made a direct reference to one such assassination attempt – Moscow’s botched bid to murder former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia using the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018.

Olga, who is married to pro-Putin politician and fellow TV host Yevgeny Popov, said that she wanted to see the spire of Salisbury cathedral fall on the head of Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and impale him. She was talking about the absurd excuse offered by the two would-be killers of the Skripals, military intelligence agents Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga to explain their presence in Salisbury on that day.

Connoisseurs of the history of official Russian lies will need no reminding that the two men claimed in a press conference that they had merely been in Salisbury as tourists to see the city’s famous cathedral spire rather than on a mission to murder the Skripals.

Putin’s Russia not only uses state assassinations as an instrument of policy, but jokes and boasts about it too. At the same time, the hypocritical supporters of Putin’s war whine and grizzle when a few drones hit Moscow – apparently oblivious to the lethal bombardment unleashed on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing civilians on a daily basis.

Russia’s war crimes since launching its invasion of Ukraine have already seen Putin personally indicted by the International Criminal Court for the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia – an atrocity unprecedented in Europe since the mass kidnaps perpetrated by the Nazis in world war two under their Lebensborn programme.

By openly avowing and bragging about their similar crimes so shamelessly, Putin and his apologists are demonstrating their readiness to defy the norms and rules that have governed the behaviour of civilised nations since the 19th century – safe in the belief that they will never be held accountable.  These sick words and wild threats should be treated with the contempt that they deserve.