Russia questions Britain's claim to the Falklands as garrison reinforced Extra Chinook helicopters and new missile system to be sent to be deployed, as Russia likens Islands to Crimea
By Matthew Holehouse, Political Correspondent
7:18PM GMT 24 Mar 2015
Britain will send two troop-carrying Chinook helicopters and new surface-to-air missile system to the Falkland Islands, amid fears Russia could be arming the Argentine government.
Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said the Islands will be ready to repel “any potential threat” following reports that the Kremlin is preparing to lease 12 Su-24 long range bombers to Buenos Aires in exchange for beef and wheat.
It came as Russia questioned the legitimacy of Britain’s claim on the Islands.
Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Ambassador in London compared the referendum held in 2013 that found 99.8 per cent of the Falkland Islanders wanted to remain a British territory to that held in Crimea last year.
The snap Crimean referendum, held at gunpoint and used to justify Putin’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula, was denounced as a sham by Britain.
Some £180 million will be spent over the next decade in upgrading the island’s defences, Mr Fallon told the Commons.
Two Chinook helicopters, which were sent to Afghanistan in 2006, will return and allow troops to respond to possible incursions more quickly, while a new system will replace the Rapier air defence missiles when they go out of service at the end of the decade.
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The Russian intervention came in response to Philip Hammond, who used the first anniversary of the Crimean annexation to condemn the “sham” referendum as a “fig leaf” for Putin’s “land grab”.
In a statement, the embassy said: “In its rhetoric Foreign Office applies one logic to the referendum in the Malvinas/Falklands, and a different one to the case of Crimea.”
It followed weeks of rhetoric from pro-Kremlin newspapers and leading Russian MPs denouncing Britain’s “colonial occupation” of the Islands, which they dubbed the “Crimea of the Atlantic”.
Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Duma’s committee of international affairs, wrote on Twitter: “Information for London: Crimea has immeasurably more reason to be a part of Russia than the Falkland Islands to be part of the UK.”
Cristina de Kirchner, the Argentine president, has backed Putin.
“The Malvinas has always belonged to Argentina, the same way that Crimea also belonged to the Soviet Union until it was given to Ukraine,” she said last year, in comments that delighted the Russian president.
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