The Russian Embassy in the UK is really stepping up its online trolling game.

After using a meme of a duckling with the word "Lame" in response to U.S. President Barack Obama's sanctions against Russia, the embassy's verified UK Twitter account had a go at pundits who criticised a possible Russia-U.S. thaw in relations.

In doing so, the embassy used the infamous Pepe the Frog cartoon, which in September was added to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)'s database of hate symbols:

In today’s papers: pundits call on @Theresa_May to disrupt possible Russia-US thaw. No trust in Britain's best friend and ally? pic.twitter.com/4TNf9x8PCh — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) January 9, 2017

The internet meme, created by cartoonist Matt Furie back in 2005, was adopted by neo-Nazis and serves as an icon of the so-called alt-right movement.

The ADL identified the image as a cartoon character "used by haters on social media to suggest racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted notions, as a hate symbol."

Though the image did not originally represent hateful views, it eventually evolved into depictions of the frog portrayed with a "Hitler-like moustache, wearing a yarmulke or a Klan hood."

While Trump disavowed the alt-right, he did re-tweet a caricature depicting him as Pepe the Frog in October 2015, with the caption "You Can't Stump the Trump":

While the Russian embassy has been particularly active in their trolling of the Western governments, people on Twitter were stunned to see an alt-right symbol used by an official embassy's Twitter account:

The Russian government has embraced the neo-Nazi (aka alt-right) symbol of Pepe the Frog. pic.twitter.com/sufSE9wJIG — Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) January 9, 2017

This is the official Russian Embassy to the UK tweeting the alt-right "Pepe the frog" meme. Great start, 2017. https://t.co/ajXYAeJmlB — The Greek Analyst (@GreekAnalyst) January 9, 2017

When Britain was called upon to disrupt the US-Russian thaw, did the Russians:

1 declare war

2 do nothing

3 tweet a picture of Pepe the Frog — Nesrine Malik (@NesrineMalik) January 9, 2017

The Russians are trolling the British government with Pepe the Frog pic.twitter.com/gnUiZAo3E5 — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 9, 2017

So this just happened https://t.co/4C66Supf8x — Jillian C. York 🌎 (@jilliancyork) January 9, 2017

And now the Russian Embassy in the UK is using the Pepe the Frog meme. Barf. https://t.co/Nv7HPNg7GE — (((Charles Hawley))) (@charles_hawley) January 9, 2017