As Britain’s Prince Andrew remains a key figure in the Epstein abuse scandal, the Times UK has added their own favorite twist to the story – Russians might be involved.

The British royal is at the center of ongoing sex abuse accusations concerning Jeffrey Epstein, with one of the late billionaire’s accusers alleging that Andrew participated in the exploitation of her when she was a teenager.

Virginia Giuffre has repeatedly claimed that convicted sex offender Epstein ordered her to have sex with his friends, including the prince. Photographs have long circulated showing Andrew with his arm around the then-17-year-old girl at a house in London. The royal has denied “any form of sexual contact or relationship” with Giuffre.

Translation: if anyone tells you that Prince Andrew did something bad, pic.twitter.com/Bb8rrs0hdH — Marisol Nostromo ⏳ ‏ (@MarisolNostromo) September 21, 2019

Andrew is known to have continued his friendship with Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in August while awaiting sex trafficking charges, in the years after the latter plead guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Given the ongoing circulation of the prince’s name in relation to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking ring, you can imagine the surprise of social media users to the Times’ claims (conveniently, via an unnamed “security source”) that MI6 is worried that Russia might have compromising information linking Andrew to the Epstein scandal.

The mysterious ‘source’ of the story basically offered the British outlet a prime opportunity to wheel out their favorite bogeyman: Russia.

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Social media users were quick to mock the claims and point out the absurdity of the Times’ story, with one tweeting: “I could obtain Kompromat on Andrew by using Google.”

“The whole world knows about Andrew and Epstein, does it really matter at this point if word gets back to Russia?” another asked.

Some questioned if the MI6 story was just a poor effort to deflect attention from the British royal onto ‘the Russians’, and many more wondered why these intelligence sources are more worried about Andrew’s reputation and vulnerabilities than about his potential criminal behavior.

More worried about who has the information instead of the illegality of the alleged actions that may have produced it? Do the right thing. Release it. — Mark O'Hagan (@MarkCork50) September 21, 2019 “Concerned”. Man’s got multiple allegations of sexual abuse piling up against him and the concern is that it could be kompromat, rather than the potential criminality... — BeldamLascar (@BeldamLascar) September 21, 2019

Also on rt.com Deeply offensive & total rubbish: UK peers respond to being branded ‘Moscow’s men’ by the Times

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