Putin aide: 'Miliband's hatred for Russia runs in family'

It was claimed Mr Miliband let his personal views cloud his judgment in the recent tit-for-tat diplomat expulsion row over the murder of ex-KGB operative Litvinenko.

Last month the Foreign Secretary expelled Russian diplomats from Britain after the Kremlin refused to sanction the extradition of the prime suspect in the murder case.

President Putin responded by throwing out several British Embassy officials and banning visas for other UK diplomats.

Now Russian political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, who is close to the Russian President, has claimed Mr Miliband inherited anti-Russian sentiments from his family.

The comments were last night being viewed as a sign of Moscow's bitterness towards Britain over the Litvinenko affair and the UK Government's refusal to extradite tycoon Boris Berezovsky to Moscow.

The attack came in Russian nationalist newspaper Tvoi Den. Mr Pavlovsky said: "David Miliband's hatred for Russia was inherited from his grandfather."

The newspaper said that in the Twenties the Foreign Secretary's grandfather, Samuel, then Shimon, Miliband, a native of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, had fought under the command of Trotsky 'eliminating' white Russians opposed to Communism.

He later came to England with his son Ralph, who became a Marxist academic, and whose sons David and Ed now serve in the Cabinet.

"David absorbed anti-Sovietism, as the saying goes, with his mother's milk," said Mr Pavlovsky.

On May 22, 2007, British officials charged Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB official, with Litvinenko's murder, announcing they would seek his extradition from Russia.

But a Russian official stated it was against the Russian constitution to perform extraditions of its citizens. Lugovoi denies any involvement.