Russo-British Relations: From cold war to thaw and back to chill

Article by Jane Calvary, Investigative Journalist

People browsing the MI5 website these days may come across a relatively long job advert to recruit Russian-speaking citizens as spy.

According to the described job specifications, in the advert, successful candidates will be hired as Russian intelligence analysts at The United Kingdom’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency (MI5). They are supposed to listen to Russian language telephone calls and work with written documents. The advert also asserts that the new spies will feed directly into the team’s investigations in a bid to help safeguard what is called Britain’s national security.

Such recruitment drives by the British security and spying agencies almost over 20 years after the collapse of Berlin wall and fall of the “Iron Curtain” could be seen an important indicator. An alarming indicator that the cold war is hotter than ever.

Bilateral relations between the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom have always been traditionally tense and complex.  The long sustained antagonism between the Kremlin and Downing Street are deep rooted in historical legacies. However, accumulation of irritating events that have led to frequent tensions between London and Moscow during the past decades have attracted many international political observers’ attentions.

Almost all commentators mark year 2006 as a year that bilateral relationship between the two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council started to roll down the hill after a short period of revival since the cold war.

It all began when a former Russian FSB secret service officer, Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was poisoned in London on 1 November 2006. Shortly after Litvinenko met with two former KGB officers in a sushi bar in London, he fell ill and died three days later. The post mortem examinations attributed his death to poisoning with a rare nuclear material polonium-210.

The British Government pointed finger at Putin’s Government claiming that Litvinenko’s death was administered by two Russian agents who were protected by the Russian Government. That was received with a swift reaction from Kremlin providing the evidences that the former spy who was living in exile in London was under the protection of the British secret intelligence service MI6. Almost nine years on and the Litvinenko’s death inquiry is open. According to the latest news from inquiry, Litvinenko was an MI6 official agent and his cover name during his exile in Britain was Edwin Redwald Carter. He was formally an MI6 agent receiving a retainer of £2,000 per month until his death.  

Russian MI6 spy’s death was just the ignition of a series tensions. Later in 2007 Britain expelled 4 Russian diplomats in London in response to what it called “Moscow’s refusal to extradite the prime suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.” The move was angrily responded by Moscow, first by threatening to expel 80 British diplomats and then declaring formal expulsion of 4, three days later.

The most serious confrontation between the Russian Government and Britain took place in 2007. In December 2007 Moscow ordered the British council’s branches in St Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg to be closed. The cultural mission was accused of conducting illegal activities in breach of Vienna Convention and also violating Russian tax laws.

Britain’s call on Russia to reconsider the decision and to push the EU for a collective response both failed.

The Abkhazia war in 2008 fuelled the flames of tensions between the two veto powers, and the tiny disunion Georgian province became a new front line in the cold war. The separatists of Abkhazia proclaimed the republic of South Ossetia and Abkhazia winning the recognition from Moscow. The recognition was seen as a deliberate response from Kremlin to Georgia’s attempts to join NATO. The then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband accused Moscow of engaging in what he called “19th-century forms of diplomacy.” He also accused Russia of trying to redraw the map of a sovereign nation and re-affirmed UK’s full support for NATO membership of Georgia.

In addition, although the evidences presented to the United Nations confirmed that Georgia had committed war crimes against Abkhazia and Ossetia population, Britain along with the United States rejected a phrase called on both sides to renounce the violence.

Since the formation of the Coalition Government and David Cameron’s premiership, the transitions in Russo-British relationship gained faster pace. In the early years, the hopes that the relations based on mutual interests could be improved intensified. William Hague, the former British Foreign Secretary of the Coalition Government, first met Russian foreign minister a few months after the formation of the Con-Dem Government. They both declared that have “agreed to adopt a more active approach to bilateral contacts at the highest level” and saw “a strengthening of the British-Russian relationship.”

Although that was a big step forward towards the normalization of relations between the two countries, the Syria conflict reversed the course.

Many still remember President Putin’s comments in a joint press conference with David Cameron in 2013. Cameron tried to push the edge by insulting people’s intelligence over Syria heartily condoning Takfiri rebels’ atrocities in Syria. He was publicly slapped in the face by Putin when he said: “You will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras. Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to humanitarian values that have been preached in Europe for hundreds of years.”

During the last four years, the United Kingdom has been at the forefront of the war on Syria frequently attempting to pave the way for military intervention in Syria under UN resolution. Russia wielding veto power has frequently blocked all those moves in the Security Council.

The Syria is not the only hot topic in the relations. Ukraine is now turned into a crisis for Russia and west.

And these were not all. In addition to geopolitical and political misunderstandings, issues such as Snowden’s asylum in Russia, the complex issue of Russian oligarchs in Britain, the ongoing conflict of interests in the Middle East and Africa, UK-US special relations, economic interests and … are still strong barriers against any significant thaw of relations between the two countries. 

JC/HSN

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