The European Council on Foreign Relations

UK Russia reset reluctance

Date: 12th September 2011  |  Author: Ben Judah,

Categories: Wider Europe,
Tags: litvinenko, medvedev, moscow, putin, david cameron

A good rule in restaurants is always to have a good look over your shoulder before taking too freely. I recently had lunch with a group of British diplomats, and one chided me for speaking a bit too loudly, while the Russians sat at the next table.

He had a point. Our Russian neighbours – a delegation high on moustaches and low on women – had fallen silent, as they swilled glasses of wine and tried to listen in on our conversation. Perhaps they were looking for clues about the prickly relations between Moscow and London, ahead of a visit by the British prime minister, David Cameron.

Other European countries are rushing to embrace the Russian business opportunities growing in the reset and recession induced political fair weather. Yet Britain has reset reluctance. While Merkel and Sarkozy regularly ink documents and grin for the cameras with Russia’s top leadership – not so the United Kingdom. There has been no top level contact with Putin since 2007 and no Prime Ministerial visit in half a decade. This is what lends David Cameron’s visit today its significance.

“We can’t compromise on Litvinenko,” said one official, mentioning the case of a Russian dissident who was poisoned with radioactive material in London in 2006. “And they know that.”

“It is not necessary to have a reset with Britain,” said one top Kremlin aide to the Russian press.

But London was not the only country to have had severe spats with Moscow during what I like to call the “short Cold War,” between the Orange Revolution and the Georgian War. Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland all had far nastier relationships and all are now – in the words of one diplomat – “boring.” What has marked the UK and Russia out is the reluctance to patch up ties politically. They are mutually unconcerned about the frost.

When I asked why this Anglo-Russian reset reluctance, one Russian minister said, “Paradoxically, despite the UK-Russia business relationship has never suffered due to politics and lots of UK businesses are in Russia. More and more Russians are going to Britain for the education and the financial services.” In fact the volume of trade actually quadrupled over five years and reached $22.5 billion in 2008.

What then if not better business does Russia want from Britain?

“We want....,” the minister pauses, “a change of attitude. More respect.”

This however hits at the nub of the problem. Britain and Russia, at either ends of the continent, have rather a similar opinion about each other place in the world. The other is seen as a bellicose fallen empire with a Cold War grudge that does not understand the 21st century is all about economics, infuriatingly unable to accept its second-tier status and slow-motion fadeout into geopolitical nothingness.

Whilst Germany, Poland and to a certain extent France see a geopolitical future for ties and know they will matter to each other tomorrow – Britain and Russia neither depend on each other for much today nor can really see much use for the other in their ambitions. To become friends you have to imagine a common future. Britain and Russia do not believe the other will be a great power in fifteen years time. Maybe this is what lends an ideological shimmer to UK-Russia relations.

Perhaps there is something deeper still. As one sharp witted Kremlin-linked analyst joked – “ Only two countries on this continent were founded by the raping, pillaging, drinking Viking barbarians. Britain and Russia...! Maybe that is why we have historically been the pole or tyranny and the pole of liberty in Europe.”

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