Diplomatic hostility towards Russia will 'erode away' within months, says former British ambassador

The UK’s former ambassador to Russia has said the diplomatic hostility between the Kremlin and the West will “erode away” within “a few months”, because both sides require a functioning relationship.

Sir Tony Brenton, speaking exclusively to The Independent, drew from his own experiences of dealing with diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia in the aftermath of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning.

Theresa May expelled 23 Russian diplomats on 14 March in response to the poisoning of former double agent Mr Skirpal and his daughter Yulia by nerve agent in Salisbury. On Thursday the EU expressed its support for Ms May and recalled its ambassador from Moscow.

But despite the heavyweight diplomatic manoeuvring, Sir Tony believes Russian-European relations will have to return to relative normality because maintaining high-level contacts is a necessity for all parties.

During his time as ambassador 15 British Royal Navy personnel from HMS Cornwall were held captive by Iran in 2007.

It was claimed they had entered Iranian waters – an accusation the UK denied.

The sailors were released 13 days later after Sir Tony negotiated with the Russians, who had significant influence over Tehran.

Sir Tony said that if British-Russian relations had been soured beyond repair, managing the release of the personnel would have been difficult.

“Things like that happen quite regularly and at various levels we will need the Russians to help us,” Sir Tony said.

“As part of our sanctions, we are not going to have any high-level contacts with the Russians for a while. This will begin to erode in a few months because you need to have high-level contacts on things.”

Then in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, the response from the West was to impose economic sanctions.

Although there was no formal method of restoring diplomatic relations, the waters were calmed when the then US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, crossed paths at a number of international conferences.

“The interesting parallel here is that the West was going to ‘isolate’ Russia after Ukraine and did so for a little bit, but this ended up eroding away,” Sir Tony said.

“These high-level freezes tend to erode quite rapidly because the world has to do its business.

“We will be slow to resume our ties, but we will in a few months’ time as we need to get back to being able to do business with the Russians.”

Although Sir Tony said he supported the actions taken by the Government, he warned that the language that had been used thus far by government ministers had been “unnecessarily virulent”.

He said in the wake of the Litvinenko poisoning there was an active effort to ensure political language was “very guarded” – an approach that has not been mirrored in 2018 by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Mr Williamson had told Russia to “shut up and go away”, while Mr Johnson compared the forthcoming World Cup in Moscow to the Olympic Games under Hitler.

Mr Johnson said it would be sickening to watch Russian President Vladimir Putin present the World Cup in the summer, in response to concerns that the event would be used as a “PR exercise to gloss over the brutal, corrupt regime”.

“Obviously we have to react robustly and firmly to deal with the Skripal outrage, but at some point we are going to have to get back to doing business with Russia,” Sir Tony said.

“We should certainly be taking action that minimises the recurrence of [a similar] attack, but we should not be burning our bridges so much that we cannot re-establish lines of communication.

“It seems to me that Gavin Williamson and Boris Johnson are dangerously close to burning those bridges.”

The current diplomatic crisis has seen a significant escalation in tension. Sir Tony described it as the “latest manifestation” of how bad relations between the two countries had become.

He warned that confrontation had reached a point “where Putin devotes a chunk of his election speech to boasting about nuclear weapons”.

“The Russians are very proud, they know in any confrontation they would lose, but their final ace in the hole is their nuclear arsenal.

“That does not mean they want to use it or are planning to use it, but we must steer the world away from them wanting to use it.”

As diplomatic relations have soured Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, said that Russia “doesn’t understand” the decisions that have been taken.

The Kremlin said the UK was forcing its allies to take “confrontational steps” over the incident and denied any involvement in the poisoning.

Russia said it would evaluate the situation and actions taken by the West before responding.

Mr Peskov said: “We don’t know what info the UK had when it discussed with EU colleagues. We don’t understand it.

“Russia has not had the opportunity to receive a diagnosis [on the Skripals]. Regarding the EU decision, we are unhappy with ‘highly likely’ formulations. Russia categorically has nothing to do with the Skripal [poisoning].”