In March 2021 the UK government published Global Britain in a competitive age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, which describes Russia as ‘the most acute direct threat to [the UK’s] security’ in the 2020s. This represents a dramatic shift in the government’s perspective since the publication of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), which barely mentioned Russia except to say that the UK was working with it and other states and groupings of countries to reduce oil and gas demand, and was building up political and security dialogue with Russia alongside China, Brazil and Indonesia. Even now, however, there are doubts about whether the UK government is sufficiently clear-eyed about the threat that Russia poses to vital UK interests and whether it appreciates just how limited the prospects for meaningful cooperation with Russia are. Moreover, the UK’s departure from the EU will leave it more isolated in dealing with Russia, and will reduce its influence in shaping the Russia policies of its European partners.
This paper is structured as follows. The first half analyses the troubled state of the UK–Russia relationship. It starts by reviewing events since early 2000, shortly after Vladimir Putin had become acting president of Russia upon the resignation of Boris Yeltsin. It goes on to examine Russian views of the UK and of the impact of Brexit on the UK’s international standing. It then draws several lessons from the recent turbulent history of the bilateral relationship and underlines the scale of the challenge that faces UK policymakers. The second half of the paper sets out recommendations for how the UK should fashion an effective post-Brexit Russia policy for the remainder of the current decade. It identifies the UK’s core Russia-relevant interests, considers the extent to which these interests are compatible with those of Russia, discusses the main policy instruments available to the UK and recommends some operational priorities. The paper concludes with a series of propositions that should guide the thinking of UK decision-makers.
