There is no published strategic overview of UK policy towards Russia. As noted, the UK government’s 2021 Integrated Review characterizes Russia as ‘the most acute direct threat to the UK’. It goes on to state that until relations improve, the UK will ‘deter and defend’ against threats from Russia, but that hardly constitutes a strategy. The cross-Whitehall Russia Strategy, finalized in 2017, remains classified, though there have been fragmentary public references to it. Responding to the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) Russia report in 2020, the government said that the Russia Strategy took a 30-year perspective, ‘designed in the long-term to move from a relationship of confrontation and challenge, which currently threatens our collective security and values, to a relationship where Russia chooses to work alongside the international community.’
Whether that ambitious objective is an aspiration or an operating assumption was left unsaid. If it is an aspiration, it prompts many questions. How likely is such an outcome? How, and to what extent, can a post-Brexit UK make it happen? What are the UK’s Russia-related interests? How are they prioritized? If, however, the government’s response describes an operating assumption – that this is the direction of travel, and that relations with Russia are likely to move slowly towards cooperation – it is dangerously optimistic, even naïve.
Instead of aspiration or optimism, a coherent strategy should be based on clear assessments of:
- The likely trajectory of UK–Russia relations;
- The UK’s Russia-relevant interests, prioritized rigorously;
- Whether these interests are compatible with Russia’s; and
- The instruments available to the UK to defend and promote these interests.
The likely trajectory of UK–Russia relations
Without an assessment of the likely direction of bilateral relations, any discussion of UK policy towards Russia is detached from reality. Judging by Russia’s latest National Security Strategy, the Kremlin takes a bleak view of the outlook for relations with the West. In this version, the leading Western powers remain determined to marginalize and weaken Russia: interfering in its internal affairs, subjecting it to economic and other pressures, and challenging its vital interests. In response, Russia must continue to strengthen its capabilities – securing domestic stability, augmenting its military power, and modernizing its economy – and its ties with non-Western countries. In the words of an experienced Russia-watcher, ‘There’s no reason to anticipate any early change in Moscow’s combative and truculent approach to relations with the West. Instead, Russia is doubling down.’
Accordingly, UK decision-makers should plan on the assumption that bilateral relations will remain largely adversarial for the foreseeable future – certainly under the current Russian leadership and, quite possibly, its successor(s). This judgment is consistent with a relationship whose foundations are fragile and with the sides’ discordant world views. It also reflects the perception of Russian policymakers that the UK is a hostile but lesser power, which Brexit is weakening further. The UK should certainly pursue dialogue with Russia where possible and if doing so serves its interests, but it ought to assume that the principal motivation for engagement will be to manage differences.
The UK’s Russia-relevant interests
The UK’s Russia-relevant interests can be grouped under five subheadings:
The protection of UK territory, citizens and institutions
The likelihood of a Russian military attack on the UK is very low, although it is likelier than it was a decade ago that the UK could, in an emergency, be drawn into armed conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe. More immediate problems are the Russian state organs and associated entities that threaten certain UK citizens (and Russian citizens resident in the UK); and the integrity of the UK’s democratic, law-based institutions. The main dangers are assassinations, espionage, cyber-enabled attacks on critical national infrastructure, exposure to corruption and disruptive information warfare.
Security in the Euro-Atlantic space
Being the part of the world in which the bilateral relationship largely plays out, the Euro-Atlantic space will remain the most important region for the UK’s Russia policy. The UK should champion the core principles of the 1990 Charter of Paris – democratic choice and fundamental freedoms; human rights; and sovereignty – as the building blocks of European security. These precepts are as valid today as then.
Wider international issues
As regards Russia, these include: security outside the Euro-Atlantic space, particularly the Middle East, North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean; proliferation, especially of weapons of mass destruction; counterterrorism and counter-piracy; and climate change. As permanent members of the UNSC, the UK and Russia will be involved in discussion of various global security and governance issues. But they are unlikely to come into conflict in sub-Saharan Africa, East and Southeast Asia, Latin America or Australasia unless Russian actions there affect the interests of a UK ally or partner.
Economic relations
Despite the hopes of UK leaders since the early 1920s, trade with, and investment in, Russia are likely to remain of limited importance to the UK. Certain UK exporters will continue to benefit from a large consumer market, particularly in Russia’s urban centres, but large new UK direct investments (similar to those made by BP and Shell) will be exceptional, if they materialize at all. Russia will remain a source of business for niche sectors in the UK, including high-end residential property, legal services and wealth management. A pressing national security issue for the UK is the threat posed by illicit financial flows from Russia (and elsewhere).
People-to-people connections
Allowing for security considerations (which will, for example, ensure that Russian citizens continue to require UK entry visas), the UK has an interest in promoting educational, scientific, sporting and tourism links with Russia. These aid mutual understanding, and underline that the UK’s problems are with Russia’s leaders and some of their policies, not with the Russian people; such links also create commercial opportunities.
Are UK interests compatible with those of Russia?
How should policymakers defend and promote these interests, given the state of the UK–Russia relationship? Answering that question requires a discussion as to whether UK interests converge with, diverge from, or clash with Russia’s.
As regards the defence of the UK and Euro-Atlantic security, UK interests will almost certainly be in conflict with Russia’s for the foreseeable future. In these areas, the chances of a cooperative bilateral relationship will remain exceptionally low.
The Russian state’s record of targeted murderous attacks on UK citizens marks it as a continuing threat, particularly when the Russian authorities have responded to overwhelming evidence of their involvement with brazen denials and obfuscation. Russian espionage, cyber-enabled attacks, information warfare and use of corruption to infiltrate and undermine parts of the British establishment do not pose the same physical threat to individuals, but they do endanger the UK’s democratic institutions. As the ISC’s Russia report stated, any threat to the UK’s democracy ‘must be treated as a serious national security threat by those tasked with defending us’.
Similarly, the UK and Russia understand the bases of European security in very different ways. Contrary to the core principles of the Charter of Paris, Russia seeks special privileges for itself: a veto over continental security initiatives and a sphere of influence around its borders. At the end of 2021 Russia presented the US with a draft bilateral treaty between the US and Russia and a draft agreement between NATO and Russia, both designed to limit the security options of Russia’s neighbours. Russia is demanding an undertaking from the US not to allow former Soviet states to accede to NATO, and not to develop bilateral military co-operation with such states. It also wants allied forces deployed on the territory of other NATO nations since May 1997 to be withdrawn, and an undertaking from NATO members not to conduct any military activity in Eastern Europe (including Ukraine), the South Caucasus or Central Asia. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko warned that if NATO did not take Russia’s proposals seriously, it would have to deal with a ‘military technical alternative’. It is difficult to see how such basic differences between Russia and the UK (and other Western countries) over European security can be bridged.
The gulf between the UK and Russia will get even wider in the next ten years if Russia’s political system becomes still more authoritarian, as is probable. Cooperation over certain high-profile regional conflicts and counterterrorism also seems unlikely, given the two sides’ divergent stances.
On wider global issues, the picture is mixed. The UK may want to discuss strengthening the rules-based international order, yet it should recognize that its understanding of this term differs radically from Russia’s. The Integrated Review speaks of ‘an international order in which open societies and economies continue to flourish’, promising that the UK intends to ‘increase [its] efforts to protect open societies and democratic values where they are being undermined; and to seek good governance and create shared rules in frontiers such as cyberspace and space’. That is so different from the Russian leadership’s conception, which prioritizes authoritarian state order, as to exclude or stymie cooperation, particularly over human rights and fundamental freedoms. Indeed, the gulf between the UK and Russia on these issues will get even wider in the next ten years if Russia’s political system becomes still more authoritarian, as is probable. Cooperation over certain high-profile regional conflicts (e.g. Syria) and counterterrorism also seems unlikely, given the two sides’ divergent stances.
Elsewhere, limited cooperation with Russia is conceivable. Despite bilateral tensions and friction in broader relations between Russia and the West, the UK and Russia worked together on counterproliferation, particularly as regards the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which sought to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. UK and Russian naval forces also cooperated in countering piracy in the Gulf of Aden. In early 2022 efforts to revive the JCPOA were still making little progress, and piracy in the Gulf of Aden was much less of a problem than previously; but at some point the UK and Russia will probably find themselves on the same side in tackling conflicts on the UNSC agenda, particularly if neither has significant interests at stake. Nonetheless, if the possibilities for cooperation are greater outside Europe than in it, they are still modest. Climate change is often mooted as an area for such cooperation, yet Russia’s profile as a major hydrocarbons producer and the relative lack of importance that it attaches to climate policy may make it hard for it to find common ground with Western countries.
Commercial interaction is a shared interest, although UK governments take the view that, ultimately, this is a matter for private companies. Tighter supervision of the UK’s financial and related industries would, however, entail a cost that the UK should pay in the interests of national security. Russia might encourage the UK to engage with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as a trade interlocutor (the EAEU includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, supposedly as an equivalent to the EU). The UK should avoid any discussion that could be interpreted as endorsing Russia’s claims to a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space, or that cuts across the interests of the EAEU’s other members. There is, however, low-key working-level technical cooperation between the EU and the EAEU that the UK might replicate.
In most cases, therefore, the UK should not expect to promote its Russia-relevant interests through cooperation with Russia. Much of the bilateral relationship will remain adversarial, particularly when it comes to protecting UK citizens and domestic institutions, and defending the UK’s security interests in Europe. The main tasks in these areas will be to deter hostile Russian action, build greater domestic resilience and, in Europe, manage differences. In this regard, it will be essential for the UK to continue talking to Russia by means of official and unofficial channels, both bilaterally and in conjunction with partners. But – to the extent that this is possible and has impact – the main objective should be to improve mutual understanding, thus clarifying what it is that divides the sides, and how tensions might be managed and alleviated – even if the underlying causes remain unresolved, as is probable.
The policy instruments available to the UK
The policy tools at the UK’s disposal fall into three categories: state power; soft power (often independent or semi-independent of the state); and partnerships with third countries. In each case, the UK has substantial assets.
State power
Arguably the most important tool of state power, and that on which other instruments are built, is economic. As noted (and as the Integrated Review emphasizes), the UK has one of the world’s largest economies, modern infrastructure and several internationally successful sectors. Yet it also faces long-standing weaknesses: marked income and regional inequalities; investment and productivity levels below those of its peers; and large current-account deficits that reflect enduring competitiveness problems. Realizing the Integrated Review’s breezy narrative of a dynamic, open, innovative, high-tech, competitive and green UK economy will necessitate overcoming structural challenges that have confounded governments of all parties for decades. Furthermore, most analysts expect that Brexit will leave the UK worse off economically than if it had remained in the EU. By international standards, the UK spends heavily on key hard power assets – its diplomatic, intelligence and defence establishments. The UK’s post-Brexit economic performance will determine whether such investment can be sustained.
The UK has skilled diplomats to understand and interpret Russian intentions, capabilities and activities, and to mount lobbying and public diplomacy campaigns (as in the aftermath of the 2018 Salisbury attack, for example). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO, which in 2020 became the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – FCDO) has been rebuilding expertise on Russia and its neighbours that was lost after the Cold War, and especially after the 9/11 attacks in the US, when resources were shifted elsewhere. With one exception, each year since 2013/14 around 40 FCO/FCDO staff have received full-time language training in Russian. In 2015, the FCO created a group of staff with careers anchored in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the so-called ‘EECADRE’, though it is unclear how large this is or how effectively it is being used.
The UK has much-respected intelligence services, with capabilities enhanced by their unique relationship with US counterparts. Like the FCDO, however, they have had priorities other than Russia for most of the last 30 years, a point underlined in the ISC’s Russia report. The committee described the extent to which intelligence resources have focused on terrorism from 2001/02 and concluded that ‘until recently, the Government had badly underestimated the Russian threat and the response it required’. The report also implied that, given other requirements, the agencies would have to use existing resources more efficiently, rather than acquiring more.
In 2020, the UK had the fifth largest defence budget in the world, giving it significant full-spectrum deterrent and fighting forces. Some of its plans respond directly to capabilities that Russia has or is developing.
The diplomats and agencies (with other departments) are capable of devising sanctions and other measures to respond to unacceptable Russian actions. While it remained a member of the EU, the UK made a disproportionate contribution to the design of EU sanctions regimes, and the targeting of individuals and entities, as the EU has acknowledged.
Lastly in relation to the sphere of state power, in 2020 the UK had the fifth largest defence budget in the world, giving it significant full-spectrum deterrent and fighting forces. Some of the plans laid out in the Ministry of Defence’s 2021 Defence Command Paper, such as a surveillance capability to safeguard undersea cables, respond directly to capabilities that Russia has or is developing. Apart from its land, sea and air forces, the UK is strengthening its offensive and defensive cyber assets through the National Cyber Force, established in 2020 as a partnership between the Ministry of Defence and the intelligence agencies – important capabilities to invest in, given the threats posed by the Russian state, and by Russian state-connected hackers and cybercriminals. In addition, the UK is raising the self-imposed cap on the number of nuclear warheads in its stockpile, mainly in response to Russia’s investments in new weapons systems and missile defence.
Even so, the UK can only deter and if necessary defend against Russia as part of a coalition, in particular NATO. And while the UK will remain a major maritime and air power by European standards, there are concerns that its army lacks the numbers, armour, firepower and lift to offer a credible defence against heavily armed, highly capable Russian conventional forces in a crisis in Eastern Europe. The Ministry of Defence plans to reduce the size of the army (from 76,000 to 72,500) and the number of tanks (from 227 to 148, though those 148 will be modernized). But this smaller force will seemingly take on more tasks in more places, working alongside allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, maintaining ‘permanent and persistent global engagement’, increasing the UK’s presence in Kenya and deploying more units in Oman. Similarly, the navy will have more ships east of Suez. The UK wants to be, and be seen to be, a military power with global reach, yet risks overextending itself. If there is an upside to the debacle in Afghanistan, it is the opportunity for the UK and other NATO countries to refocus on the threat posed by Russia to the security of the Euro-Atlantic area.
Soft power
As the Integrated Review notes, the UK has valuable soft power assets. These include the high quality of its legal system and public institutions, and low levels of corruption. In 2021 the UK came 16th among 139 countries and jurisdictions in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, and 11th among 180 countries and territories in Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perception Index. The 2019 Portland soft power index ranked the UK second out of 30 major economies, highlighting the attractiveness of its creative, new media, educational and research sectors. Such capabilities assist attempts by the UK (with allies and partners) to press Russia to honour its international obligations as regards democracy and fundamental freedoms. They also support the UK economy, attracting Russian businesses, researchers and students to the UK.
Judging by the spread of authoritarian models of governance in recent years, however, the pull of the UK’s soft power should be kept in perspective. Furthermore, the Kremlin has disrupted some of the UK’s most effective soft power instruments, presumably fearing their potential impact. The BBC’s Russian-language service was available on medium wave and FM in Russia until 2007, when its Russian partners were forced by the Kremlin to remove it. By 2011 it had become an entirely online service. The Kremlin may now try to complicate the work of BBC News Russian (formerly known as the BBC Russian Service) still further by classing it a ‘foreign agent’, as it did the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The British Council, which once organized cultural exchanges and English-language library services in 15 Russian cities, had to close all its offices except that in Moscow in 2007; the Russian authorities closed the Moscow office in 2018 following the Skripal affair. Surprisingly, Russia is not among the top 20 sources of foreign students in UK higher education, despite the popularity of UK boarding schools among members of Russia’s elite. More positively, prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic more than 200,000 Russians visited the UK each year, offering opportunities for people-to-people contacts and the chance to leave Russians with a positive impression of the UK.
Partnerships with third countries
Finally, the UK needs alliances and partnerships. Because Moscow sees the UK post-Brexit as a second-tier and declining power, it may be more tempted to act against UK interests (as it did in the 2018 Salisbury attack). With allies, the UK is much better placed to deter hostile Russian action and respond to it if it happens. The government frequently touts the UK’s post-Brexit sovereign choices; in reality, working closely with like-minded states will remain the starting point for its Russia policy.
As the Integrated Review notes, the UK is an extensively networked power. In terms of hard and soft power, it has much to contribute to its alliances and partnerships, and those international organizations and groups of which it is a member. In principle, then, it can draw on a portfolio of multilateral and bilateral ‘equalizers’ when dealing with Russia.
Among multilateral bodies, the EU (still) and NATO stand out: ‘the collective synthesis of defence and security capabilities in their widest, most modern sense.’ Until Brexit, EU membership was paramount for the UK, conferring the automatic cover and power of the world’s largest economic bloc when relations with Russia soured. In 2014, the impact of sanctions on Russia was much greater because they were imposed by 28 member states. Even in 2018, though the UK was halfway out of the door, it was able to persuade its EU partners to show solidarity after the Salisbury attack, resulting in coordinated expulsions of Russian intelligence officers. In addition, the UK made a vital contribution to EU foreign and security policy as Western Europe’s pre-eminent provider of military, diplomatic and intelligence assets.
Despite Brexit, the EU is still an essential security partner for the UK, not least in Eastern Europe. Through its association agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, the EU seeks to stabilize the region and help defend these countries against Russian pressure and aggression. The UK’s decision not to include foreign and security policy cooperation in the post-Brexit EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) means, however, that institutional ties between the UK and other European countries have weakened. The Integrated Review says that the UK ‘will work with the EU where our interests coincide’. But the UK now has no seat at the EU table. It will have to work harder to influence the EU27, and will have to rely on sympathetic member states to argue its case inside the EU.
NATO, which provides the only substantive military deterrent to Russia in the Euro-Atlantic space, is the other vital multilateral body in relation to the UK’s Russia policy. The Integrated Review states that ‘the UK will remain the leading European Ally in NATO, working with allies to deter nuclear, conventional and hybrid threats to our security, particularly from Russia’. Yet even NATO can only be partly insulated from the reverberations of Brexit: most NATO members, notably France and Germany, are also members of the EU and have been bruised by the UK’s acrimonious departure from the Union.
The UK should increase its political investment in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as well as in NATO. Though the OSCE is severely constrained by the need to achieve consensus on almost every decision, enabling Russia to block actions it finds inconvenient, it remains the European security organization with the most comprehensive membership – 57 countries, including the US and Russia. Its commitments are not legally binding, but Russia has signed up to them. Two of the most important are the Helsinki Final Act (Helsinki Accords) of 1975, and the Document of the Moscow Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE of 1991. In the first, the Soviet Union (and Russia, by succession) accepted the right of participating states ‘to be or not to be a party to treaties of alliance’, thereby acknowledging that one state could not veto another’s choice to join organizations like the EU or NATO. In the second, the participating states ‘categorically and irrevocably’ declared that human rights commitments did not ‘belong exclusively to the internal affairs’ of individual states, thus giving states the right to hold each other accountable for their implementation of such commitments. UK officials have been active in using the mechanisms of the OSCE to raise concerns about human rights in Russia, but UK ministers tend to pay attention to the OSCE only during its annual Ministerial Council meetings; they should do more to hold Russia to its OSCE commitments.
The Integrated Review is clear that the UK’s most important bilateral partners will continue to be the US, followed by France and Germany, sometimes acting in arrangements such as NATO, the trans-Atlantic ‘Quad’ and the G7. With each of these countries, there is a broad identity of interests as regards Russia, although their policy approaches can differ significantly. Because the Biden administration is less erratic than its predecessor, it should be easier for Washington and London to find common approaches to Russia. US interests in relation to Russia are, however, narrower than those of its European allies: its economic relationship with Russia is limited, and it therefore looks at sanctions almost exclusively in terms of the impact on Russia, whereas Germany, in particular, has to consider how they affect its own economy. Equally, most of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal targets the US and looms larger for American administrations than for their European counterparts. Moreover, the experience of the Trump presidency highlights the risks now inherent in reliance on the US. Like other US allies, the UK has an incentive to hedge against the possibility that Trump is re-elected in 2024 – or that someone else espousing his brand of national populism is. And regardless of the political persuasion of the next US president, the reorientation of US foreign policy away from Europe and towards Asia will almost certainly continue.
Uncertainty about the future direction of US policy argues for a determined effort by the UK to rebuild relations with the EU, and in particular with France and Germany. This would give the European pillar of the trans-Atlantic community renewed strength and make the UK more relevant in the US – thus strengthening the partnerships that the UK needs for an effective Russia strategy. In the past, the UK would have tried to broker a common EU stance (as it did, for example, to ensure that the EU imposed sanctions on Moscow in 2014), while remaining cognizant of the US standpoint. Now it must use other formats, such as the Quad, to find policies that its main European partners will advocate when they meet the rest of the EU; and it must do this without becoming separated from the US position.