| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
No-Visa Regime
// Russia Freezes Relations with Britain on Official Level
Yesterday the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the introduction of retaliatory sanctions against Great Britain. Russia is not only expelling four British diplomats but also suspending cooperation on antiterrorism with London. In addition, "until official explanations are received from London," Russian officials will not request British visas, and the Russian Foreign Ministry is now refusing to consider any visa applications submitted by British government representatives. Moscow's actions promise only to exacerbate the conflict between the two countries.
British Ambassador to Russia Anthony Brenton was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on short notice yesterday afternoon, where upon arrival he initially refused to speak to the press. Exiting the ministry fifteen minutes later, however, he took the initiative to approach the waiting journalists. According to Mr. Brenton, he spoke briefly with Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko, who handed him a note to be delivered to London. "We discussed the Litvinenko case. I said that the British authorities are taking that incident very seriously and are still expecting a satisfactory response from Russia," he said. He declined to discuss the contents of the diplomatic note.
Five minutes after Mr. Brenton's departure, however, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin arrived at the ministry, and he was more than happy to comment on the contents of the note. According to Mr. Kamynin, the note handed to the British ambassador informs the British government of the actions that Moscow is taking in response to London's introduction of sanctions against Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed for Kommersant yesterday that the list of steps mentioned by Mr. Kamynin accords with the contents of the message given to Mr. Brenton.
Mr. Kamynin painted Moscow's actions as a "mirror image" of London's "unfriendly and provocative actions." Such a description of Moscow's response is not entirely accurate, however. Like the UK, Russia has announced that it will expel four diplomats, who will be given ten days to leave Russia. But Moscow isn't stopping there. "The measures announced by the British side on July 16 make continuing Russian--British cooperation in the struggle against terrorism impossible," said Mr. Kamynin.
Moscow's response to London's promise to tighten controls on the procedure for Russian officials applying for British visas is also less than symmetric. "Until explanations are received from London, Russian officials will not request British visas, and Russia will not consider applications from British officials for Russian visas," Mr. Kamynin explained.
Moscow employed similar tactics in April, when the Kremlin recommended that senior officials not attend the Russian Economic Forum in London, but at that time the ban was merely unspoken. Now, however, the Russian Foreign Ministry has taken the unprecedented step of essentially declaring a boycott of a foreign state without the formal severing of diplomatic relations and the recalling of the ambassador. Although a Russian Foreign Ministry official assured Kommersant's correspondent yesterday that "such measures are par for the course," he could not offer an example of a single precedent.
The tone of the Russian Foreign Ministry's statement was extremely harsh: "Moscow did not seek a quarrel with London. The position taken by the new Labour government in relation to Russia is based on anything but common sense. Look at the price of the demand to change the Russian Constitution just to extradite one suspect in the Litvinenko case!" Mikhail Kamynin reasserted that Moscow had been cooperating in good faith with London on the Litvinenko case, and he blamed London for seeking to "play the Russian card within the framework of European and transatlantic politics."
The British Embassy in Moscow bluntly refused to comment on Mr. Kamynin's remarks. "Until the ambassador passes the information given to him by the Russian authorities to the British government, we are refraining from any comments," said the embassy's press service to Kommersant.
In the UK itself, however, the Russian Foreign Ministry's statement was received extremely negatively. The Foreign Office told Kommersant, "We are disappointed that the government of Russia is not cooperating in the matter of the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, and we consider the expulsion of four employees of the embassy to be a clear injustice." However, the British diplomats promised to "carefully study all the measures in order to ensure that we understand all of the details."
Both Russian and British diplomats have kept mum in conversations with Kommersant regarding how soon Moscow can expect to receive the explanations that it has demanded about the changes in the visa regime for Russian officials. It appears that reciprocal visits between Russia and the UK could be suspended for quite awhile.
One of the dangers of this scenario for London was explained yesterday by Alexander Shokhin, the president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), who said that the Russian--British crisis could lead to the departure of a significant number of Russian companies from the London Stock Exchange. "If events are going to [continue to] develop in this key, as a result it could turn out that the UK's trading floors, which Russian companies, including government companies, have traditionally been very fond of, will begin to lose position, and stock exchanges on the Continent will have the opportunity to pull Russian companies in," said Mr. Shokhin in an interview with RIA Novosti. If this turns out to be the case, he predicts that the London Economic Forum will soon lose out to Davos in terms of significance.
Given British Foreign Secretary David Miliband's comment, even as he read out his list of political retaliations against Russia, that he hopes that the conflict will not touch the booming economic cooperation between the two countries, Mr. Shokhin's words definitely contain a covert threat against the UK.
Alexander Gabuyev
All the Article in Russian as of July 20, 2007
|
|
|
