British Council Holds On Tight to Russian Turf
// Russia sends a protest note to the UK
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday sent a note to the British government to protest recent activities of the British Council in Russia. The Foreign Ministry accused the British of defying a recent order and said it halts the accreditation for British consulates’ current employees who work for the British Council and would not issue visas for new employees. The Russian Foreign Ministry went on to say that if the British persist in defying the order to curtail operations in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, Russia would close the British Council's Moscow headquarters to drive the organization out of the country. The UK Foreign Office has promised to come with a set of response measures, which would probably see several Russian diplomats expelled from Britain.
British Ambassador Sir Tony Brenton was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday to receive an official protest note against activities of the British Council in the country. The British earlier defied Russia’s ban issued late last year to close offices in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. The Russian Ministry said the British Council had an “illegal status” as it was accused of murky financial dealings and being quartered on the premises of the diplomatic mission, which was giving its employees diplomatic immunity. The British NGO considered the claims unfounded and said it would carry on working in Russia. On Monday British Council employees in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg went to work as usual.
The Russian Foreign Ministry in the note to the ambassador listed measures that would be taken against the British Council if it persists in defying the order. As Kommersant earlier predict, these would be mostly financial penalties. The St. Petersburg branch will have to face claims of back taxes. Earlier, the British Council branch in Nizhny Novgorod was facing 5 million rubles claims in debts. The Foreign Ministry also announced diplomatic measures against the British Council. Employees of British consulates in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg responsible for the Council would not be able to prolong their accreditation in the country. New employees on the way to work in consulates in these cities will be denied Russian visas. What is more, Russia made it clear that it is ready to banish the British Council from the country altogether by closing down not only regional branches but the Moscow headquarters as well.
The British Council’s regional branches are still trying to establish the status of the organization in the country. The Council’s branch re-opened in the city but renamed itself “the culture department of the consulate”. “We will not be happy with the change of the name, and we are going to insist that the British meet our demands,” the Foreign Ministry’s second secretary for Sverdlovsk Region Sergey Ivanov said. The Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Andrey Krivtsov told Kommersant that while turning the British Council into a consulate department “its management must remember that the organization with the diplomatic status will not be able to work for profit”, “which they are very inclined to,” the ministry’s told Kommersant.
The British Council was set up in 1934 under the auspices of the British Foreign Office as an NGO to promote the United Kingdom and its culture abroad. The British Council has offices in 100 countries organizing training, grant programs, exchanges, exhibitions and scientific workshops abroad. The first British Council in Russia was opened in Moscow in 1992 to get the status of a cultural center at the British embassy in 1994. The British Council went on to open another 16 offices in the country – in St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Volgograd, Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Veliky Novgorod, Omsk, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Rostov-on-Don, Samara and Sochi. 400,000 Russians have been involved in the Council’s projects every year.
Russia does not hide the fact that the British Council row is reflecting a recent chill in the bilateral relations. The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier described the British Council’s decision to resume operations in defiance of the ban as “provocation aimed at inflaming tensions in Russian-British relations”. “We expect our British counterparts to stop ignoring obvious facts and refrain from a line of further confrontation that is fraught with the most negative consequences for Russian-British relations,” the ministry said in a statement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier was frank enough to link the steps against the British Council with Britain’s “discriminating demands” to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, as well as the refusal to give Russian intelligence services a partnership status.
Britain is trying to distance itself from attempts to link the British Council row with big politics. UK Ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton said on Monday: “There have been clear statements by the Russian foreign ministry in recent months linking the events around the British Council with the Litvinenko case. Our view is that the British Council is a cultural organisation and should not be involved in political disputes.” The UK Foreign Office, however, made it clear yesterday that repressions against the British Council would inevitably cause a reaction from Britain. “We are waiting for an official confirmation of what Russia is saying, and we will give an official statement some time later,” a spokesperson from the UK Foreign Office said on Monday. Britain may react by refusing Russian diplomats visas or expelling some of them from the UK. It did so in a previous cold spell in Russian-British relations following the death of Alexander as the UK stopped issuing visas for Russian officials and expelled several diplomats from the country.
“In these conditions Britain probably needs a bigger row,” Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, told Kommersant. “They need to have more and more instances to be able to accuse Russia of some barbaric or illegal actions.” The Russian Foreign Ministry’s Andrey Krivtsov in an interview with Kommersant called on Britain “not to think about ways to retaliate but to sensibly review the bilateral relations”. “Once the relations are fixed, the issue with the Council will be resolved as well,” he said.
Yulia Taratuta, Moscow, and Sergey Antonov, Yekaterinburg
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 15, 2008
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