Journalists got their hands on documents that talk about the relations between London and Moscow in the first years of Putin’s presidency.

Initially, after Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair sought to introduce him into the narrow circle of the world’s most influential politicians. At the same time, Putin himself made false promises. The Financial Times writes about it.

Documents were handed over to Britain’s National Archives this week that confirm Blair’s attempts to strike up a friendly relationship with the Kremlin’s new master early in his presidency.

The publication refers to a document from February 2001, which tells about a meeting between Blair and then US Vice President Dick Cheney. The British Prime Minister described Putin to the interlocutor as a “Russian patriot” with “the mentality of Charles de Gaulle.”

“He [Блэр] understood that Putin has a low approval rating in the US. But he believed it would be better to give Putin a seat at the head table and encourage Putin to adopt Western views as well as the Western economic model,” the document said.

Blair believed that “the best response from Putin” can be obtained in the event that “he is treated with some respect.” The British Prime Minister expected that in this case Russia would not try to separate the European members of NATO from the USA.

At the same time, reports of the British government for 2001 show that against the background of “Putin’s warm rhetoric about close ties” between Great Britain and the Russian Federation, Russian espionage activity on “Foggy Albion” resumed.

Documents from that period also record Putin’s numerous false promises to Tony Blair – that Moscow would end aid to Iran’s nuclear program and side with the West over Saddam’s Iraq.

Putin also assured Blair that he does not want to become known as an “anti-NATO” person and has no intention of “trying to slow down the process of NATO expansion.”

British reports showed that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was also sympathetic to the new Russian president. He once even suggested that NATO leaders “instruct Putin to speak on their behalf” at Indo-Pak talks in Kazakhstan in 2002. The US Secretary of State at the time, Condoleezza Rice, called the Italian Prime Minister’s proposal a “terrible idea.”

Relations between Britain and Russia

Tony Blair is considered one of the most successful British prime ministers. He headed the country’s government for almost a record 10 years – from 1997 to 2007.

A noticeable deterioration of relations between London and Moscow began in the second half of the 2000s, which was facilitated in particular by the murder of ex-FSB spy Oleksandr Litvinenko.

In 2014, Britain imposed sanctions against the Russian Federation for annexing Crimea and invading Donbas. And after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine in 2022, Great Britain became one of the largest suppliers of weapons and other aid to the Armed Forces and, at the same time, one of the main supporters of the introduction of sanctions against the Russian Federation.