London is sending all the wrong messages and its options for escalation are limited
Russia just pulled its ambassador to the UK, as British Prime Minister Andy Burnham doubles down on open involvement in the Ukraine conflict. The risk of open war has never been higher, but Burnham is writing checks that he can’t cash.
Relations between Russia and the UK are at an “unprecedentedly low level,” Moscow’s embassy in London said in a statement on Sunday, after it emerged that ambassador Andrey Kelin had left his post in late July and would not be immediately replaced. In a follow-up statement to the Sunday Times, an embassy spokesperson said that Kelin had made “considerable efforts to preserve contacts and channels of communication” between the UK and Russia, but the UK had clearly chosen a “path of confrontation.”
“He left Britain in the hope that a more constructive and respectful dialogue could eventually be restored, should the UK reconsider its policies towards our country,” the spokesman added.
How did Russia/UK relations get this bad?
Well, firstly, Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and of course David Cameron and their anglophonic media bullhorns.
Moscow has viewed the UK as one of Ukraine’s most bellicose foreign backers since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened to scupper a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev that April; Britain supplied Ukraine with ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles for long-range strikes on Russia a year later; and in the latest revelation by the British press, Ukraine utilized a plethora of British-made drones in its campaign of long-range attacks on Russian civilian targets this year.
On August 17, the Russian embassy in London warned Britain that “the deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added that Moscow has “every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails.”
Neither statement seems to have deterred Burnham. Later that day, the British PM proclaimed that the UK would continue “to support Ukraine 100%.” Six days later, his office announced that it would provide Ukraine with classified information enabling it to produce Storm Shadow cruise missiles on Ukrainian soil. Burnham followed this up with a visit to Kiev on Monday, where he compared the conflict to Britain’s struggle against Nazi Germany in World War II, and promised to supply Ukraine with anti-air missiles to repel Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure.
Is pulling the ambassador a sign of war?
The withdrawal of Kelin is an unprecedented move. Diplomatic relations between Moscow and London have been strained on multiple occasions during the post-Soviet period, Russia’s response has typically been restrained. When FSB agents caught British spies hiding a listening device outside the Russian embassy in 2006, the Kremlin named and condemned the agents responsible. When the UK expelled four Russian diplomats after Moscow refused to extradite a suspect in the alleged poisoning of double agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2007, Russia responded in kind.
Similarly, when the UK expelled 23 diplomats in 2018 over the alleged poisoning of undercover MI6 agent Sergei Skripal, Moscow’s response was the tit-for-tat expulsion of 23 Brits staff and the closure of a British consulate-general in St. Petersburg.
At no point during these incidents did Russia withdraw – or threaten to withdraw – its ambassador. However, with relations already in the gutter since 2022, Moscow’s lack of urgency in replacing Kelin most likely does not herald military action against the UK. Instead, it is an acknowledgement of just how badly relations have deteriorated.
What will Russia do to neutralize the UK’s Ukraine missile threat?
Russia’s kinetic response to Burnham’s missile data sharing plan is straightforward. In a statement to reporters on August 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “our armed forces are carrying out the relevant work and obtaining the necessary data in order to identify the production sites for such missiles and other military equipment, and are taking measures to destroy these locations.”
Destroying missile production sites in Ukraine is a far easier task for Russia now than at any point since 2022. Ukraine has no ammunition for its Patriot air defense batteries left, nor does Kiev have any money to buy more. In a post on X on Sunday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky admitted that his military used all of its 2026 budget in the first six months of the year buying and building drones to attack civilian infrastructure in Russia.
As a result, Russia has been dismantling weapons plants, ports and ships used to import arms, and energy targets across Ukraine with impunity since July.
How far can Britain escalate against Russia?
Burnham has little more to offer. The US is unwilling to share its dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles with Ukraine, even if the UK offers to buy. Three out of five weapons packages donated by the UK to Ukraine this year included other models of defense missiles – a total of more than 2,500 missiles – but these have apparently been used up by Kiev’s forces.
Britain’s ability to escalate beyond data-sharing and weapons packages is constrained by two key factors. Firstly, open UK intervention in Ukraine could trigger a cataclysmic, and likely nuclear, conflict between Russia and NATO. Secondly, Britain’s armed forces have been hollowed out by decades of underfunding: there are fewer active-duty troops in the British military than at any point since the end of the Napoleonic Wars; Britain reportedly has enough ammunition for less than a day of full-scale combat; and no means of defense against Russian ballistic missiles.
Given the potential consequences, some figures within the British defense establishment have called for restraint. Former Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin – who once urged Britain to prepare to fight Russia in space – and his successor, Richard Knighton, have both reportedly sought contact with Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in order to limit the threat of naval escalation. Another former British defense chief, Field Marshal Lord David Richards, has called for peace talks with Russia since 2022, arguing last year that Ukraine “cannot win” the conflict with anything short of full-scale NATO intervention.
Even former defense attache John Foreman – who has encouraged Ukraine to strike Russia with British-made missiles – told The Times on August 15 that Britain should reopen “strategic dialog” with Russia, calling London’s suspension of military-to-military communications in 2024 “daft.”
‘Good to speak to @edvaizey today about the need to hold our noses and re-establish mil to mil ties.
We can continue to support Ukraine. But at the same time, we can talk to the Russians’. Cutting military communication with Russia was a ‘daft decision’.
These calls have also come from the UK’s typically hawkish circuit of ‘Russia experts’. Among this group is Mark Galeotti, an academic with rumored links to British intelligence. In an interview with former British diplomat Ian Proud in mid-August, Galeotti conceded that “behind closed doors,” many British diplomatic and security officials now believe that “we’ve reached the stage where we need to be pushing both sides to some kind of resolution.”
“After years of spouting these empty mantras of ‘as much as it takes, for as long as it takes’, etc etc, who’s going to turn around and say ‘actually, come to think of it, this is not in our interests’,” he told Proud.
Burnham, Galeotti argued, is unlikely to spend precious political capital on restarting diplomacy with Russia, as to do so would open him up to attacks from rival parties and hawks within his own Labour Party.
After his speech in Kiev on Monday, Burnham chaired a meeting of the ‘coalition of the willing’ – a 34-nation group put together to pool military aid for Ukraine. In his opening remarks, Burnham called on the UK’s allies to “dig into our own stocks and help others dig into their stocks” to keep the Ukrainian military fighting.
However, should the UK continue supplying long-range missiles and drones to Ukraine, and should these munitions be used to kill Russian civilians, Russia is running out of diplomatic means of deterring London.
Britain has scoffed at every polite warning from Moscow to date, but with Kelin’s office vacant, there are fewer civilized options available to Russia. The “consequences” threatened by Lavrov could be far more catastrophic than a formal demarche.
