Are Boris Johnson and the Tories really ‘anti-Russian’?

Downing Street has insisted that Boris Johnson is “anti-Putin” but not “anti-Russian” in a rebuttal of Kremlin allegations against the prime minister.

No. 10 hit back after President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described Johnson as “the most active participant in the race to be anti-Russian”, adding: “It will lead to a foreign policy dead end.”

The “war of words erupted” as Johnson announced a fresh wave of Russian sanctions and pledged more military aid for Ukraine during Nato talks in Brussels about the Russian invasion, said The Independent.

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Despite his tough stance, Johnson also emphasised that he was “not remotely anti-Russian” – and “joked that even his name is popular there”, the Daily Mail reported. But as commentators have noted, the Tory leader and his party have a mixed track record in their relations with Moscow.

‘Malign Russian state’

As foreign secretary, Johnson took a hard line against Moscow, expelling 23 Russian diplomats following the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in 2019.

As more than 20 other countries followed suit by expelling more than 140 Russian diplomats in a coordinated move, Johnson said that the “objective of this global collective action is for the world to signal that the doubts and fears about that Kremlin action have crystallised”, reported Reuters.

In 2018, he compared Russia hosting the football World Cup to Adolf Hitler’s 1936 Olympics, noted The Guardian. When Labour MP Ian Austin said President Putin was going to “use” the tournament in the way Hitler used the 1936 Olympics,” Johnson replied: “Yes, I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right. It is an emetic prospect of Putin glorying in this sporting event”.

Moscow said Johnson’s words were offensive to “a nation that lost millions of lives in fighting Nazism”.

Months later, he joined Washington in condemning “divisive” German plans to press ahead with the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Johnson said the plan could leave European energy consumers heavily dependent on “a malign Russian state”.

The PM’s warning appears to have been vindicated by the invasion of Ukraine. This week, he escalated the rhetoric over the Russian incursion by calling for Putin’s gold reserves to be targeted to prevent him trying to dodge sanctions.

The government said a total of 1,000 fresh sanctions have been imposed by the UK since the Ukraine war began. The UK has also provided armaments to Ukraine, including 6,000 new defensive missiles and £25m for their armed forces this week, reported The Independent.

Links with Moscow

Some critics have argued that Johnson and the Tories have been at best negligent and at worst cosy in their relationship with Russia.

In 2020, a report found that successive British governments had embraced Russian oligarchs and then looked the other way on alleged election interference. It concluded that the British government – under the Conservative Party leadership of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson – did not conduct serious assessments.

A former Downing Street adviser told Politico that “previous stop-start attempts” to deal with “dirty Russian money” in the UK economy were hindered by “this kind of Tory orthodoxy, which is also a Treasury orthodoxy, that the economy needs to be completely open”.

Questions have also been raised about Russian donations to the Conservative Party. The Guardian said “a series of people with dual UK-Russian nationality, or with significant business links with Russia, have donated heavily to the Conservatives in recent years”.

Labour has estimated that donors who had made money from Russia or Russians had given as much as £1.93m to either the Tory Party or constituency associations since Johnson became PM in 2019. The SNP puts the figure higher, at £2.3m.

The biggest single donor is the financier Lubov Chernukhin, who has donated £700,000. She is married to Vladimir Chernukhin, a former deputy finance minister under Putin.

When Johnson was asked by a Labour MP earlier this month if he would order the Conservative Party to give these donations to Ukrainian humanitarian causes, the PM refused, saying: “It’s absolutely vital that… we demonstrate that this is not about the Russian people, it is about the Putin regime,” the BBC reported.

‘Putin’s useful idiots’

Johnson's friendship with Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian-born businessman who owns the Independent and Evening Standard, has also come under the spotlight. Lebedev, the son of a Russian billionaire and former KGB officer, was awarded a peerage in 2020 after being nominated by Johnson.

The Times reported that UK security services initially assessed that granting Lebedev a peerage posed a national security risk, but that that assessment was withdrawn after Johnson intervened. The PM is said to have responded to advice to drop it by claiming: “This is anti-Russianism.” However, noted Sky News, Johnson later dismissed the claim as “simply incorrect”.

Commenting on the “anti-Russian” claim, former Downing Street communications chief Alastair Campbell tweeted that it was “the Kremlin playing the UK like a fiddle” and “trolling” the West. Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr was also sceptical, denouncing the Daily Mail, which led on the allegation, as “Putin’s useful idiots”.

However, a foreign policy analyst was more welcoming. “Three cheers for Boris Johnson,” tweeted Nile Gardiner in response to the allegation, “the PM’s handling of Ukraine crisis is far stronger than that of Joe Biden or any leader in Europe”.