A somewhat heterdox argument today from Mary Dejevsky in the Independent, who has taken Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Westminster, as well as the events in Egypt as the chance to reflect upon the past twenty years of Russia-Britain relations.  In the article quoted below, she argues the case that pragmatism should predominate when it comes to Britain’s approach to Russia, running counter to the current spate of comments urging Britain to retain a healthy distance in its dealings with Moscow, as long as the Kremlin continues to manifest disdain for freedom of press (an issue raised just last week with Luke Harding’s expulsion), practice legal nihilism and quash opposition activities:

It is a measure of how testy relations between our two countries have been that Mr Cameron’s Moscow trip will be the first by a British prime minister for five years. It is par for the course, too, that even the foreign minister’s visit was almost derailed by a row about a British reporter’s visa. As so often, ideology was brought into a dispute where it did not belong, while everyone jumped to the worst possible conclusion: it’s back to the bad old Soviet days.

Which points up a paradox: why was Mrs Thatcher then able to do business with Mikhail Gorbachev, while more recent British governments have found it hard to do business with Russia in anything but oil and gas? In large part, I suspect, it was the overblown expectations of post-Soviet Russia harboured by the foreign-policy romantics. When they ask wistfully why Russia could not be more like Poland or the Baltic States, their delusions are already exposed.