British Officials Urge Resumption of Military Contacts with Russia

British officials and diplomats fear an unintended maritime escalation with Russia and are pressuring senior military leaders to restore direct communication with their Russian counterparts, The Times reported on Tuesday.

According to the newspaper, former British chief of the defense staff Tony Radakin and his successor, Richard Knighton, have repeatedly sought contact with Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov but have been unable to speak with him for four years. Their last reported conversation took place in 2022. There has likewise been no direct contact between the two countries’ defense ministers since October of that year.

Moscow has repeatedly said it does not rule out diplomacy with Western countries despite regarding many of them, including the UK, as “unfriendly.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote in a keynote article in June that Russia is “not opposed to contacts with any party.”

The Times cited sources as saying that “senior officials and diplomats are nervous about the lack of communication” and are concerned that “a misunderstanding in the high seas could be the trigger for a wider conflict with Russia.”

The newspaper cited a recent incident in which Russian frigate the Admiral Grigorovich fired warning shots near a British yacht in the English Channel. Both Moscow and London said the shots were intended to prevent a possible collision.

A military hotline linking the UK armed forces with the Russian Defense Ministry’s situation center remains operational. Diplomatic communication is also possible through the two countries’ embassies.

Relations between London and Moscow had deteriorated significantly long before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Russia has accused Britain of playing a major role in worsening tensions, including by supporting the 2014 Western-backed change of government in Kiev.

In 2021, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender sailed through waters off Crimea that Russia considers its territorial sea, with London claiming it was exercising the right of innocent passage through Ukrainian waters.

Since the escalation in 2022, the UK has become one of Kiev’s leading military backers and has supplied Kiev with advanced weapons, including Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Moscow has alleged that such systems require Western expertise to program and launch.

Then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson discouraged Ukraine from going through with a peace agreement negotiated with Moscow during talks in Istanbul in the early weeks of the conflict.

Alongside France, the UK co-leads the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, a group of countries supporting Kiev’s terms for resolving the conflict and advocating for deployment of NATO forces in Ukraine in the future.

In an article written for Politico Europe that the outlet ultimately declined to publish, Lavrov accused Britain and other Western European governments of pursuing expansionist policies while portraying Russia as the aggressor. He argued that such an atmosphere was “scarcely the climate for substantive dialogue.”