There were, Boris Johnson admitted, numerous obstacles to the improvement of Anglo-Russian relations, including but not limited to the annexation of Crimea, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London, differing views on Syria, Libya, Ukraine and North Korea, and Russian cyber-activity and meddling in elections across the world.

On the upside, though, trade in crisps was up.

‘Things aren’t easy between us’: Boris Johnson meets Russian counterpart in Moscow Read more

“There are increasing exports of British Kettle crisps,” Johnson told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who looked confused but smiled politely. Was it a joke, or was it the perfect piece of good trade news for newly blue-passported Britain? It was unclear. The interpreter didn’t bother translating it, presumably for worry that he had misheard.

After an hour and a half in talks with Lavrov, the pair emerged for a press conference. It was important to engage with Russia, Johnson said, despite a whole litany of Muscovite misdeeds, which he proceeded to list. To brighten things up, Johnson mentioned the crisp exports for a second time.

Both ministers joked over the issue of trust. Lavrov said he trusted Johnson so much he’d use the Russian pronunciation of his name – Ba-REES, not BOR-is. Johnson said Lavrov was so solid he’d had no qualms about handing the Russian his coat along with everything in his pockets, “secret or otherwise”.



“As Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan used to say, trust but verify. I can’t remember what that is in Russian,” said Johnson, now enjoying himself, and completing the sentence with some incomprehensible faux-Slavic mumbling.



Expanding on the historical themes, he took a moment to remember the second world war alliance between Britain and the Soviet Union: “Winston Churchill said he wanted to strangle the Soviet Union at birth. He did not take a favourable view of the actions of Joseph Stalin, I’m afraid to say. The relations between me and Sergei Lavrov are considerably better than that.”

A veteran foreign minister who has seen it all before, Lavrov played the straight man to Boris’s buffoon. In 2008 he reportedly shouted down the phone at the then foreign secretary, David Miliband: “Who the fuck are you to lecture me?” Rather than anger, this time his look as Boris rambled on seemed to mix mild boredom with disdain.

“I can’t remember any actions of Russia that could be seen as aggressive towards the United Kingdom,” Lavrov said with the quiet calm of someone who has spent a decade in permanent denial mode, after Johnson had listed several.

Later in the day, Johnson went to speak to students at the Plekhanov University, where he made a passionately argued case that societies that embrace freedom of speech and free trade were destined to be more prosperous. He detailed London’s diversity and prosperity at length, as the Brexit elephant in the room went unmentioned.

“When I say this, I may be accused – as I often am in my own county – of excessive frankness,” he said, repeating Britain’s geopolitical disagreements with Russia, and giving a rather charitable interpretation of what he tends to be accused of.



Johnson also found time to meet civil society activists, having a conversation that Tanya Lokshina, of Human Rights Watch, said showed he “could clearly benefit from learning more and following the situation more closely”.

Others were less diplomatic. A Russian television correspondent, in her report from the press conference with Lavrov, called Johnson “an odious but in many ways also curious person”. Still, he could probably chalk that up to exactly the kind of Russian disinformation campaign about which he had come to Moscow to scold Lavrov in the first place.