Three days ago, in a Russian government building in Kensington, west London, a group of Russia’s closest British friends gathered for an event. The speaker was interesting: Neil Kent, a Cambridge professor who co-convened a prestigious intelligence seminar at the university, regularly attended by some of the biggest names in the spy world — until he resigned last year over accusations that the seminar was linked to the Kremlin.

The group holding Thursday’s event was even more interesting: the Westminster Russia Forum, which calls itself “the United Kingdom’s premier exponent of neutral and positive relations between the UK and Russia”. The forum is the successor to the Conservative Friends of Russia, which had to disband in 2012 after a number of MPs resigned from its