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Russia Doubts Johnson Election Win Means Better Relations With The U.K.

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This article is more than 4 years old.

As U.K. foreign secretary, Boris Johnson was no friend of Russia. There's not much sign that will change now.

The Kremlin sees little reason to think that Boris Johnson's big win in the U.K. general election will lead to an improvement in relations between Moscow and London.

“Of course we hope every time that political forces that win elections in any country share the ideology of and aim to build good relations with our country. I don’t know how appropriate such hopes are in the case of the Conservatives,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told reporters, according to remarks cited by Reuters.

Increasingly poor U.K.-Russia relations

U.K.-Russia ties have been increasingly poor in recent years. The low point followed the poisoning in 2018, in the English city of Salisbury, of the former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia.

British Prime Minister now, and with a mandate that will enable him to make good on his promise to deliver Brexit, Johnson was U.K. Foreign Secretary at the time of the Salisbury attack.

Russia has always denied any involvement, but the U.K.'s allies were convinced by British assertions that Moscow was to blame. Scores of Russian diplomats were expelled from countries around the world following the incident.

Johnson was forthright in his condemnation of Russia from the start, describing the country as "a malign and disruptive force." He later compared Russia's hosting, in the summer of 2018, of the Soccer World Cup to Hitler's Olympics in 1936.

Russia is fiercely proud of the Soviet Union's role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Johnson's comparison was chosen either in ignorance of that, or as a calculated attempt to cause maximum offense.

Unpublished intelligence report on Russian influence

Either way, it was not at all well received in Moscow. When Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary, the Kremlin drily, and diplomatically, noted that his contribution to U.K.-Russia relations had been "modest".

So there's no sense that Johnson's victory carries with it any immediate prospect of an improvement in the dire relations between London and Moscow.

There is also the matter of one piece of unfinished business.

Before the election, the prime minister's office delayed the publication of an intelligence report into possible Russian attempts to influence British politics.

While the chancellor (finance minister), Sajid Javid, said the delay was "perfectly normal," others, including Hillary Clinton, were not convinced.

Visiting London in November, Clinton told The Guardian that the delay in making the document public was “damaging, inexplicable and shaming.”

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