[5] Russia retaliated with its own sanctions against the UK and accused it of involvement in attacks against Sevastopol Naval Base, the Nord Stream gas pipeline and the Crimean Bridge.

From the 1720s Peter invited British engineers to Saint Petersburg, leading to the establishment of a small but commercially influential Anglo-Russian expatriate merchant community from 1730 to 1921.

In 1805 both countries again attempted to combine operations with British expeditions to North Germany and Southern Italy in concert with Russian expeditionary corps were intended to create diversions in favour of Austria.

The United Kingdom gave financial and material support to Russia during the French invasion in 1812, following which both countries pledged to keep 150,000 men in the field until Napoleon had been totally defeated.

[20][21] London hosted the first Russian-language censorship-free periodicals — Polyarnaya Zvezda [ru], Golosa iz Rossii, and Kolokol ("The Bell") — were published by Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Ogaryov in 1855–1865, which were of exceptional influence on Russian liberal intellectuals in the first several years of publication.

[28] Russia desired warm-water ports on the Indian Ocean while Britain wanted to prevent Russian troops from gaining a potential invasion route to India.

The Open Door policy promoted by the United States and Britain was designed to allow all nations on an equal footing to trade with China and was accepted by Russia.

[42] The Convention ended the long-standing rivalry in central Asia, and then enabled the two countries to outflank the Germans, who were threatening to connect Berlin to Baghdad with a new railroad that would probably align the Turkish Empire with Germany.

Under Foreign Minister Sir Edward Gray Britain felt its national interest would be badly hurt if Germany conquered Belgium and France.

[50] Lenin's New Economic Policy downplayed socialism and emphasised business dealings with capitalist countries, in an effort to restart the sluggish Russian economy.

Former British prime minister Churchill claimed that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after World War II amounted to 'an iron curtain has descended across the continent.'

In October 1994, Queen Elizabeth II made a state visit to Russia, the first time a ruling British monarch had set foot on Russian soil.

[67] Relations between the countries began to grow tense again shortly after Vladimir Putin was elected as President of the Russian Federation in 2000, with the Kremlin pursuing a more assertive foreign policy and imposing more controls domestically.

[71] In July 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Boris Berezovsky would not face charges in the UK for talking to The Guardian about plotting a "revolution" in his homeland.

She was forced to reassure concerned Members of Parliament that her decision had been made only on legal grounds, and that diplomatic and foreign policy questions had played no part.

In 2004, Alexander Fursenko of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and Arne Westad of the London School of Economics started a project to disclose British–Soviet relations during the Cold War.

[83] In 2014, relations soured drastically following the Russo-Ukrainian War, with the British government, along with the United States and the European Union, imposing punitive sanctions on Russia.

[86] UK prime minister David Cameron and U.S. president Barack Obama jointly wrote for The Times in early September: "Russia has ripped up the rulebook with its illegal, self-declared annexation of Crimea and its troops on Ukrainian soil threatening and undermining a sovereign nation state.

[92] In early 2017, during her meeting with U.S. president Donald Trump, the UK prime minister Theresa May appeared to take a line harsher than that of the U.S. on the Russian sanctions.

[94] In mid-November 2017, in her Guildhall speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, prime minister May called Russia "chief among those today, of course" who sought to undermine the "open economies and free societies" Britain was committed to, according to her.

Deploying its state-run media organisations to plant fake stories and photo-shopped images in an attempt to sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions.

[108] In his speech at the RUSI Land Warfare Conference in June 2018, the Chief of the General Staff Mark Carleton-Smith said that British troops should be prepared to "fight and win" against the "imminent" threat of hostile Russia.

[109][110] Carleton-Smith said: "The misplaced perception that there is no imminent or existential threat to the UK – and that even if there was it could only arise at long notice – is wrong, along with a flawed belief that conventional hardware and mass are irrelevant in countering Russian subversion...".

[117] Britain also supplied the Ukrainians with military equipment; most notably sending NLAW missiles to Ukraine, commencing in January 2022 in anticipation of the Russian invasion.

[122] On 26 February 2022, Britain and its partners took "decisive action" to block Russia's banks' access to the SWIFT international payment system, according to British prime minister Boris Johnson.

[130] On 8 May 2022, British prime minister Boris Johnson's office stated that G7 leaders agreed that the world should increase economic pressure on Russian president Vladimir Putin in whatever manner feasible.

"[134] On 29 September 2022, a Russian Su-27 fighter "released" a missile in the vicinity of a Royal Air Force Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint which was carrying out a routine patrol over the Black Sea.

In May 2023 at the annual G7 summit, in Tokyo, Sunak stepped up sanctions on Russia, banning the import of Russian diamonds, along with Russian-origin copper, aluminium and nickel, as he redoubled UK support for Ukraine.

[136] In July 2024, British prime minister Keir Starmer gave Ukraine permission to strike targets inside Russia with British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

In January 2012, Jonathan Powell, prime minister Tony Blair's chief of staff in 2006, admitted Britain was behind a plot to spy on Russia with a device hidden in a fake rock that was discovered in 2006 in a case that was publicised by Russian authorities; he said: "Clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose.