The British Council is facing closure of its network of regional centres across Russia after the Foreign Ministry declared they were operating illegally.


The charges were rejected by the British side. James Kennedy, head of the council in Russia, told University World News: “We do operate on a legal basis – the 1994 agreement on education, culture and science between the two governments."

The Foreign Affairs Ministry said the council, a British government organisation that runs a range of educational, cultural and scientific programmes, had no legal basis for its work. Mikhail Kamynin, a ministry official, said the council’s offices in St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg would have to suspend their activities on 1 January.

Kamynin, who has headed the Russian side during months of negotiations with British embassy officials over the status of the council, said the work of regional offices was in breach of a 1963 Vienna convention on consular relations. Only the head office in Moscow, considered the cultural wing of the British embassy, could remain open.

In a statement issued by the ministry to Russian wire agency Interfax, Kamynin said the council had no legal grounds to continue its work in Russia. The regional offices would remain suspended until a new bilateral agreement defining the functions and activities of the council were agreed, he said.

Drawing up a new agreement, which has been under discussion since October, had been slowed down by a “deterioration in mutual relations between” Britain and Russia following “unfriendly measures” from Britain last July, the statement said.

The reference is understood to relate Britain's expulsion in July of four Russian diplomats following the failure to win extradition of Andrei Lugovoy, the Russian businessman suspected of killing former KGB agent and British citizen Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006. Litvinenko died an agonising death three weeks after drinking tea laced with a deadly and rare radioactive element, Polonium 210.

Demands that Lugovoy be extradited to face charges were dismissed by Russia. He was elected to the Russian Duma (parliament) this month as a representative for nationalist party LDPR and now enjoys parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

Pressure on the council had been building since a series of tax raids in 2004 on English language teaching centres the council ran. The language centres were subsequently shut down, although the council says this was done as part of a wider review of cost efficiencies and denies any wrongdoing.

“We have complied with all requests about tax and finances and other issues. As far as we are aware there is no outstanding issue about operating in a Russian legal framework, therefore we reject their assertion we are operating illegally,” Kennedy said.

Talks over revising the 1994 agreement had broken down, Kennedy said, adding: “There are political differences between Britain and Russia and this may be affecting the relationship. We believe that at such a time cultural and educational relationships are more important than ever.”

He said given that the council believed it did have a legal basis to work in Russia and that it had Russian partners keen to work with it, the council intended continuing its programme of events and activities in 2008 and believed it had the right to do so.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week demanded that Moscow reverse the decision. Brown said the Russian decision was "totally unacceptable".

He told a parliamentary committee: "We wish this action to be desisted from immediately," adding that Russia must not put the welfare of British Council staff at risk.

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