The UK pledged more than £35 million to Vladimir Putin’s Russia through ‘eye-catching’ projects supported by Tony Blair’s government, a newly released file shows.
Millions of pounds were earmarked for initiatives including retraining military officers for civilian life, a number of ‘cyber-centres’ and management training in the president’s name.
Cabinet ministers were presented with a round-up of ‘bilateral activity’ as they prepared for Putin’s visit to the UK in December 2001, when he held talks with Blair at Chequers, the traditional country retreat of British prime ministers in Buckinghamshire.
The attempt at ‘soft power’ ultimately failed, with Putin ordering the first round of military aggression against Ukraine in 2014, followed by the all-out attack three years ago.
The formerly confidential book revealing the projects to UK government eyes has emerged at a time of increased focus on foreign aid as Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer make cuts to their nations’ spending.
Blair has previously been said to have conducted a ‘wide-ranging charm offensive’ to win over Putin, despite concerns at the time over the Kremlin’s military aggression beyond its borders.
The UK-Russia projects included training Russian military and civilian peacekeepers as part of a ‘Conflict Prevention Fund’ and building ‘civil society capacity’ in the North Caucasus.
The book, released at the National Archives, details how this strand involved ‘helping the Russian military adapt to a post-Soviet world through an officer resettlement programme.’
At the time, the scheme had retrained some 2,000 officers per year at a cost of £2 million at centres in five cities.
In total, over 12,000 were retrained since 1995 with the scheme expected to run until 2003, according to the previously secret file.
The preface states: ‘The summary aims to round up interesting and eye-catching activities (which do not need to be particularly expensive or large), rather than aiming to be exhaustive.’
Marked ‘restricted – confidential library, Cabinet’, the document goes on to list a wide range of activities, including British Council ‘cyber-centres’ in Moscow, Irkutsk, Samara and Nizhny Novgorod. The facilities were said to be ‘providing new IT services to young Russians.’
Another initiative entitled the ‘Russian President’s Management Training Initiative’ aimed to provide UK attachments for newly graduated managers from the federation and improve their performance.
The former Department for International Development (DfID) gave £5.1 million to support the project between September 1997 and December 2001, according to the briefing.
HIV and AIDS was another focus for DfID which had ‘earmarked’ £25 million for related projects over the next five to seven years.
The brief reads: ‘This will aim to support the Russian Government and society in making a timely and effective response to HIV/AIDs by targeting vulnerable young people.
‘The new programme will focus on policy and advocacy, improving understanding of epidemiology and high-risk behaviours and large-scale harm reduction pilot projects.
‘It will complement existing projects on harm reduction and outreach work among injecting drug users and commercial sex workers in Sverdlovsk and Samara Oblast and elsewhere.’
Initiatives led by the British Council were also listed, including ‘multi-cultural, multi-ethnic education’ in Sochi, a large resort city.
In a snapshot of a markedly different age in UK-Russia relations, there is also a reference to ‘partnership programmes between UK and Russian remand prisons.’
Declassified UK has probed the relationship between Blair and Putin during the early 2000s. The media organisation covering UK foreign policy found evidence of a ‘wide-ranging charm offensive’ launched by Blair to win round his opposite number.
Director Mark Curtis told Metro: ‘Tony Blair courted Putin for years after he first took office in 2000.
‘He increased UK arms exports to Russia while Putin was waging a brutal war in Chechnya and developed a strong personal relationship.
‘The overwhelming reason was to secure the interests of BP, which extracted billions worth of oil under Putin and became a strategic partner to the regime in Moscow.’
A previous file release in 2022 showed how Blair wanted Putin to be given a seat at the world’s ‘top table’ to encourage him to adopt Western values. In the papers, the British PM described Putin as a Russian patriot, sensitive to Russia’s ‘loss of respect’ abroad.
The former Labour leader has since changed tack on Putin, saying in 2023 that ‘Russian aggression in Ukraine must be defeated.’
Giving his own recollection of his meetings with the Russian president, he said that he had tried to reason with him over allowing Ukraine to choose whether to join NATO or not before his opposite number said, ‘It’s not their choice, they’re with us.’
Days after the full-scale invasion began BP announced that it would exit Russia and offload its stake in the federation’s oil giant, Rosneft.
Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact josh.layton@metro.co.uk
