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Russia has banned cabinet ministers including Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves from entering the country under new sanctions announced by Moscow’s foreign affairs ministry.
More than a dozen other senior Labour politicians are among the 30 British citizens on the Russian “stop list” as tensions between London and Moscow rose after Ukraine’s recent use of British missiles to strike deeper into Russia.
Moscow also said it was expelling a British diplomat for alleged spying, the latest in a series of tit-for-tat expulsions reflecting strained relations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The UK has also this week imposed fresh sanctions on 30 oil tankers from Russia’s so-called shadow fleet as it tries to squeeze Vladimir Putin’s funding of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian ministry said it was putting military officials, journalists and tech industry figures on its “stop list” as well as politicians, as a result of “incessant aggressive anti-Russian rhetoric” by the UK government.
Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, have already been banned from entering Russia, and were on an equivalent list of 39 senior British politicians, businesspeople and journalists in 2022.
The FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, announced on Tuesday that it had acted on documents accusing a British diplomat of engaging in “reconnaissance and subversive activities that threaten the country’s security”.
The FSB claimed that the British diplomat “intentionally provided false information when applying for entry into Russia, thereby violating Russian law”. Russian media reported that the diplomat had been given a two-week deadline to leave the country.
According to the FSB, the British diplomat, whose photo was splashed across Russian TV news bulletins, had been a replacement for one of six UK diplomats expelled in August, also over accusations of espionage. The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said at the time that the accusations were baseless.
The Russian foreign ministry said that it had summoned the British ambassador in Moscow, Nigel Casey.
“To be clear, we refute these allegations. They’re baseless. We’re now considering our response,” a No 10 spokesperson said. “This is not the first time that Putin’s government has made malicious, baseless accusations against our staff.”
In May, Britain expelled a senior Russian defence attache, accusing them of operating as an undeclared military intelligence officer. In retaliation, Moscow ordered the British defence attache to leave Russia.
In September, Russia announced it had revoked the accreditation of six British diplomats it accused of spying, coinciding with Starmer’s visit to Washington, where the use of Storm Shadow missiles was on the table for discussion.
The spokesperson added: “The UK government is unapologetic about protecting our national interests and will now respond in due course, and our embassy in Moscow will continue its important work in Russia to support UK interests.”
Relations between Britain and Russia plunged to a new low last week after Britain agreed to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles on targets inside Russia. The green light came days after Joe Biden, the US president, agreed to do the same for America’s long-range Atacms weapon.
The decision to approve the strikes was made in response to the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine, which UK and US officials warned was a significant escalation of the near three-year conflict.
Kyiv has since used Storm Shadow missiles to strike a command headquarters in the village of Maryno in the Kursk region. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Britain had sent dozens more of the missiles to Ukraine several weeks ago.
