Britain is one of the biggest problems in geopolitics today. The simple reason, it has tried to to hold on to a world influencing position, when its real power projection has fallen considerably. There is nothing wrong with trying to influence, but the mode and legitamacy of that influencing is important in itself. What the UK did was to take advantage of being an island and harbour all sorts of rogues and terrorists to act as levers into the rest of the world. They thought that this was clever and replaced the deficit in physical power projection, thus restoring its position in the world. However, it didn't work like that, terrorism has become a huge world wide problem, their implication in it, has not only made them a target in their own right, but through world opinion has more than negated any top up in influence. Resulting in, at least a less capable world influencing function, or worse creating the UK as a rogue terrorist pyriah nation Their ongoing illegal invasions as poodles supporting a US cause, their puppet training, their ongoing accepting and shielding of initiators of criminal strife, is doing nothing to abate their wayward ways and restore them to some semblence of integrity. Add to this an historic record, to always suppress Russian interests, even imperialy before any cold war activity, and you have a very difficult basis for a relationship. The basic fact is that the whole British institution is set up to meet out anti-Russian policy. Indeed its stench is the strongest in the world. Now, we all want better realtionships, and it will be intersting to see if Britain, is capable of moving away from its automatic institutionalised knee jerk ant-Russian approach, and move to a common interests based approach, following along the same lines as the US has done. For it would seem rediculous, that Britain could be so backward in thinking, that it cannot realise what a mess it has created of its own doing, by playing geopolitical games illegally.

Britain has been anti Russian for centuries... I doubt it will change quickly if at all.

Given the present situation of BP, losing $billions in the Gulf crisis and with shares falling, it is time for them to sell most of their shares in TNK-BP...

"former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko" A basic investigation would reveal he was smuggling Plutonium given the fact that he and his alleged assassin both visited a private security firm linked to MI6 intelligence which since the Balkans in the 90’s have been used as western intelligence cover Litvinenko himself it was revealed was an MI6 agent and his Italian counterpart an expert in nuclear waste disposal was arrest afterwards on weapons smuggling. GOD is this Russian government horrible.

Haven't they discussed the issue of still unexplained death of Dr David Kelly? What Her Majesty would say on that?

Don't the Russians watch movies? The cold war is over & James Bond is still killing Russians on the big screen.The 'bad' Russian is now a mafia thug as opposed to a Communist thug..As far as history is concerned, the British have been meddling with Russian destiny since the Crimean war...That won't change...I hope Medvedev is smart enough to see that the post cold war 'language' has changed but not the motives.Just like Japan, Britain is an island nation perpetually desperate for natural resources. Britain regards Russia much as Japan regards China...disdain for the people coupled with a fascination for the sheer scale of resources & geography.

Most people in Britain actually regard you guys pretty highly these days, we're not as fanatically patriotic as the US and many of us actually bother to read up on world history. We are fully aware of Russia's sacrifices in WW2 and how far russia has come since the collapse of the USSR. It's about time we put the past behind this East-West standoff and just tried to get on with each other for the sake of the rest of the world. Because of the historic ties we have with America our governments tends to make stupid decisions like following them into stupid pointless wars in the middle east. I can tell you that the majority of the British people did not support these wars and could see from the start it was just going to turn into Vietnam all over again. The British population does not hold America in such high regard as you might think since the apauling reign of Bush. We are sick of our governments making bad decisions on our behalf knowing full well that none of the population is behind them. Hopefully our new government under David Cameron will start to correct the mistakes of our former governments.