So farewell Andrei Kelin, for seven no doubt increasingly uncomfortable years Moscow’s man in London. With not a bang but a whisper: it transpires that he left the embassy last month, and so far there is still no suggestion of who (if anyone) will replace him.
As a result, there is talk that the Russians are thinking of scaling back their diplomatic representation to the Court of St James, leaving matters in the hands of the chargé d’affairs, Vasily Tsyganov. This has been kind of denied by the embassy, which stated simply that it has said nothing to imply ‘that the Russian side intends to downgrade the level of diplomatic relations between our two countries’. At the same time, the statement noted that ‘as for the state of Russia-UK relations across all areas, they have deteriorated to an unprecedentedly low level entirely on London’s initiative’.
The fact that no replacement for Kelin has yet been mooted is noteworthy but hardly unique. Indeed, there was a gap of a couple of months between Kelin assuming his position and the departure of his predecessor, Alexander Yakovenko, in 2019.
The real questions, then, are why the delay and who succeeds Kelin?
Having served in post for almost seven years, this is not a case of an ambassador being ‘withdrawn’. That would imply either a diplomatic rebuke for the host nation – in which case, why not make it public, given that Kelin informed his own people back in June? – or else a demotion for the diplomat in question.
