Boris Johnson invited to visit Russia

Boris Johnson will become the first UK minister to visit Russia in more than five years, after accepting an invitation from the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

The trip — to take place “in the coming weeks” — coincides with the UK rethinking its foreign policy towards Syria, where it has been outmuscled by Moscow’s intervention. The US, Britain’s principle foreign policy ally, has also signal a desire for greater dialogue with Vladimir Putin.

However, a Foreign Office official said that Mr Johnson was not prepared to “reset” the relationship until Russia changes course “on issues such as Ukraine”.

“This is absolutely not about cosying up — in fact the opposite,” the official said. “He intends to say the same things face to face as we do in public . . . Boris has always said we can’t reset but we must engage when in our interests.”

A cross-party committee of MPs warned this week that UK-Russia relations were at their worst since the end of the cold war, and criticised the Foreign Office for appearing “not to know what it wants”. The foreign affairs committee called for greater engagement, but said that sanctions on Russia should not be lifted until its actions in Ukraine change.

Mr Johnson has held a strong line on Moscow, and in October raised the prospecting of introducing new sanctions for its actions in Syria. Yet he was unable to secure the support of the outgoing Obama administration or European allies for a tougher approach.

He subsequently suggested that Britain’s position on Syria could change, saying that President Bashar al-Assad should be allowed to run in future elections and implicitly removing the UK’s demand that the dictator should step down within 18 months.

“It is our view that Bashar al-Assad should go, it’s been our longstanding position. But . . . we are open-minded about how that happens and the timescale on which that happens,” Mr Johnson told a House of Lords committee in January.

David Cameron visited Russia on a one-day trip in September 2011, seeking to improve relations five years after the murder of the dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London five years earlier.

Last year 11 Eton College school children organised their own meeting with Mr Putin in Moscow. One of the boys later claimed the president had shown them “his human face”.