Col Maxim Elovik, the expelled attache, left, with Andrey Kelin, the Russian ambassador to the UK, laying wreaths at the Soviet war memorial in London earlier this month -

Even in the dark days of the Cold War, there were always mechanisms for Soviet and Western officials to reach out to the other side.

From formal conferences to less rigid but equally starchy cocktail parties on the diplomatic circuit, there was always a way for military officers, spies and functionaries to indicate quite where the temperature level of international relations hovered.

The expulsion of the Russian defence attache – likely to be reciprocated in Moscow with his British opposite number sent packing –  removes one channel through which the London-Moscow relationship, as toxic as it currently is, could be managed.

Defence attaches, if used correctly, form a vital network of advice and expertise. The British officer in Moscow will have undergone two years of language training and other professional preparation to prepare for a three-year stint in one of the most sensitive and challenging posts the MoD can offer.

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The decision to expel the Russian would have been taken in full knowledge of the consequences and only after lengthy, and no doubt occasionally heated, discussions about the risks of adding yet more shade to an already murky level of understanding when it comes to today’s Kremlin.

That the man was an undeclared intelligence officer would in all likelihood have been known at the highest levels of Whitehall for years; it is, after all, the unwritten part of a defence attache’s job description.

 

Britain previously considered closing the Highgate trade mission in 2018, so well known was it as a hotbed of spying. So why take these moves now?

The charges laid against two British men (one a parliamentary researcher) in April of having started a fire at a warehouse containing aid shipments for Ukraine, seemingly at Moscow’s behest, would have been the final straw after months – if not years – of provocation and escalation.

Other European nations have also responded to fresh violations of the status quo.

Germany is in the process of expelling 71 Russian spies and on Friday left Moscow in no doubt it would take action over a 2023 hacking attack on the Social Democratic Party of chancellor Olaf Scholz.

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 600 Russian intelligence officers operating in Europe with diplomatic cover were ejected from the continent.

This left a glaring black hole in Putin’s intelligence coverage of Western nations. He would have felt a desperate need to remedy the situation.

However, in attempting to rebuild Russia’s spy network, he has encouraged agents to act way beyond the normal, acceptable level of espionage which states tolerate on their turf.

The question now though for Western governments is whether this action reflects a new reality in international relations, if not the acknowledgement of an actual Cold War 2.0.

And if that is the case, this may be only the start of a bigger diplomatic headache for Western leaders, as there will be many China hawks calling for Europe and the US to take equally robust action over the undeniable threat from Beijing.

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