Blair gifted Putin silver cufflinks for his birthday, archives show | Tony Blair

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Officials told Tony Blair he would present Vladimir Putin with a new set of silver buttons from 10 Downing Street as he received the Russian leader’s invitation to join him on his birthday during the prime minister’s visit to Moscow.

The president will be the first leader to receive the Special No. 10 cufflink, the prime minister was told in a memo before an October 2001 trip to Moscow, which was released by the National Archives.

Maggie Cleaver, Downing Street’s press officer, wrote in the note to Blair: “You will remember that Putin has already asked you to come to celebrate his birthday on Sunday – so we are presenting you with a set of new silver No. 10 cufflinks – he will be the first captain to own them.” .

A year earlier, Blair stirred controversy with a hastily arranged private visit aimed at personalizing relations with Putin. During a birthday visit in 2001, Blair praised Putin’s strong leadership and asserted that the Cold War was over.

Other papers released from the archives contain Blair’s own assessment of Putin. The record of a February 2001 meeting between Blair and US Vice President Dick Cheney, at which the latter asked about Putin, indicates that Blair “described him as a Russian patriot, fully aware that Russia had lost its place in the world”.

Calling him a “Russian de Gaulle” would be misleading, Blair added, but he had a similar mindset, and it was right to press him on a number of issues.

Blair told Cheney that he “thinks it’s best to let Putin at the top of the table and encourage Putin to reach out to Western positions as well as the Western economic model.”

The other files, whose authorship is not clear but marked “secret” and were part of briefing notes for a 2001 visit to the US by Blair’s foreign affairs adviser John Sawyers, detailed assurances Putin made to Blair at various summits turned out to be false as Russia continued the levels of war. Cold for espionage activity against the United Kingdom. The main issues involved the Russian supply “related” to Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program.

Putin had told Blair in Moscow that he did not want to be seen as “anti-NATO” and would not try to slow NATO’s expansion, but the Russian defense minister emphatically contradicted this.

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Despite Putin’s warmth of rhetoric about the close ties between Russia and the UK, Russian intelligence efforts against British targets remain at a high level. The Russian intelligence presence in the UK is at Cold War levels, and they continue to attempt to deploy active and hostile officers to act against British interests around the world,” it notes.

A senior British diplomat reported that Blair suggested to Putin during his visit to Moscow in October 2002 that he might wish to meet “major British energy players” on a return visit to London as a means of reiterating their commitment to working together. Putin said he hoped to build a gas pipeline through Belarus that would supply the UK and “guarantee stable supplies for decades to come”.

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