Embassy of the United Kingdom, Moscow

The Embassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow is the chief diplomatic mission of the United Kingdom in the Russian Federation. It is located in the Arbat District of Moscow, on Smolenskaya Embankment of the river Moskva. The current ambassador is Nigel Casey.

History


Before the October Revolution of 1917, the British embassy in Russia was seated in Saint Petersburg, in a palace overlooking the Troitsky Bridge. Diplomatic relations were broken off when the last ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, left Moscow on 26 December 1918.

In 1924, after the Russian Civil War, Great Britain was the first foreign power to recognize the new Soviet government, sending an ambassador to Moscow in 1924. He was provided with a palace at Boloto, on the Island, or Zamoskvorechye, near the Kremlin in Moscow, and the British embassy remained there until 2000.

In the mid-1960s, the present embassy site at 10 Smolenskaya Embankment, near the Novoarbatsky Bridge, comprising 2.27 acres (0.92 hectares), was offered to the British Government, but it was not until March 1987 that an agreement was signed for the land to be exchanged for two sites in London. The architects for the new embassy were Ahrends, Burton and Koralek (ABK) of London and Dublin, and the new complex was officially opened by Anne, Princess Royal on 17 May 2000.

The present embassy building contains offices for 250 staff; 31 flats for staff and facilities for their recreation and welfare, including a swimming pool and cafeteria, medical centre and kindergarten, workshops and stores; and covered car parking for 85 cars.

In 2007, a sculpture by Andrey Orlov of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, as portrayed by Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin, was erected on the embankment alongside the embassy.

In July 2022, the city authorities renamed the section of the Smolenskaya Embankment where the embassy stands to the Luhansk People's Republic Square, celebrating the Luhansk People's Republic; the embassy stated that it would continue to use the previous address. At the same time, Moscow renamed an intersection near the United States Embassy as Donetsk People's Republic Square. The Moscow authorities stated that this was in retaliation for a one-block section of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Embassy of Russia, Washington, D.C., being renamed in honor of Boris Nemtsov, a Russian dissident shot dead by assassins in 2015.

Outside Moscow
Outside Moscow, there is currently one British Consulate-General in Yekaterinburg where the senior officer is the Consul-General. A British Consulate-General in Saint Petersburg was established in 1992, but it was closed in 2018 because of a diplomatic fallout following the poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer in the United Kingdom.