The polonium trail that started at the deathbed of Alexander Litvinenko and wound through West London's sushi bars now extends, metaphorically at least, to the British Council's two regional offices in Russia. The Kremlin wants them shut. It accuses the council of operating “outside its official status”. In reality, it is casting around for leverage in the escalating row over Scotland Yard's attempt to extradite the chief suspect in the Litvinenko murder. The council has reopened its Yekaterinburg office in defiance of a Kremlin edict and plans to do the same in St Petersburg on Thursday. Yesterday, summoned to the Foreign Ministry to explain himself, the British Ambassador in Moscow gave warning that any further Russian actions against the British Council would be considered breaches of international law. Forget the OK Corral. For a primer in the art of the 21st-century showdown, look no further than a modest, fifth-floor office suite a few blocks from the Hermitage.

It beggars belief that an Anglo-Russian relationship relaunched in a blaze of Blairite bonhomie eight years ago should have sunk to this. The British Council's connection to the Litvinenko affair is non-existent except insofar as its UK-appointed staff have diplomatic status. This, Moscow believes, gives grounds for reflexive attacks on the council's operations whenever any aspect of the bilateral relationship is causing irritation, without risking a full diplomatic rupture. It is true that closing libraries and cultural centres may be less dangerous than shutting embassies. It is also true that Russia's latest round of bullying is shot through with schoolyard spite, and entirely self-defeating.

In Russia, as elsewhere, the British Council exists to “connect people with learning opportunities and creative ideas from the UK”. This used to be called cultural diplomacy, but the phrase does little justice to a range of heavily oversubscribed services that include teacher training, educational exchanges, walk-in information centres and sponsorship of major arts events. Last year, half a million Russians were taught by British-Council-trained English teachers or visited a council centre or event, and another million accessed its web-based services. More than 40 young Russians travelled to Britain on pres-tigious university scholarships administered by the council, and 338,000 approached it for information about education in the UK.

It is not arrogance but common sense to observe that in an anglophone and increasingly borderless business world, Russians stand to gain hugely and to lose nothing at all from a British Council presence in their major cities. The current Kremlin leadership is wilfully blind to this. Conceivably, a nimbler response from London to the opportunities created by the Soviet collapse could have ensured that some of Vladimir Putin's aides, nearly a generation later, would be admirers of the council's work. Instead, Mr Putin's thinly veiled xenophobia sweeps all before it, and three British Council offices remain of the fifteen less than three years ago.

This dismaying and destructive rift may deepen before it starts to heal: Mr Putin, who leaves office in March, has little reason to foster personal warmth with Gordon Brown, and the chill he radiates instead is bouncing back. It is to be hoped that his successor wants a thaw.