Russia held back from swift retaliation against Britain yesterday as it sought to gauge European Union support for Gordon Brown in his confrontation with the Kremlin.

Alexander Grushko, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, warned Britain to expect a “targeted and appropriate” response to the expulsion of four diplomats from London for the Kremlin’s failure to extradite Andrei Lugovoy. But, against expectations, he announced no tit-for-tat expulsion of British diplomats. Instead, he accused Britain of punishing Russia for upholding its Constitution, which forbids extradition of citizens to stand trial abroad.

“The more we study statements by British officials, the more we are perplexed and resentful,” Mr Grushko said.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, ordered the diplomats to leave on Monday after Moscow refused to hand over Mr Lugovoy to face trial for the murder of the dissident former agent Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210.

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BACKGROUND

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• The Litvinenko File

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Mr Miliband said that Britain would ask EU members to “take our concerns on this case into account” in future relations with Russia. He is due to meet other EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

Mr Grushko dismissed London’s actions but exposed Russian nervousness about a wider confrontation by issuing a direct warning to EU leaders not to back Britain.

“The United Kingdom, as is evident from statements by its officials, will resort to solidarity tools within the European Union,” he said. “We hope that common sense will prevail . . . and its members will not yield to more attempts to turn relations between Russia and the EU into an instrument for one-sided political goals that have nothing to do with the real interests of co-operation.”

His words suggest that Moscow is prepared to see a chill in relations with Britain over Mr Lugovoy but is eager to avoid a wider conflict with the EU, which is Russia’s biggest trading partner. Britain’s best hope of pressing Moscow into action over the Litvinenko affair now appears to lie in Brussels.

The Kremlin may be calculating, however, that Germany, France and Italy will be unwilling to jeopardise relations by showing solidarity with Britain. All are highly dependent on Russian energy and the French company Total signed a lucrative deal with Gazprom last week for a share of the giant Shtokman gasfield.

Mr Lugovoy, a former KGB bodyguard, met Mr Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day that he fell ill. Mr Lugovoy insists that he is innocent and has accused the British Secret Service and the exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky of involvement in killing Mr Litvinenko.

Mr Grushko made clear that Russia would retaliate soon against Britain for the expulsion of its diplomats, saying that London had chosen “a direct path to confrontation”. But he said that Moscow’s response would refrain from harming tourists, business people and “everyday citizens”.

He accused Britain of double standards in calling for Mr Lugovoy to be handed over, while rejecting Russian extradition applications.

“We are being punished for observing our own Constitution, which is not just unfair and unacceptable but even contradicts common sense,” Mr Grushko said. “Russia has asked London to extradite 21 Russian citizens, including businessman Boris Berezovsky and envoy of Chechen separatists Akhmed Zakayev, accused of grave crimes. None of them was extradited. If Russia acted in the same manner as London, over 80 diplomats would have been expelled from the British embassy to Russia.”

Britain’s attitude made co-operation with Russian law enforcement agencies difficult, if not impossible, in future, including in the fight against terrorism, Mr Grushko said. The British Embassy in Moscow said that any Russian retaliation would be unjustified.

Despite the war of words, there were signs yesterday that London and Moscow were keen to limit the scope of the dispute. Sir Anthony Brenton, the British Ambassador, told Russian television: “We do not expect our disappointment with the Russian authorities about the Litvinenko case to affect the economic sphere. Indeed, we expect British-Russian economic ties to continue to grow.”

Sberbank, the largest Russian bank, which is state controlled, also chose yesterday to indicate that it could be ready for a flotation on the London Stock Exchange by the end of the year.

Mikhail Margelov, head of the international affairs committee in the Russian Senate, said that he hoped that relations would not deteriorate further. He said: “Russia-British relations have a centuries-long history and it would be stupid to overshadow them by a distrust toward Russia’s law, jurisdiction and Constitution.”

Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of USA and Canada Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, criticised the British reaction but urged the Kremlin not to intensify the conflict. “Why does one former KGB officer killing another deserve this attention?” he asked.

In London, Yuri Fedotov, the Russian Ambassador to London, said that Russia would soon respond against Britain and admitted that relations were strained.

“The response will follow. It takes time. We are serious people,” he said. “It is really hard to be optimistic today. I hope in the long run our relations will be restarted — reloaded, so to say — but that is not the best moment of the history of our bilateral relations.”

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