THE British Ambassador to Russia will defy a warning from the Kremlin by addressing a conference of President Putin’s fiercest critics today, four days before the G8 leaders’ summit in St Petersburg.

Two senior US officials and the Canadian Ambassador will also attend the meeting, in what many here see as a show of support for the Russian Opposition in the face of an increasingly authoritarian Kremlin.

The two-day “Other Russia” conference in Moscow is being organised by Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion, and other prominent Kremlin critics to try to galvanise the Opposition before the G8 summit. Among the participants are Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who has pledged to run for President in 2008, and Andrei Illarionov, a former Kremlin economic adviser who resigned in protest last year.

Igor Shuvalov, who succeeded Mr Illarionov as the Kremlin’s G8 chief representative, said last month that it would be seen as an “unfriendly gesture” if foreign governments sent senior officials to the forum. But a British Embassy spokesman told The Times that Anthony Brenton, the Ambassador, had decided to attend, with the support of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

“We are aware of Mr Shuvalov’s comments,” the spokesman said. “We see this forum as contributing to the development of civil society in Russia, and the Ambassador therefore has accepted an invitation to take part in it.” Mr Shuvalov, a deputy head of the Presidential Administration, said in an interview with the Financial Times Deutschland on June 30: “If high officials take part in (the conference), we will view this as an unfriendly gesture.”

Western leaders have pledged to raise concerns at the G8 summit about the Kremlin’s moves to curb democracy by scrapping local elections and muffling the independent media. Dmitri Piskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said that Moscow would frown on foreign officials attending the Other Russia summit, which he described as “criticism for criticism’s sake”.

Mr Brenton, however, said in a radio interview last week that he had spoken to Mr Shuvalov and cleared the air.

“Mr Shuvalov is my friend,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio. “I spoke to him after his statement. He told me that he had nothing against my attending this meeting. I am not taking part in order to interfere in Russia’s internal politics. I am going there to show the UK’s support for civil society as a whole.

“I will say that in the strongest, most effective, richest societies there is a very strong, rich, energetic civil society. It is in Russia’s interests that such a society develops here.”

The US officials attending the Other Russia conference are Barry Lowenkron, the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, and Daniel Fried, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.The Canadian Embassy said that its ambassador would be there only as an observer.

Relations between Moscow and London have been tense since January, when the Russian security service accused four British Embassy employees of spying. The Federal Security Service, which succeeded the KGB, accused them of illegally funding Russian NGOs.

President Putin also indirectly criticised Britain last week for granting political asylum to Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen rebel envoy, and Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch.

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