Imagine you are an up-and-coming diplomat, perhaps in your mid-to-late thirties. Let’s say you are given one of the less glamourous but not unimportant postings — Yekaterinburg, if we were to name one purely for the sake of example, in Russia’s Ural mountains. It’s not Moscow or St Petersburg but it still has a population of a million people and for decades it has been at the heart of the Russian military-industrial complex. In the Soviet Union it was a closed city, meaning that foreigners were barred and even Russians needed a permit to visit if they weren’t residents. The city has built all sorts of weaponry, including chemical and biological. There is good business to be done for British firms who are looking for opportunities.

So let’s imagine that, shortly before you go, your senior at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office puts a metaphorical arm round your shoulder and says: “In short, Hudson” — let’s call you Hudson — “as Deputy Consul General people will be watching you. Yekaterinburg is not the sort of place you can just wander round. It has history. It has significance. Boris Yeltsin was party boss there. We’ve had a bit of trouble with the Russians recently, so mind how you go.”

Don’t, for example, do what James Hudson just did, which was to get caught on camera swigging champagne and having sex with a couple of prostitutes in a Yekaterinburg brothel. The internet has made these things very easy to put out there in a very untraceable sort of way, and the KGB/FSB has a long history of using the honeytrap.

Read your memos and brush up on Anglo-Russian relations, reminding yourself that the FSB recently arranged the assassination of the spy-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko right under our noses in a London hotel; that the British Council has had to suspend operations in Russia, ostensibly for tax reasons but really because the Russians consider it a perfidious propaganda outfit; that Moscow is livid that we harbour figures such as the Chechen separatist politician Ahmad Zakayev and oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky who have openly stated they are plotting to overthrow the Russian Government.

Take notice, too, of the fact that the Commons Defence Committee has just urged tougher action with Moscow over unauthorised incursions by Russian warplanes into the airspace around Britain, adding that they had attempted to enter the airspace around Britain without permission on 18 days over the past two years. You would in any case probably remember those interesting recent pictures appearing in the press of ageing Bear bombers "buzzing" the UK.

Despite Russia and America pressing the “reset” button with President Obama’s visit to Moscow this week, Russia’s relations with the West are still cool. Georgia, Ukraine, missile defence, gas supplies to Europe... these are all still issues, even if some of them have gone a little quiet. Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine has been badly handled, giving the two countries the hope of joining — annoying Russia — without actually letting them in. Expect the usual drama with gas this winter, and every winter after that unless and until Europe does something to cure itself of this dependency. While there are signs that the US and the Kremlin will reach a deal on missile defence, it would seem to depend on Russia cracking the whip with Iran, with whom it has a long and lucrative relationship.

Bear in mind that in Russia all these issues are relayed to the public through the prism of a compliant, often nationalistic media. And always, always remember that the KGB is back in control. Its former members are at the highest levels of government — in fact, President Medvedev is a rare example of a non-former agent being in a position of power.

It is very important, therefore, to play with a straight bat. Every so often we get embarrassed by some cock-up — prostitutes, cameras hidden in rocks, that sort of thing — so mind how you go. Just because we exchange expensive paintings with each other, doesn’t mean that we and the Russians are friends.

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