NEWSLINK: “Boris Johnson is about to perform a policy U-turn as he becomes the first foreign secretary to visit Russia in five years.” – The Independent (UK)/Mary Dejevsky

“… first … it amounts to an enormous foreign policy U-turn, one of the most definitive by any UK government in many years. Second … it is that rare creature in the currently grim world of diplomacy: a move in the right direction that could play a small part in the making of a better world. This is not, of course, how the Foreign Office presented it. The emphasis from the diplomatic spinmeisters was all on what this visit was not. As reported by the BBC, this is what an unidentified Foreign Office ‘source’ said. ‘This is not a return to business as usual … It does not “signal any shift in UK policy towards Russia”.’ ‘He is not going in order to reset the relationship… This is not about cosying up, in fact quite the opposite.”‘ … “