Latest updates: outgoing prime minster makes rare public intervention in Tory leadership contest
Speaking to reporters on a trip to Leeds, Truss said the claim that the Foreign Office was short of experts on Russia was “completely untrue”. She went on:
I’m proud of our record, but we need to do more, and one of the key areas in bringing down the cost of living is dealing with Russia - making sure they can’t hold the world to ransom over their gas supplies - and I will be tough in standing up to Putin. The Institute has argued that the war in Ukraine requires the UK, and democratic nations more generally, to review its approach to Russia. But this is hindered by the relatively small team dedicated to it. This is not new; as many interviewees for this paper noted, and observers have commented publicly, after the Cold War there was a ‘moment of hope’ and a belief that the worst of the Russian threat had passed. Diplomatic expertise on the countries of the former Soviet Union was reduced.
Other elements of the Foreign Office’s Russian expertise have continued to be downgraded. Despite the Foreign Affairs Committee drawing attention to Russian language proficiency as a ‘weak spot’ in 2015, the number of staff in the department who could speak it at ‘advanced’ level dropped from 83 in December 2017 to below 60 in February 2022.
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