Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke for many people horrified by Alexei Navalny’s death in a Russian prison last week when he suggested that the Russian ambassador to the UK ought to be expelled in response. Labour’s David Lammy and the SNP’s Ian Blackford also advocated this back in 2022. This, however, would be a mistake.

It’s a wholly understandable emotional response. At worst Navalny’s was a direct killing, or else slow-motion murder by putting a man whose system is already compromised by near-death thanks to Novichok in an Arctic prison camp and subjecting him to treatment verging on torture.

While we may not have much to say to the Russians today, tomorrow it may be different

Besides, Andrei Kelin, Russia’s ambassador since 2019, has hardly endeared himself to his hosts. He notoriously chuckled when suggesting that the defenders of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol had themselves to blame for their fate by not surrendering when the Russians attacked. Beyond that, he has claimed that atrocities – which have been investigated by independent agencies – were ‘staged’ by Kyiv. He has also been silent as figures on the more toxic end of Russian politics, such as former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and TV commentator Vladimir Soloviev, issue threats against Britain ranging from saying British trainers in Ukraine would be ‘ruthlessly destroyed’ to calling for London to be ‘turned to dust’. Nonetheless, the issue is not Kelin’s own character, but the wisdom of doing something for the sake of doing something, regardless of the implications.

Russia is not going away. One way or another we need to be able to talk to Moscow. Indeed, arguably at times of such diplomatic constipation, any channel is all the more important – and frankly, it matters more that we can talk somehow to antagonists than friends. Some have suggested that we could just as easily talk to Russia through other channels, or that there would be no difference if diplomatic relations were downgraded to just having a chargé d’affaires in London (in effect a junior, or temporary ambassador) instead.

But if a chargé is every bit as good as an ambassador, why have ambassadors at all? Likewise, although there are other channels, from UN delegations to lower-level contacts, they supplement rather than replace the need for direct ambassadorial connections. For all its modern trappings, diplomacy remains a world of personal relationships and status. Having ambassadorial contact matters, not least because while we may not have much to say to the Russians today, tomorrow it may be different.

In any case, the issue is not really about whether we feel we need a Russian ambassador in London – it’s whether we want to keep one in Moscow. This will inevitably be a two-way process. Tit for tat seems to be the name of the zero-sum game for Vladimir Putin these days.

Our embassy in Moscow is already pared to the bone, and our new ambassador, Nigel Casey, was only accredited in December. His predecessor, Deborah Bronnert, ably managed the difficult but necessary balancing act of challenging the Kremlin’s toxic narratives while continuing to make what connections could still be developed insider the country. Were Casey expelled now, the embassy would be further disrupted and attenuated.

After all, an embassy is not just a communications channel, it’s also our diplomatic eyes and ears, and one of our remaining ways of connecting with wider Russian society. In July, the Kremlin imposed Soviet-style travel restrictions specifically on British diplomats – not on the rest of the Western diplomatic corps. Why? Precisely because it fears the kind of outreach that the embassy was doing, however difficult it already had become. To quote one former US diplomat in Moscow, ‘so long as the Brits kept getting out there and talking to people in the country, the more they could undermine Putin’s narrative that [the West] hates all Russians and that’s why there’s a war’.

It may be a little simplistic, but I tend to think that whatever the Kremlin wants us doing less, we should do all the more. As John Foreman, the previous defence attaché in Moscow noted, ‘striving to reduce UK staff in [the British Embassy in] Moscow so as to constrain our understanding of what is going on has been an active Soviet/Russian tactic for decades. Expelling Kelin would help meet that goal’.

In short, we could kick out Kelin and get that quick hit of dopamine from feeling we are striking a blow against a tyrant. After all, Navalny was not a British citizen but his cause was rooted in universal rights and his treatment surely a disgrace. Yet at the same time, we would hand Moscow not just a propaganda win but a practical one, too. Losing more of our already-limited on-the-ground expertise and ability to gather information and connect to ordinary Russians does not seem likely to help anyone but Putin.