Russia:Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has called for a pro-Kremlin youth group, Nashi, to cool down its aggressive protests against the British ambassador to Moscow, Anthony Brenton.
As Britain's relations with Russia descended to near cold war lows late last year following the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, its ambassador to Moscow also complained about what he described as a campaign of harassment against him.
For six months Mr Brenton has been the number one target of the pro-Kremlin youth group after he ignored official requests and participated at a civil society conference on the margins of the G8 summit in St Petersburg.
His presence was deplored by Nashi, which equated meeting Kremlin critics such as chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov with endorsing fascism. In an open letter, it asked how Britain would feel if Russia's ambassador to London had met the IRA.
Since then Nashi activists have followed the ambassador constantly, picketing the embassy, disrupting meetings where he was speaking and following him around in cars, often forcing his driver into evasive action on the city's busy boulevards.
Last night, the British embassy in Moscow reacted with relief to what it hopes is the end of the campaign.
"We welcome the message delivered by foreign minister Lavrov to Nashi and we look to the Russian authorities to ensure that there is no repeat of the harassment experienced by our ambassador over recent months," a spokesman said last night.
Nashi, unlike other youth movements, which tend to react against the status quo, has set itself up as a staunch supporter of the Kremlin. With financial backing from nationally oriented businesses in Moscow, its leaders have met with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, who has backed its broad message, if not all its tactics.
Founded in the wake of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, where mass movements helped annul elections, Nashi aims to resurrect Russia's days of glory as a global superpower.
But as its website suggests, it's not all about politics, and the organisation has added social activities such as a recent giant Christmas party into the mix in an attempt to broaden its appeal to the young.
It remains to be seen if the group will now respect the request from the Russian foreign minister. In his comments yesterday, Mr Lavrov seemed to acknowledge some of the complaints made by the British foreign office.
He said he respected Nashi's right to exercise its constitutional rights to expression but went on to state that political actions must be "within the framework of the legal field, including Russia's international obligations ensuing, among other things, from the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations of 1961".