Lord Mandelson, the Business secretary, will this week lead a delegation of British corporate leaders to Russia on a trip that is being hailed by Moscow as an important sign of the UK’s willingness to maintain a strong bilateral trading relationship.

Over the last eighteen months, the UK’s relations with Russia have been amongst the worst of any European Union nation, following the dispute over Moscow’s failure to extradite the man London suspects of murdering former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.