David Miliband is taking a tough line against the Kremlin after its efforts to drive the British Council out of Russia. The foreign secretary said Russia's behaviour was 'reprehensible'.
The Guardian says that if bilateral relations - poisoned, in the most literal sense, by the Litvinenko affair - continue to deteriorate, then Russia could lose its biggest investor and most of the residual goodwill it enjoys in the EU. 'A long pause for thought, followed by very quiet negotiations' needs to take place, it adds.
'Nothing impresses the great mass of the Russian electorate more than the sight of its leader taking a stand against its 19th-century imperialist rival, which is why Mr Putin has singled out Britain, rather than Germany and France, as the main object of his grandstanding exploits,' Con Coughlin writes in the Telegraph.
'But ... there is little doubt that his underlying motives are an attempt to bully the British government into dropping its attempts to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the recently elected Russian MP who is Scotland Yard's prime suspect in the Litvinenko murder.
'If Britain really wanted to get tough with the Kremlin, making life difficult for both Russia's super-rich and spooks would certainly concentrate a few minds in Moscow.'
The FT's Quentin Peel says Britain needs to look further to find the roots of Russia's anger, which stem from Britain's refusal to extradite the exiled oligarch and critic of Vladimir Putin, Boris Berezovsky, and the west's alleged failure to grasp the importance of Chechnya in the 'war on terror'.
* This is an extract from the Wrap, our digest of the daily papers.
