Nigel Casey, UK ambassador to Russia: No communication is extremely dangerous
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Russia editor, speaks to Nigel Casey, the UK’s ambassador to Russia, about the challenges of working in Moscow on behalf of a government that views President Putin’s Russia as a threat to Britain. He believes this job is one of the most challenging - and important - of his career. In a wide ranging conversation, the ambassador describes his life in Moscow over the last two years, a period of heightened tensions between the UK and Russia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The number of diplomats in the city has been drastically reduced and, for a British ambassador in Moscow, there are daily challenges to deal with. You’re going to hear his experience of being followed wherever he goes in Russia and how, on occasions, his staff face harassment. He sees a key part of his job - defusing potentially dangerous diplomatic misunderstanding with the Russian government.
He also reveals the gap between the anti-British rhetoric heard in the country’s state media and the genuine curiosity of ordinary Russians towards the UK. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presenter: Steve Rosenberg Producers: Ben Tavener, Clare Williamson and Lucy Sheppard Editor: Justine Lang
Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
(Image: Nigel Casey. Credit: UK Gov)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Hello, I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor, |
| 0:09.6 | and this is the interview from the BBC World Service, |
| 0:12.9 | the best conversations coming out of the BBC, |
| 0:15.8 | people shaping our world from all over the world. |
| 0:19.5 | Today we are spending trillions on war and peanuts on peace. |
| 0:23.1 | Wind power in the United States has been subsidized for 33 years. Isn't that enough? Solar for 25 |
| 0:28.7 | years. That's enough. I don't have army. I don't have missile rockets. I have my body. I have my |
| 0:35.6 | voice. I love singing and so my goal was always to do better and better at it. |
| 0:40.1 | I was still in an induced coma in hospital when the world was defining me. |
| 0:45.5 | For this interview, I met Nigel Casey, the UK's ambassador to the Russian Federation |
| 0:50.7 | at the official ambassadorial residence, which is directly opposite the Kremlin, |
| 0:56.4 | just across the river Moscow. In a wide-ranging conversation, the ambassador describes his life |
| 1:02.2 | in Moscow over the last two years, a period of heightened tension between the UK and Russia |
| 1:08.4 | following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. |
| 1:13.2 | The number of diplomats in the city has been drastically reduced, |
| 1:17.0 | and for a British ambassador in Moscow, there are daily challenges to deal with. |
| 1:21.8 | You're going to hear him say that he's followed wherever he goes in Russia, |
| 1:26.0 | and how, on occasions, his staff face harassment. |
| 1:29.9 | He sees a key part of his job diffusing potentially dangerous diplomatic misunderstandings with the Russian |
| 1:36.6 | government. He tells me there's a gap between the anti-British rhetoric you hear in the state |
| 1:42.2 | media and the genuine curiosity of ordinary Russians |
... |
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