STARS SENT TO PLAY USSR FOR 'POP PROPAGANDA' ELTON & CLIFF... UK's secret weapons in the Cold War

Visiting Kyiv for the first time as Foreign Secretary earlier this month, Yvette Cooper confirmed 100 new sanctions against Russia, targeting its military and energy sectors in a bid to exert pressure to end its aggression against Ukraine.

- BY EMMELINE SAUNDERS

But the war of words between the UK and Moscow is certainly nothing new.

Despite being united in defeating the Nazis during the Second World War, problems set in the moment the guns stopped firing.

Suspicion began after the Allied forces declared victory and started dividing what was left of the war-torn continent into Western and Eastern blocs.

And, 80 years ago this month, Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Union embassy clerk based in Ottawa, defected to Canada, taking with him 109 documents detailing the Russians' wartime espionage activities in the West.

The "Gouzenko Affair" is often cited as one of the key triggers for the Cold War.

Yet, in 1955, two years after the death of dictator Joseph Stalin, British artists, actors and musicians began an extraordinary series of cultural swaps between the UK and the USSR, later to include the likes of superstar duo Elton John and Cliff Richard.

November marks the 70th anniversary of director Peter Brook bringing Hamlet to Moscow, a play that had not been performed in the Russian capital since the 1930s.

It was soon followed by exports such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Helen Mirren, Laurence Olivier and actress wife Joan Plowright, and TV presenter Hughie Green.

The latter hosted a Russian version of Double Your Money in Moscow, the first time a Western quiz show had been broadcast in the USSR.

"The British government saw this as a way of building up British prestige and influence," says Sarah Davies, a history professor at Durham University, who is writing a book on the subject.