The move by the British Prime Minister (pictured top, left) marks the first time his nation has joined forces with Russia since London suspended such ties after the 2006 killing of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, a Vladimir Putin (pictured top, right) critic and former officer in Russia's FSB security service who died in central London after drinking tea laced with the radioactive element polonium-210.

Britain has since unsuccessfully pressed Russia to extradite the man it believes was behind the poisoning, former KGB bodyguard Andrey Lugovoy, who has protested his innocence.

"We both want the Sochi Games to be a safe and secure," Cameron said after meeting Russian President Putin in the Black Sea resort where the Games will be held.

"So today I have agreed with President Putin that there should be limited cooperation between our security services for the Sochi Olympics."

Sochi is alarmingly close to Russia's Muslim provinces of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, while the North Caucasus region is home to a raging Islamist insurgency, where attacks by militants fuelled by poverty and the ideology of global jihadism are a frequent occurrence.


Meanwhile, a suicide bombing in Moscow in 2011 killed at least 35 people at Domodedovo, Russia's busiest airport - something International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge claimed had not shaken confidence that Sochi will host a safe Olympics and Paralympics in 2014.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed the move with less than a year before the start of the Games.

"Security service cooperation was suspended," he said.

"It was frozen on the initiative of the British side, but nevertheless we are satisfied with their readiness to cooperate in the interests of ensuring the safe and peaceful organisation of the Olympic Games in Sochi."

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