RIA Novosti reports that the FSB specifically accused the Zaslavskys of "illegally gathering secret commercial information for the benefit of several foreign oil and gas companies, in order to give them advantages over Russian competitors."

The Russian authorities' attention to the Zaslavskys' ties to the British Council has further soured relations between Britain and Russia. The Guardian reports that in January, Russia closed the regional offices of the British Council in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg as part of the ongoing diplomatic conflict between the two nations over the murder of former KGB agent and British resident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. But Thompson Financial reports that the Russian government said the Zaslavskys' arrests were "not connected to the present state of Russian-British relations."