I helped launch the new friendship group because it would be rash to ignore a vital member of the international community

This week I helped launch the Conservative Friends of Russia, a group for those with an interest in Russian politics, history, business and culture. Our aim is to improve relations between the two countries, provide a forum for open debate and help to inform decision making in business and politics.

The "Friends of …" model is familiar within British political parties – there are many such groups including those dedicated to America, Israel, India, Poland and Azerbaijan – but there has never been one for Russia, which is unusual given the size of its economy and its importance on the international stage.

Whether we like it or not, Russia is an influential and essential part of the international community and its importance will only grow over time. We need to stop making decisions based on misconceptions that are decades old, and deal with reality.

Britain is in a difficult economic state and should be looking to remove barriers to trade and employment, particularly with a country bursting with natural resources. Currently, many businesses are struggling to trade because of visa complications that could be easily resolved by politicians, but few are prepared to sit down and listen to businessmen trading with Russia. We provide a forum to enable that engagement and to amplify the voices of the unheard.

There are many areas of potential co-operation between the UK and Russia. Energy is an obvious one. With prices rising rapidly in Britain, why ignore the one country with an overwhelming amount of natural resources? Science and technology is another, with the two countries investigating co-operation in space.

Increasingly in need of the finances brought by foreign students, UK universities welcome about 20,000 Russians each year. Surely we owe them a warm welcome and a positive learning environment rather than assuming they are all spies?

We must remember, however, that being a Friend of Russia is not the same as being a Friend of the Russian government. By that reckoning, our Conservative members were not friends of Britain between 1997 and 2010 and we can assume that the entire British public colluded in the "dodgy dossier" and the expenses scandal. It is simply small-minded prejudice to discount a friendship group on the basis of the actions of the few. I've seen some astonishing examples of this in the past week.

It's certainly not the easiest of times for a group with an interest in Russian politics. Some recent decisions have been alien to our way of thinking, given our now largely secular society and long history of democracy. Russia, on the other hand, is an extremely religious country and democracy there is only just approaching its 21st birthday. Rather than immediately denouncing everything we see, why not listen to the full arguments from a variety of sources and form an opinion based on facts and information rather than ignorance and emotive reflex?

There will always be differences of opinion in politics and this is true between all nations. Each has to deal with its own unique circumstances and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What is important is having a forum within which different opinions can be heard, exchanged and discussed, and this is the purpose of CFoR.

We absolutely understood that we were embarking on a controversial project that many would try to strangle at birth. However, in contrast to the comments of armchair critics on Twitter who have not attended our events, my inbox is bursting with positive messages of support from attendees of all backgrounds – students, businesses, MPs, charities and cultural organisations. Many media outlets have praised our bravery in tackling a thorny but necessary subject. Certainly, our membership has expanded rapidly in the past few days. I like to live by the adage that fortune favours the bold, and I believe that beyond the initial hysteria, CFoR will have an extremely promising and positive future.

• The first Russian motherboard based on ARM-processor Baikal-M