Not from the British side. Stalin's purges of the officer corps in 1937-38 were thought to have greatly weakened the Soviet Army and therefore they believed that its offensive value was small. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, argued in Cabinet in March 1939 that "if we had to make a choice between Poland and Soviet Russia, it seemed clear that Poland could give the greater value". In April the Chiefs of Staff submitted their Report on the Military Effectiveness of Russia to the Cabinet. They claimed that the poor state of Russian railways meant that "any substantial military support to Poland is out of the question". Russian industry was in such a poor state that "we consider it doubtful whether the national economy of the Soviet Union could deliver war stores at a greater rate than would suffice to keep in the field [to the Russian Western Frontier] thirty divisions". At three weeks maximum, Russian mobilisation would have to be abandoned to prevent an economic collapse. The Minister for Coordination of Defence, Lord Chatfield, said that "Russia, although a great Power for other purposes, was only a Power of medium rank for military purposes...Her assistance would be of considerable, though not great, military value". (The Chiefs of Staff were actually in favour of a Russian alliance but the terms of reference they were given prevented them from saying so.)

The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Halifax, for political reasons, were against a Russian alliance. Chamberlain opposed a Russian alliance, claiming that "there were still important moderate elements in Germany which it was desirable to foster and encourage. He greatly feared that an alliance with Russia would drive those moderate elements into Hitler's camp".

Negotiations had been going on with Russia about some kind of pact, but the Russian desire to occupy Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to forestall Germany were opposed by the British, who were in principle opposed "to traffic in the honour of neutral Baltic States", even if this meant it gave Britain an ally.

The Russian foreign minister Molotov invited the British and French to talks on a possible military pact. Marshal Voroshilov, the Russian delegate, bluntly asked them: "Will Poland accept the entry of Soviet troops in the Vilna corridor in order to make contact with the enemy; likewise will Poland give our troops access to Galicia; likewise allow them passage to get to Romania? ... I consider that a reply to these questions is of cardinal importance. Without a precise answer, any continuation of these discussions is useless".

The British hesitated because the Poles were opposed to the presence of Russian troops in their territory. The French, who were wholeheartedly in favour of an alliance, instructed its delegation on 21 August to sign any agreement that would secure Russia as an anti-German power. By then, however, it was too late. Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, gave Russia everything she wanted in a non-aggression pact signed on 23 August.

Therefore, the negotiations for an alliance between Britain, France, Poland and Russia broke down due to British opposition to conceding the Baltic and eastern Poland as a sphere of Russian influence and Polish opposition to the presence of Russian troops. Germany, of course, had no such scruples and was willing to agree to this for tactical reasons and so won Russia's signature.