The website of Russia's embassy in UK crashed due to suspected hacking incident on Sunday, according to a Reuters report.

The alleged hacking developed just before Prime Minister David Cameron expands history as he begins the first visit by a British leader to Moscow since the 2006 killing in London of a Kremlin critic.

"Prior to the visit of Prime Minister David Cameron to Russia, the website of the Russian Embassy in London (www.rusemb.org.uk) was brought down by a suspected DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack," the embassy said in a statement.

A DDoS attack is executed by bombarding a website with information requests, effectively overwhelming the system and causing it to crash or become unavailable to internet users.

The embassy said it had set up a "mirror" website (www.rusemborguk.ru) to give the public and media access to information and developments regarding Cameron's trip to Russia on Sunday.

Reuters recalled Britain's relations with Russia have been soured by a dispute over the 2006 murder in London of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died from poisoning by radioactive polonium-210.

Russia has refused to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, an ex-KGB bodyguard Britain supposedly for prosecution for Litvinenko's murder. This caused further problems between the two countries.

Reuters noted, however, that relations have improved slightly since Cameron took power in Britain last year at the head of a coalition government and since Dmitry Medvedev became Russian president in 2008.

A Russian embassy spokesman said problems with the website began on Friday night. The site was accessible for some time on Saturday but was down again on Sunday, he told Reuters.