UPDATE 1-Russian oligarch pays for Turner exhibit in Moscow

(Adds Usmanov, Pushkin and Tate director quotes and details)

By James Kilner

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russia is to exhibit paintings by the English artist William Turner for the first time since 1975 despite a sharp downturn in relations between London and Moscow.

Metals billionaire Alisher Usmanov -- who maintains close links with the Kremlin and owns nearly a quarter of the London soccer club Arsenal -- has bankrolled the exhibition between Moscow's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and London's Tate Britain.

"The generations have changed since Turner was last in Moscow and it's important that the young see him," Zinaida Bonami, Pushkin museum deputy director, told Reuters by telephone on Wednesday.

A row over the 2006 murder of former KGB agent and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London triggered the worst fallout between London and Moscow since the Cold War.

Both sides expelled diplomats and the British government's cultural arm was forced to close two regional offices. Some observers have linked a police crackdown on BP's Russian joint venture TNK-BP to the row, though the Kremlin has denied this.

In December last year, only a last minute deal secured 120 Russian paintings for an exhibition at London's Royal Academy after Moscow had said it was worried the artworks would be confiscated.

But at a news briefing, Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar said he was sure the exhibition of 110 oil and water colour paintings, including some of Turner's most famous, would go ahead in November.