Awarded for 2 reasons:
1 - Awarded by the ruskies because it makes the whole episode seem heroic. Doing so means that our involvement wasn't down to their insufficient capabilities, rather that our team was exceptional. By implication, the russians were at least acceptable rather than substandard and so the whole issue becomes politcally more acceptable back home.
2 - Accepted by the brits because the ruskies thanking UK gives Tony B a chance to shine in positive publicity. It gives him international brownie points saying how plucky little old UK managed to do so much when other countries couldn't (ie fuelling the 'UK might against US mass' type of high level willy waving).
I'm with Flap62 in questioning what the crew did that was so special as to deserve all the back slapping and I suspect that the answer is 'nothing more than they happen to be convenient at the time' in allowing the realisation of the 2 reasons I mentioned above. BEagle's part of the team reasoning is tosh really as we all know - after all, I'd lay money that the rest of the team of which they were part were conveniently forgotten and their work hasn't been recognised regardless of how much involvement they may have had. The Pprune thread at the time even had aircrew praising ASCOT Ops (it's a rare enough event in itself that it stuck in my increasingly-cloudy memory) but was there anyone from ASCOT there? I doubt it...