How it feels to be on Russia’s sanctions list
When I called Russian President Vladimir Putin a murderous criminal and a liar, I wasn’t expecting he would notice or retaliate. And then, on a quiet Sunday, my phone began beeping. Turned out I was being sanctioned by Russia for being among those ‘‘who form the Russophobic agenda’’.
No-one has written to inform me. I am not counting on an appeal. I saw a statement on the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and have learned to spell my name in Cyrillic. There’s no option to apply to have the sanction revoked, unlike the New Zealand site where banned Russians are given the option to appeal.
I wasn’t planning on visiting Russia this week, so the ban has not been an inconvenience. I am concerned that Russian authorities may try to seize the family super yacht. We certainly won’t be docking in Sebastopol any time soon.
Financier Bill Browder was put on an Interpol watchlist for lobbying against Putin’s crimes. It made international travel difficult for him for many years. I wonder whether sanctions will turn into bots, or border hassles. It’s unusually ominous to be officially listed as an enemy of a state. Putin’s regime has repeatedly, and brazenly, violated other countries’ territory to poison its opponents.
I did visit once as a teenager when it was still the USSR. Friends later published a bestseller, which was a tour guide about what not to do in Russia, loosely based on everything I did wrong (don’t swap dollars for roubles in a back alley. You’ll get lotto tickets). I loved the people. Russian families invited us for dinner, at great risk to themselves. Hanging out with foreigners was illegal. I swapped a pair of jeans for a fur hat in Red Square.
I grew up with stories from my Polish stepmother, who arrived in the US as a political refugee in the 1970s. She was fleeing the Soviet occupation of Poland. Her father had his construction company confiscated, then ‘‘nationalised’’. He stayed, but smuggled his family out.
My stepmother’s reaction to my news? ‘‘Keep a low profile.’’ She knows what Putin’s old KGB friends are capable of.
Being banned from entering Russia is obviously not going to shut me up. The risks I take are nothing to those of my Polish family in the 1970s.
This column was going to be about the Reserve Bank, but monetarists will still be wrong next week. They can wait while I again remind you that Russia is a violent, outlaw, aggressor country led by a war criminal.
So what is the point of the Russian sanction? I think it’s a toothless threat. Anyone could have been targeted. The list of 32 New Zealanders is random. Some have no idea why they are singled out. But fear is the point. It’s intended to shut people up. If I can be targeted, so can you.
Now I am a little Russophobic, because I wonder what else Russians do when they sanction you. If they are wasting time sanctioning me, imagine what their Ukrainian kill list looks like.
The question arises of how my columns came to the attention of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is a fine newspaper that deserves to be read by more world leaders, yet I am sceptical that Putin absorbs my Friday wisdom with his orange juice and marmalade toast.
I will nominate a suspect: The Russian embassy in Messines Rd, Karori, grateful that hospitable New Zealand permits it to remain open, is clipping columns and sending them back to Moscow with little yellow highlighters over the authors’ names. Expel them.
They are now targeting New Zealand citizens in their own country. I feel vindicated when I wrote that diplomatic tut-tutting is not enough of a response to Russian aggression, and called for a muscular stand in support of international rules and standards of behaviour.
A recent Yale paper reveals that sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy. They are far more reliant on Western imports than they let on. Businesses, capital and over 500,000 highly educated, skilled Russians have fled.
We must maintain our sanctions, confiscate Russian property, and stop selling them food. Our apple industry is literally profiting from supplying Russia, but an apple a day keeps the sanctions away.
When I lived in Europe, a Ukrainian friend gave me some of their vodka to try. It was seasoned with honey and pepper. We gave my friend Marmite in return. Russian poison tasted better, she said. Ukrainian vodka is deliciously superior to Russian.
With none available, we recently sampled ‘‘P*** Off Putin’’ vodka made in New Zealand by Good George brewing – proceeds help Ukraine.
We raised a toast to my sanctioned status, channelling the words of the brave defenders of Snake Island, whose courage and honour make me proud to be on their side: ‘‘Russian warship: Go f... yourself.’’
My stepmother’s reaction to my news? ‘‘Keep a low profile.’’ She knows what Putin’s old KGB friends are capable of.