We must beware of the Russian bear
IN THE past five weeks two pretty bizarre events have happened, to be met by equally weird reactions. First, an attempt was made to murder two Russians on British soil, one resident and one visiting. Sergei Skripal long ago spied for us against his native Russia. He was caught, tried, sentenced and served years in a Russian jail. Then he was swapped, with others, against Russian agents captured in the West. Finally free, he was allowed to settle to live quietly and harmlessly in Salisbury.
His daughter, still resident in Russia, came visiting and within hours both were ill from an extremely rare and uniquely Russian poison which it has to be presumed she inadvertently brought with her. A single brush-pass with this Novichok is likely to be lethal and somehow a British police officer was also contaminated by it and was brought to death’s door. It may be none of the three will die but none will ever be the same again.
As to who was responsible, only fantasists or professional liars such as the Russian government continue to suggest it was anyone but the Kremlin. No one other than this can obtain or have any access to Novichok.
Moreover, we have all over the past 10 years watched Russia degenerate from a merely authoritarian state to a full-fledged dictatorship under its increasingly bizarre and paranoid dictator Vladimir Putin.
HE YEARS ago caused the Duma to pass a new law authorising Russia to carry out contract killings of anyone it chose (not necessarily escaped Russians) anywhere in the world. The days of reformer Mikhail Gorbachev are long gone and we had better simply get used to that.
The second event was the Russian general election that reappointed Putin for another six years as untrammelled tyrant of Russia and its increasing dependencies as he re-establishes the inner core of the old USSR, abolished by Gorbachev. The entire election was so blatantly rigged that had it happened in a sweaty banana republic we would all have just shrugged.
And the reactions? Donald Trump rings the Kremlin to congratulate the despot on his rigged result. He does not mention contract killing in the shadow of Salisbury cathedral, though the US describes itself as a world pinnacle of democracy.
The general secretary of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, does exactly the same and to hell with EU solidarity. And Angela Merkel, chancellor of the richest and most influential democracy in Europe, follows suit.
In Germany’s case there is a clear explanation. Years ago up to 40 per cent of Germany’s energy needs were met by her hyper-efficient and clean nuclear generators. But, impelled by political correctness and the votes of the Green Party, Merkel abolished them all and elected to replace those 40 per centage points of energy needs with Russian gas and oil, thus becoming a dependent state of the neo-Stalinist Kremlin. What on earth did she think she was doing?
If ever there were an argument that with billions of cubic metres of shale oil and gas beneath our feet we British must stop faffing about and drill for them. Events have proved it.
Well resourced Armed Forces and energy self-sufficiency are today the only two guarantors of true national independence in a world becoming more and more brutal.
To rely on fair-weather friends across the Channel or an oddball across the pond is to toss dice for all our futures.