Don’t expect the EU to unite against Russia

With Putin buying some European states and bullying others, Britain must remain constant

We should welcome the stance of our new Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Vladimir Putin’s antagonistic regime. In Washington, he has said that the EU should stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the US on a joint approach. Hunt is right on Russia. However, whether he can persuade Europe to continue that journey is another matter.

The US has announced additional sanctions on Russia, following its finding that the Salisbury poisoning was organised by Putin’s regime. More will automatically come into place soon unless Russia complies with US requests, which is unlikely to happen. The UK’S sanctions are weaker than those of the US. Where we have let oligarchs close to Putin float their firms on the London Stock Exchange, Washington sanctions them.

A clear and unambiguous stance is not about being anti-russian, but pro-democracy. One of the great issues for our generation is how free societies deal with authoritarian states and how those states, notably Russia and China, use the freedoms of open societies to undermine them.

The reasons we have sanctions in place are clear. Russia has annexed Crimea, instigated a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, conducted a failed putsch in Montenegro and led Georgia to war in 2008. The Kremlin also attempted to manipulate the 2016 US presidential elections, a story that has yet to reach its explosive denouement. This is all against a backdrop of subversive information campaigns waged via Kremlin-controlled media, mass killings in Syria and continual cyber-attacks on Western targets.

But let’s be realistic about our European neighbours. In future, it may be more difficult to get a united response from EU states. That’s in part because Putin’s political warfare tactics are working. He is playing European nations off against each other. His aims are to weaken Nato and the EU, to split the US from Europe and to build up Russia’s sphere of influence in eastern Europe.

So, for example, Putin’s United Russia party is allied to two former fringe groups that are now in power in Austria and Italy. He is forging closer ties with Greece, Hungary and Turkey. Russian money – dirty or otherwise – is a highly significant force in Cyprus. Russian loans have been used by the French Front National. Russia has supported anti-eu politicians in the EU Parliament on both the Left and Right fringes. Yet the Baltic republics feel threatened by the Kremlin. Sweden and Finland have increased defence budgets or produced mass mobilisation plans. Russia appears to be rearming Bosnian Serbs, possibly for a “managed conflict” in the Balkans.

The net result of this campaign to bully some while buying others may be that, if Putin threatens Nato members in eastern Europe, Nato members in southern or central Europe will refuse to support them. At that point, Nato becomes a paper tiger and is dead in all but name, thus achieving one of Putin’s strategic objectives.

However, the Kremlin needs to achieve its disruptive aims while keeping Russian gas flowing into Europe and receipts flowing to its Treasury. Although states such as Poland and Lithuania have weaned themselves off Russian energy, Germany is partially dependent – 75 per cent of its natural gas supply comes from Russia. Effectively, the German taxpayer has been paying for Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as its general rearming.

In the next few years Russia wants to double its energy supply capacity by building the geopolitically critical Nord Stream II pipeline to Germany. Officially Russia and Germany see this project in commercial terms. In reality, it is one of the most politically divisive infrastructure projects in European history. It will arguably give Russian gas even greater importance in European energy supplies at a time when EU states should be looking elsewhere.

However, all is not well in America. While it is true to say that the US is tougher on Russia than the EU is, the Trump administration has a unique conflict – with its own president. After his painful press conference with Putin at Helsinki, US media outlets as well as Republican and Democrat politicians are asking if President Trump has indeed been compromised. Thankfully, Trump cannot withdraw sanctions unilaterally.

All this means that Britain’s consistency and sense of purpose are more important than ever. The UK remains a nation that is global, transatlantic and European. Our task should be to help align the US and Europe as well as allies throughout the world for the mutual security of all. That implies much more work and thinking on Global Britain than has been the case thus far, as well as a governmental rethink on the balance of hard and soft power tools and how they are best coordinated. I hope Hunt’s team gets to grips with this important work. They will not succeed without doing so.