Putin’s weakness is being exposed
This newspaper has always argued that the West needs to take the propaganda war to the Russians: for too long Moscow has been allowed to laugh at us. Now, finally, the West is laughing at them. We know that four Russians travelled to Amsterdam to try to hack into the network of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has been investigating the Salisbury poisonings. Their mission was a farce.
Not only were they caught and sent home with a flea in their ear, but the Dutch and British security services have now published their personal documents and details of their previous missions. One laptop had connected to the Wifi of a hotel during a world doping conference; another could be linked to attempts to investigate the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine. Here, finally, is hard evidence of the Russians trying to cover up previous mistakes – and blowing their own cover in the process.
This is not how a sophisticated great power operates. Moscow’s actions in the past few years have been corrupt, petty, murderous and incompetent, all symptomatic of a regime in economic decline desperately trying to shore up support with acts of mindless nationalism. Up to this point, the West has been reactive, as if our governments assumed Russia’s malfeasance spoke for itself. No: the charges against Russia need not only to be proven but the evidence broadcast as widely as possible. It is vital to cut through Russia’s diplomatic mockery of Western claims and to put an end to the conspiracy thinking that is dubbed “fake news”. Westerners who insisted that Russia was innocent now look foolish. Perhaps in future, they will take the warnings of their nation’s security services a little more seriously.
And, crucially, Vladimir Putin looks rather daft, too. Students of history will remember that Russian leaders have been punished before for going too far, too fast: Nikita Khrushchev lost his job, in part, over the Cuban Missile Crisis. Popular trust in Mr Putin has reportedly fallen to its lowest point since the annexation of Crimea, either because of his humiliation overseas or his attempts to raise the pension age. The West needs to keep the pressure up. On Mr Putin’s watch, foreign policy has become a mix of James Bond and the Keystone Cops. He remains a dangerous man but, as the world can see, not invulnerable.