Russia’s assassination attempt in Britain hits a nerve
If a foreign power was reckless enough to enter the United States and dispense one of the world’s deadliest poisons in an assassination attempt, injuring civilians in the process, Americans would rightly be outraged and demand a response.
Nothing short of this happened March 4 in Salisbury, Britain, roughly the same distance from London as Richmond, Va., is from Washington.
The British and U.S. governments, along with Germany and France, have accused Russia of using the highly toxic nerve agent Novichok in the attack that left former Soviet-era spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter in critical, comatose conditions; a police officer hospitalized; 18 other people injured; and biohazard crews flocking into neighborhoods.
This is far beyond Cold War “spy vs. spy” stuff. It is the latest abomination by a Russian government that has flouted international norms by supporting a despotic regime in Syria, seizing Crimea, subsidizing insurrection in Ukraine, violating international trade sanctions, doping Olympic athletes and — closest to home — using an information warfare campaign to undermine American elections.
Britain has historically enjoyed a “special relationship” with the United States as one America’s staunchest allies. After North Korea employed VX, another deadly nerve agent, in assassinating Kim Jong Nam — the half-brother of dictator Kim Jong Un — Washington levied sanctions against the Pyongyang regime in response.
Russia’s similar crime deserves a similarly forceful response.
A good, if belated, start were the sanctions announced Thursday by the Trump administration in reaction to Moscow’s interference in the presidential election. But targets of the new sanctions are low-hanging fruit: the same 13 Russians and three Russian companies already indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February for U.S election sabotage, along with six Russian military intelligence officials.
If nothing else, these sanctions validate Mueller’s Russia investigation, which President Trump has dismissed as a “witch hunt.”
The Treasury Department has bigger fish to fry, including wealthy members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner-circle elite. Treasury was required to assemble this classified “Kremlin List” under a sanctions law passed by Congress last summer. Treasury Undersecretary Sigal Mandelker, who heads the agency’s terrorism section, says it is ready to be employed. All it needs is an order from the Oval Office.
“One should go for the Putin inner circle so that the people see there is a cost,” says Anders Aslund, a Russian economy expert with the Atlantic Council who advised Treasury officials on the list.
It’s long past time for Trump to shake off his puzzling reluctance to criticize Russia’s autocratic president and start getting tough, especially because U.S. intelligence officials are convinced that Moscow will try to subvert the upcoming midterm elections.
Otherwise, Putin, a former KGB spy master headed for an easy re-election victory of his own on Sunday, will continue to be emboldened to believe he can act with thuggish impunity, even in the heart of the democratic West.