IT’S JUST COWARDLY FOLLY TO APPEASE THIS THUG
RUSSIA has murdered a British citizen on the streets of London. It has blustered, gloated and lied. And we are not going to do much about it. That is the dismal upshot of the public inquiry into the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
What is abundantly clear is that the British Government is not going to respond properly to the outrageous behaviour of what is a rogue state in all but name.
And by ‘properly’, I mean we should be launching major money-laundering investigations into the tide of dirty Russian cash which swills through our financial system.
We should be telling the crooked bankers, lawyers and accountants who facilitate this theft from the Russian people that the game is up.
We should be expelling Russian spies from London, in the full glare of publicity, and prosecuting those who co-operate with them, betraying our country for money, favours and flattery.
And we should be urging our Nato and European Union allies to join us in fighting back against all forms of Russian subversion, mischief-making and influence-peddling – in everything from energy supplies to propaganda.
In understated legal language, yesterday’s report by Sir Robert Owen, a retired judge, tells an extraordinary tale. Mr Litvinenko, a fugitive former Rusoss sian spy, had intimate, first-hand knowledge of the murky overlap between the Russian state and organised crime.
He advised MI6, Britain’s overseas intelligence service, in particular on the activity of statesponsored Russian gangsters in Spain – touching on the financial interests of the highest levels of power in Moscow. That may have been the motive for his murder.
But Sir Robert also highlights other possibilities – the personal antagonism between Mr Litvinenko and the Russian president Vladimir Putin, for example.
Litvinenko accused Mr Putin of staging a series of apartmentblock bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people, his aim to create a climate of fear in which Russians would yearn for a strong leader. Almost overnight, Mr Putin became Russia’s most popular politician.
More sensationally, Mr Litvinenko also accused Mr Putin of being a practising paedophile.
Sir Robert’s report contemptuously dismisses the conspiracy theories around Litvinenko’s death – that he poisoned himself, was bumped off by British intelligence, or fell foul of gangland associates.
It deals with other myths, too. The polonium isotope that killed Mr Litvinenko would not have cost million of pounds for the quantity used. Nor did it leave a radioactive signature that could be traced back to a top- secret plant in Russia.
TOmy mind, these points add yet more credibility to the report. It does not back every allegation against Russia – just those where the evidence is incontrovertible.
Russia is a highly bureaucratic and centralised country. It is inconceivable that anything as risky and important as the assassination of a British citizen, especially one working for MI6, would not be signed off at the highest level.
Sir Robert also had access to secret documents and witnesses – from MI6, from the domestic spy agency, MI5, and from the Government code-crackers of GCHQ.
He makes it clear that the secret evidence implicated the highest levels of the Russian state in the murder. Spywatchers surmise that it may include an electronic ‘intercept’ – a Russian government communication, probably obtained by America’s National Security Agency, and shared with its ally, GCHQ.
Clearly, the Americans want no details of this to come out. If we are indeed able to snoop on the Kremlin’s secrets, it is best not to give clues of how we do it.
The contempt Mr Putin and his cronies have shown for Britain is astonishing.
Yesterday, they dismissed our legal system as a politicised sham, and have accused us of ‘colonial’ thinking for having the temerity even to request the extradition from Russia of the men identified in the report as the assassins, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi.
By contrast, the greatest credit for the report goes to Mr Litvinenko’s widow, Marina. With dignity and determination, she has pursued her demand for an inquiry – in the teeth of sustained opposition from the British authorities.
Only when relations between the two countries cooled after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014 did the Government finally back down and agree to give Mrs Litvinenko and the other witnesses their day in court. Yet none of the evidence given to the inquiry will have come as a surprise to the authorities. Britain’s intelligence services are all too well-informed about the depravity, greed and murderous brutality that reign in the Kremlin.
They report this in graphic detail to Mr Cameron and other leaders, to the point that the Prime Minister feels physically repelled by Mr Putin when he has to meet him in person.
BUTthe unusually blunt language used in the report creates a diplomatic problem. It is not only the reptilian Russophiles in the City of London who want, for their own self-interested reasons, to maintain a working (ie lucrative) relationship with the Putin regime.
It is the pinstriped appeasers closer to Downing St who are the bigger problem. Our own diplomats see the naming and shaming of the Putin regime not as an opportunity to be exploited, but as an obstacle to be overcome.
They believe that Russia’s help is indispensable in the attempt to start peace talks over Syria, where Mr Putin’s ally President Assad is benefiting from the Russian aggression against militant opposition armies.
That is a catastrophically mistaken approach. If we want to bring the Assad regime to the negotiating table, we should be increasing pressure on its backers, such as Russia and Iran, not soft-soaping them.
The Russian state murdered Mr Litvinenko to send a message to other Russians: do not defect; do not co-operate with Western spy agencies. If you do so, we will hunt you down and mete out a slow, agonising death.
It was a message to Britain, too: Russia can do what it likes in the streets of our capital city. British citizenship bestows no protection.
What message will Mr Cameron send in response?
edward lucas writes for The economist and is the author of The new Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West