Fraser Nelson:
The Kremlin is rewriting the rules of conflict and proving that it can literally get away with murder
It’s impossible to hide in Britain. We are one of the most filmed people on earth, with a security camera for every dozen citizens. If you avoid train stations, the motorway cameras will catch you. Disguise your face, and the way you walk can mark you out. The Metropolitan Police has a division of “super-recognisers” who trawl through video footage to spot criminals, with an astonishing rate of success. It would be easier to get away with an assassination in the former East Germany than in modern-day Salisbury, as Vladimir Putin has just found out. The killers he sent for Sergei Skripal have been identified and shamed; his operation brutally exposed.
That, at least, is how we see it. In Moscow, it might look rather different: showing the world that it can strike anywhere, with relative impunity. The Kremlin has again demonstrated that it will not play by the West’s rules, reneging on a spy swap deal in a way even the Soviets never dared to do. This Salisbury attack also puts other potential defectors on notice: you may run to a country like Britain, but they can never properly protect you. Theresa May can expel some Russian diplomats and ask her allies to do the same. But beyond that, there’s not a lot she can do apart from protest at Putin’s new rules.
The two assassins with their photographs plastered all over the newspapers, far from being disgraced, may now find themselves made into heroes in Russia. This was what happened to Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun when they were identified as the murderers of Alexander Litvinenko. They left a clumsy trace of radioactivity that allowed police to retrace their steps, from the hotel room they used to the aircraft they flew in. Both denied everything, and then lapped up the glory in Moscow. Lugovoi was elected to the Duma and ended up marrying a go-go dancer in a lavish ceremony on the Black Sea.
This may explain the recklessness of the Skripal operation. “Toilet tradecraft,” said Johnny Mercer, a Tory MP. “More Johnny English than James Bond,” said Ben Wallace, the security minister. But how subtle did Putin intend to be? If the Russian criminal mafia wanted someone dead, they’d send a hitman and make it look like a mugging. But in Salisbury, two serving intelligence officers hopped over from Moscow via Aeroflot using Russian passports, carrying a nerve agent easily traceable back to Russia. They left so much collateral damage that 21 people required medical treatment. It doesn’t just seem messy: it looks like deliberate provocation, intended to send a message to Britain and the world.
Russia is mired in economic woe, its people impoverished, its entire military budget smaller than the rise that Donald Trump is planning for the US armed forces. In any standard military conflict, it would lose. But in playing by his rules – and flouting ours – Putin has found a way of getting the West to fear him again. He taunts, pokes, kills, then sits back to watch the reaction. The West can understand war and peace. But Putin is trying something in between, with a strategy of constant destabilisation: not a Cold War but a hot peace. We have no idea how to react. Expelling spies might have hurt in the Brezhnev era, but it is little more than symbolic when the spying is done through cyberspace.
We sometimes forget how Russians see all of this, and what they went through after the Cold War. It’s hard to think of a country that suffered a greater loss of power or prestige. Almost overnight, it went from superpower to an irrelevance – still a source of deep resentment among its young. This has left a receptive audience for Putin’s tale of national rebirth, people who cheer on his revanchism in Crimea, Syria and beyond. The sanctions on Russia serve to help the Kremlin’s narrative of entrenchment.
Theresa May delivered suitably stern words in the House of Commons this week. It was intended to sound like a declaration of war on Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, which oversaw the Skripal operation. But other than the language, which has been dialled up to Defcon 2, the British response has been mild. Mrs May could shut down Russia’s sizeable “trade delegation” in London (seen in government to be a hotbed of mischief) but did not, as this might lead to the Kremlin closing down the BBC in Russia.
Britain certainly won’t be declaring cyber-war on Russia because the Kremlin’s cyber-unit has massive funding and, unlike our equivalent, doesn’t have to play by any rules. We already have the “unexplained wealth orders” intended to target Russian oligarchs in London, but there have been strikingly few casualties so far.
The Prime Minister has – just – been able to squeeze a joint response from her allies, with several expelling Russian diplomats. If Putin wanted to see whether Europe and America were still capable of uniting after Trump and Brexit, he has his answer. But there were a few EU countries – such as Greece and Austria – who preferred inaction. The US deported 60 Russian spies. But the Kremlin is understood to have about twice as many still there – as both sides know. Trump prefers good relations with Putin, as his recent visit to Helsinki demonstrated.
The Kremlin has pledged to ignore the arrest warrant for the two Salisbury assassins, as expected. The hit men will have their foreign travel curtailed. But they are unlikely to be the type who plan autumn parties in the Côte d’azur and will likely be well looked-after in Russia now. When Anna Chapman was unmasked as a Russian spy by the American government eight years ago, she was sent back to Moscow and treated as a hero, embarking upon a career as a television host. Putin seems to be delighted for Russians and the world to know that he’s on manoeuvres, looking after his friends and sending hit men after his enemies.
An unnamed British government source was quoted yesterday as saying that more retribution will come and that Putin “must see that there is a price attached” to what he does. This is precisely the point. He has seen the price, he thinks it well worth paying. And that he’ll end up looking very much like a man who can get away with murder.