The UK needs a coherent policy on Russia
5 min read
Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake urges the Government to show a “robust and consistent” response to Russia.
Last month the Joint Investigative Team (JIT) probing the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 presented its findings. The JIT produced ‘irrefutable’ evidence to underpin their conclusion that the missile which brought down the plane and killed every one of its 298 civilian passengers was fired by pro-Russian rebels, and that the missile itself was taken into rebel-held territory from neighbouring Russia. Moscow dismissed the report as ‘biased,’ and presented a series of conflicting and increasingly implausible excuses to shift the blame.
The reaction of Putin and his regime to the MH17 disaster and the ensuing investigations is reprehensible but unfortunately entirely predictable. It is reprehensible in that the Kremlin has the callous gall to dismiss the evidence that links official Russian actors to the atrocity; but it is predictable because this aggressive campaign of denial and obfuscation in the disaster’s aftermath fits such a familiar pattern of Russian state behaviour.
When a UN aid convoy carrying food and medicine to the starving Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed in a bombing raid (killing 20 people) last month, two Russian warplanes were registered in the sky directly overhead. If these Russian jets were not responsible, then the forces of Putin’s ally Bashar al-Assad almost certainly were. Russia dismissed with ‘resentment and indignation’ the suggestion that either could even have been involved. Kremlin-backed media later claimed the entire incident was an elaborate hoax. The strike destroyed the brief ceasefire which Russia itself had committed to protect.
When Sir Robert Owen’s inquiry found after years of painstaking research that British citizen Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006 on the orders of Russian officials – and ‘probably’ at Putin’s explicit command – the Kremlin waved away the accusations on the grounds that they were ‘politicised’.
The MH17 denials are a classic example of Putin’s favoured tactics. Russia commits an act contrary to the norms, agreements or treaties of international law – witness its adventurism in Ukraine, Syria, and Georgia, its wilful destabilisation of its neighbours and its pernicious habit of interfering in other states’ elections with propaganda or cyber-attacks. Confront Russia with evidence, and Putin’s Government leaps into action issuing flat denials, fomenting bizarre conspiracy theories that implicate NATO or the United States, or attempts to turn the international institutions Putin holds in contempt, against his critics.
Beyond these war zones, the Kremlin conducts an expensive spin campaign through state owned networks RT and Sputnik News. Not only that, Moscow pries into the heart of Western institutions, in an extraordinary effort to bully and harass governments adhering to the international rule of law.
I have previously pushed for justice for the former shareholders and executives of the Yukos oil company, which was arbitrarily expropriated by the Russian state after its Chief Executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky questioned Putin’s ruling methods and explored a joint venture with Western oil majors. Khodorkovsky himself was jailed on trumped-up charges for nearly a decade.
Now we see Russia pulling out all the stops to dodge the USD50 billion compensation bill it faces for destroying this company. Moscow has harried the Belgian government into rewriting laws to make it much more difficult for the former shareholders of Yukos to attach Russian state assets in the country to pay off the debt. In France, the Government is pushing through similar legislation under the threat of unjustified retaliatory asset seizures. The Kremlin has even attempted to blackmail the Obama Administration into pressuring US courts to deny justice to the shareholders.
In the West, we are often guilty of complacency towards Putin’s Russia. During the Coalition the Liberal Democrats supported strong EU sanctions against the Russian state over its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. This complacency is reflected under Theresa May also; it’s unclear what the Prime Minister meant when she expressed to Putin her “dissatisfaction with the current parameters of cooperation” at the recent G20 Summit in Bejing. It would be surprising if she had in mind a senior member of her Cabinet standing in the House of Commons calling protests outside Russian Embassies around the world. And as Home Secretary, May had a lacklustre reaction to the findings of the Litvinenko Inquiry. Despite Liberal Democrat urging she ducked taking serious measures stating that the UK already has “a series of sanctions in place.” And let’s not dwell on the Labour party who enjoy a leader who believes that NATO should be disbanded, wishes to “reorient the Ministry of Defence towards soft power” and has a strongly pro-Kremlin advisor in a key advisory role.
Unless faced with a robust and consistent response to his actions, Putin will continue to act as he wishes. We must show a firm commitment to existing economic sanctions until the Ukraine crisis is resolved, and we must hold a credible threat of fresh measures in the case of any escalation. Until we see a demonstrable and genuine change of behaviour from Moscow – from Ukraine to Syria to cyber warfare – it is critical to maintain sanctions against Russia. Stability in Europe requires Britain to conduct a vigorous defence of our legal and political systems from Russian interference and to stand with our European neighbours on holding Russia to account. Nothing less will be enough.
Tom Brake is a Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington
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