If we kowtow to Putin, his disdain for us grows

The Times

The absurd trial of a dead man is one more reason to stand up to the bully in the Kremlin
Many in Moscow complain that Vladimir Putin no longer takes counsel, that he has gone rogue. But the critics are wrong in one important respect. At his side, whispering in his ear, is the ghost of Franz Kafka.

How else to explain the political decision to prosecute, and find guilty, a dead man, the whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky? He had uncovered a tax scam that went almost to the top and so, by the inverted logic of the Iron Law of Putinism, the corpse of Sergei Magnitsky had to be tried and found guilty of tax evasion, as he was last week. He will be unable to do time.

The absurdity of that trial has been compounded by Russian readiness to grant asylum to the renegade National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. Suddenly, cynically, the Russian authorities have decided that whistleblowers, if they are American, deserve the full protection of the State.

Today Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner, will hear whether he will be sent to jail for six years on convoluted embezzlement charges involving £400,000 of state-owned timber. It is wrong of course to anticipate the verdict of even such a plainly politically motivated trial. But I will eat my rabbit-fur schapka if Mr Navalny walks free and proceeds, as he hopes, to contest the September elections for Mayor of Moscow.

How will Britain react to his jailing? Almost certainly with head-shaking disappointment. Or perhaps just demure silence. The Magnitsky verdict was assessed by David Lidington, the Foreign Office Minister, as an “exceptional step”. That fell short in capturing the trial’s perverted essence. Britain, he said, was going to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. The nine-year jail term in absentia of William Browder, Magnitsky’s former employer and co-defendant, drew no significant comment from the Government, even though he is a British citizen.

As for poor Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB but also a British citizen, poisoned in London, he too is getting short shrift. First, the Foreign Office has withheld documents from Sir Robert Owen, the coroner, on grounds of national security. That made it next to impossible to determine whether the Russian state was involved in his killing (as Litvinenko claimed on his deathbed). Then, last week, the Government blocked the possibility of a public inquiry that would have allowed the coroner to study classified evidence in private. Russian officials are well pleased: Litvinenko’s dirty secrets about Mr Putin have been frozen out of the Anglo-Russian relationship.

Since last month we are again exchanging intelligence with Moscow. A bolder government could have drawn up a Litvinenko watchlist, naming and tracking all of those associated with his killing. Instead we are just burying the facts of the case.

Britain is buckling to Russia and in so doing it is misunderstanding the essence of Putinism. Yes, it would be useful to have Russian support on the UN Security Council if we wanted to intervene in Syria or get tougher on Iran. But Russia shows no sign of wanting to abandon the path of diplomatic obstructionism. And indeed David Cameron seems to be reconsidering whether arming Syrian rebels is worth the bother or the blood.

Being nice to Mr Putin may also be about staying on cordial terms with Russian investors. That would explain why we have failed to enforce the so-called Magnitsky Act adopted in the US: a visa ban and asset freeze on a long list of undesirable characters associated with the whistleblower’s death. We consider visa applications only on an individual basis, says the Foreign Office. Crucially, Britain is not freezing the assets of suspect Russians.

That is good news for Knightsbridge estate agents but it should rattle the British business community. Exactly how much political backing are we giving our vulnerable investors in Russia? The Russian courts are skewed. Once a prosecutor takes a case to court there, conviction is likely. It is a system that criminalises those who oppose Mr Putin — not only Mr Navalny but also the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been in jail for nine years. But it is also enough to fall foul of local bureaucrats. And particularly dangerous to come up against the hidden, crooked networks between business and political power.

There is then a strong British interest in campaigning against the abuse of Russian courts. Above all, though, there has to be a better understanding of the nature of Putinism. Moscow’s hope is that its “managed democracy” puts it in the same category as the Asian Tigers such as Singapore: an open trading relationship should lead naturally to an overlap if not a complete sharing of values.

But that’s not working in the Anglo-Russian relationship. The Putin elite, made up of scions of Cold War dynasties, subscribes to the old codes; it expends huge energy in seeking out and neutralising enemies.
Appeasing the Kremlin thus merely increases its contempt for us. In Arthur Koestler’s 1941 classic Darkness at Noon, the communist police interrogator Ivanov rants at the hero in terms that could apply to the Kremlin today. “ History is a priori amoral,” says Ivanov. “To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as it is.”

Russia, this Russia, plays rough. It thinks we are governed by Sunday school teachers. If we want change in Russia, if we want to think about dealing with a Kremlin beyond Vladimir Putin, then we have to toughen up too. hairy woman payday loan https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php быстрые займы онлайн