Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

The Kremlin starts punching

European Voice

Ways to respond to Russia’s efforts to prevent agreements between the EU and its eastern neighbours. Making friends is one thing. Influencing them is another. Russia has no desire to make friends out of its former empire. It settles for bullying them instead.

In startling form in recent weeks, the Kremlin has taken off the gloves in its dealings with its neighbours. It started trade wars with Moldova, Ukraine and Lithuania, and terrified Armenia into giving up, for now, its plans to do a deal with the European Union at the Vilnius summit in November.

A big Russian-Belarusian military exercise, Zapad-13, supposedly rehearsed counter-terrorism operations, but with warplanes and missiles – to intimidate the Baltic states and Poland. A Finnish lawyer, Kari Silvennoinen, who has written books denouncing Stalinist aggression, was detained at Moscow airport and deported.

The response so far has been modest. The EU is considering opening its market to Moldovan wine. Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrick Ilves hurried to Chisinau this week to lend support. The EU has protested about the treatment of Lithuania, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of Ministers, and of Ukraine. Ukraine is trying to buy gas from Slovakia, reversing the normal flow of the east-west pipeline, to get round the impending squeeze from Russia. But political considerations in Bratislava are slowing this down.

On the military front, NATO’s Steadfast Jazz exercise in early November is much smaller than Russia’s effort. And NATO is bending over backwards to insist that this drill, the first such exercise to be held in the new member states, is all about interoperability and certification, and absolutely nothing to do with showing the means and will to deter any Russian mischief on the alliance’s north-east flank.