The latest developments in the investigation into the assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed last November in London, is interesting, to say the least.
To no one’s surprise (at least no one who is not a Kremlin stooge), the person the British Director of Public Prosecutions has charged with the murder is an former(?) member of the Russian security services, just as his victim was. The Crown Prosecution Service is formally demanding Andrei Lugovoi’s extradition from Russia.
What makes this really fascinating is that the CPS is well aware that the Russian state has a policy of not extraditing Russian nationals to other countries (nor are they in the habit of surrendering their assassins to foreign police no matter how politely they are asked). The fact they went ahead and made the demand for extradition anyway shows that the government is at last taking the threat Putin and his cronies pose seriously and this is an excellent way of dealing him a no-win hand politically, even though it will not result in Lugovoi being brought to justice. Although no one in an official capacity is saying the Putin regime ordered this murder on British soil, you do not have to squint very hard to see the writing between the lines.
Update: an new article in the Telegraph seems to confirm what I was suggesting about a determination to face Putin down. Good.
Would the UK perhaps have grounds for taking punitive action against Russia in other areas, such as the action taken against Libya following the state-sanctioned assassination of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 or the 1988 Lockerbie tragedy?
Julian, they have not openly accused the Kremlin, they have just accused an ex-KGB guy, so unless they do, I cannot see that as the next move.
But who know what else came up in the investigation?
Yeah, right. so this former KGB guy just decides to fill in a slow week by getting hold of Polonium-210 which obviously was on spesh at Asda and poisioning some bloke just for the hell of it.
The real story here is that the Russkies are reverting to being gits again under their beloved tyrant Putin. It’s “Cold War II – this time you need our oil!”
They ought to be taken down a peg or two, reminded that they lost the war and that losing a war carries a cost. In this case the cost is not being able to poison people they don’t like on UK territory.
I just saw some dissident geezer on Newsnight say that what we’re seeing is an unprecedented take over by the secret servicce. Take over, yes. In the context of Russia that’s hardly without precedent.
I don’t have much faith in the useless plods or the DPP. They’ve got it badly wrong before
Maybe Lugovoi is telling the truth. After all, why poison yourself as well as the victim ? There’s more to this than meets the eye.
The more I ponder the world the more I come to the realization that certain people are just bound and determined to live under the boot of autocrats. Russia is a perfect example, as is the Islamic world.
Preaching the gospel of democracy won’t change this, the best we can do is keep these degenerate regimes and their people at bay.
Unfortunately Russia is far too big and powerful, and more importantly rich, for Britain to effectively take any real action over this.
I agree with Perry’s initial analysis – it’s just a great way for the UK to deal the USSR…er, Russia, a no-win hand.
Hank Scorpio, do you suggest that those peoples are just genetically pre-disposed to dictatorship? What an appalling view, that some ‘peoples’ are ‘beyond help.’
Patrick:
I wouldn’t say “genetically” predisposed, but frankly I believe in such things as a national character, and yes, I do think a lot of people are “beyond help”.
Russia, the Middle/Near East, etc are all areas that have always been under the thumb of a strong man. As far as I’m aware they have no real concept or example from their own pasts of liberty, and yes, I think this explains their inability to embrace it.
As opposed to, say, England in the pre-parliamentary era?
Rich? Not so much. Britain actually holds the high cards in this, if they are willing to use them (which they are not). Russia wont extradite? Fine, revoke all visas to Russian citizens, close their embassy. Russia will have to do the same in response, which will cost perhaps billions in business and tourist dollars, which Russia cant afford. If i were the new PM, i would leverage the US to broker a deal or come on board in exchange for continuing support in Iraq.
But that wont happen, mainly because of the continuing pussification of The West in general, and Europe in particular. The diplomats will handle it, by which i mean nothing will happen.
Rich? Not so much. Britain actually holds the high cards in this, if they are willing to use them (which they are not). Russia wont extradite? Fine, revoke all visas to Russian citizens, close their embassy. Russia will have to do the same in response, which will cost perhaps billions in business and tourist dollars, which Russia cant afford. If i were the new PM, i would leverage the US to broker a deal or come on board in exchange for continuing support in Iraq.
But that wont happen, mainly because of the continuing pussification of The West in general, and Europe in particular. The diplomats will handle it, by which i mean nothing will happen.
Russia wants to be considered a major player in world affairs. Russia’s unwillingness to extradite Lugovoi based upon its simple claim that “he did not murder” indicates that Russia has not yet advanced to join the major nations.
Having abundant natural resources does not necessarily make a nation progressive. Britain should continue to press Russia for extradition.
Fine, revoke all visas to Russian citizens, close their embassy. Russia will have to do the same in response, which will cost perhaps billions in business and tourist dollars, which Russia cant afford.
Thanks a bunch. That’s my wife unable to visit the UK and me unable to visit her in Russia.
Russia’s extraction industries –gold, oil among others– fell prey to Yeltsin’s Kremlin kleptocrats a decade ago. Like Charles V’s default to Aztec gold, like ignorant and stupid Islamists today, Putin’s geopolitical extortions are a dead-end… by 2050, Great Russia from Petersburg to Vladivostok will have shrunk to 50-million deadened souls, less than suffered Czarist tyranny in 1750.
There will be more Litvinenkos, done in by more Putins. But soon enough, despite the KGB apparat’s Estonian cyberwar, brutal assaults in Georgia and Ukraine, Stalin’s Bronze Soldier now surveys a Soviet cemetary. Bluster and threaten as it will, Putin’s Evil Empire redux contributes nothing, lacks all capacity, will soon enough lose half Siberia to China and its indefensible Southern Tier to frothing, murderous Islam.
Brazen and corrupt, as power ebbs the heirs of Lenin will rage against the light. Too late… treachery and violence only go so far. Darkness and Death are Russia’s portion, well-deserved.
The new PM gets one high and inside on the first pitch.
For those who are not familiar with colonial idiom, high and inside is a baseball pitcher throwing very close to a batter’s head. It’s intimidation. This is the main cause for most bench clearing brawls.
The British should request formal extradition of the accused from every country in the world. At least he will have to choose whether to vacation in Cuba or Venazuala. If he sticks his nose outside of Russia, grab him. Declare all members of the Russian Security Service persona non grata in Britain.
Really? Some facts (I am using purchasing power parity GDP figures):
Russia: 142 million people, $1.7 trillion GDP
Britain: 60 million, $1.9 trillion GDP
Britain+EU: 486 million pop, $12.8 trillion GDP
USA: 300 million pop, $13 trillion GDP
China: 1.3 billion pop, $10 trillion GDP
China is big, powerful and rich. Nuclear armed Britain is as rich as nuclear armed Russia and has vastly more important friends and long term systemic trading partners.
Remove the energy sector from the Russian figures and their true weakness becomes even more apparent, because energy is a weapon you can only use by denying it to everyone else who would want to buy it (and thereby not benefiting from it’s value yourself), it is a weapon you cannot really use very often or for very long. Moreover the more you use it or threaten to use it, the more you drive the people you use it against to find alternatives.
All the Kremlin has is delusions of being big and powerful.
Just send in a Bond-James-Bond to do away with the blighter! What’s the good of having a Secret Service if it won’t do simple things like that!? Leave him stranded in the heart of Chernobyl, and brazenly say he must have sleep-walked there, out of guilt. Really, there’d be nothing to it!
Now here’s hoping that the spy services are listening to our every e-word, and getting bright ideas……
Diplomacy, it’s been said, is the art of saying “nice doggie” while reaching for a stick. The stick is an alternate energy source that can replace Russia’s gas and oil at a price the UK is willing to pay. That’s the day that the UK (and the US and the rest of the world) can stop saying “nice doggie” to an awful lot of regimes.
But the people are a different matter. We need to build connections so that their less than sane regimes cannot easily prime them into a nationalist lather and get them to do something stupid.
It will be quite humiliating for Britain to climb down after this. I’m sure Putin will threaten Brown into rolling over for him.
If the Royal Navy and Britainn could do nothing more than abjectly beg Iran for it’s sailors back pretty please, what gives anyone confidence that Putin, a hard man not afraid to kill people won’t have Gordon Brown begging?
Suppose that Blair was indeed Bush’s poodle (more like Blair influenced Bush but let’s suppose)? Putin can send men to KILL Brown. Does anyone honestly think the British Security Services, overwhelmed by PC and handcuffed by legalisms, could do anything other than issue an after-action report? British Security can’t even stop jihadis at home. And Putin could certainly threaten Britain quite credibly. With a nuked London by a deniable jihadi proxy if Brown does not back down (which of course he will).
Smart people are often stupid (about violence). It works. Putin just killed someone spectacularly in London, in full view of the world, and got away with it. He’ll use violence and the credible threat of violence to make Brown publicly humiliate himself as the Iranians did. Britain is weak and easy prey because it has under Blair and Brown ruled out use of force.
Being weak has consequences. As Putin himself said after Beslan, “we were weak and the weak get beaten.” Britain should expect a good round of beating. As should the EU.
Honestly, what can they do about it? Send a sharply worded letter of protest? Violence unless met with stronger and overwhelming counter-violence, always wins.
Britain and the EU are weak and easy prey for anyone, absent Uncle Sam to protect them. Who’s been kicked around enough to take his protection and go home.
Re: British Security can’t even stop jihadis at home.
The whole comment betrays a pretty ‘special’ lack of understanding.
But this bit is especially dumb.
A high profile trial finished recently where they did just that and sent the treasonous scum down, thus demonstrating that they can.
These vermin as they say, only have to be lucky once, security services have to be right all the time, look at 9/11.
While I don’t doubt that Scotland Yard have conducted a thorough investigation, it borders on the bizarre that the UK has made this extradition request for Lugovoi. The UK has no leverage over Russia on the international stage, Russia has politically outmanouvered the West (Including the USA) on every issue that comes to mind lately.
Whilst Western Europe is guzzling down Russian gas and increasingly so Russian oil, the UK government will have to either accept that this extradition request is a hollow gesture or be prepared to cut a deal.
The Russian government maintain a lot of antipathy towards their British counterparts for harbouring dissidents (Boris Berezovsky springs to mind, the rich oligarch now based in the UK who openly called for voilent overthrow of the Putin regime in a national UK newspaper very recently), it is most doubtful the Russian goverment would accept a request that goes against their extradition laws for the death of one civilian, especially as he was a avid member of the anti-Putin camp.
An extradition request autmatically means that Lugovoi will not be able to travel.
Russia is basically Nigeria with nuclear weapons at the moment, and after the oil blow out, the bills will indeed start to come through. However, although Putin has rather crudely crushed all dissent, his position is not as secure as it looks. He has plenty of enemies, and if they can not speak out right now, it is only a matter of time.
What possible value is there to penalising ordinary Russians? Do you think the people at the top will care? No, they will just use that to say “See! We told you those western people were bastards! Rally to the Flag, Comrades!”
No, as far as I am concerned, let as many Russians bring their capital and talents to the west as possible.
I have nothing against Russia, it is the Russian government I do not like.
Mark Breuner –
‘Russia wont extradite? Fine, revoke all visas to Russian citizens, close their embassy. Russia will have to do the same in response, which will cost perhaps billions in business and tourist dollars, which Russia cant afford.’
You flout this absurdity as though it is a realistic option! Do you understand to what extent Britain is dependant on Russian gas supplies? Russia turned the taps off for just a couple of days last Winter and Western Europe went into convulsive shock. It is effectively a one-sided relationship. British companies (Particulary oil majors) would lose out much bigger than Russia ones if anyone were seriously to believe your suggestions could happen.
Russia can’t even be bullied by the U.S with international oil prices the way they are. And certainly not by Britain, who couldn’t even extricate captured navy personell from a non-nuclear, politically isolated Iran by means other than begging and humility. Putin also enjoys a lot more influence and sway over domestic politics and Russian big-business than the British poltical establishment, giving him many more options in a potential diplomatic showdown than Britain has.
Revoking visas all willy-nilly is a stupid reaction and I like the idea of encouraging brain drain by encouraging educated Russians to Go West, Young Man.
OTOH: What about withdrawing recognition of the diplomatic immunity of most of the embassy staffs? It seems to me that the Russian ambassador might become more helpful once his bodyguards no longer have even “course of official duties” immunity and have to comply with UK or Washington DC firearms laws. Or, if his wife is locked out by the host country.
And the Met should get an arrest warrant issued if they haven’t already, and then forward it to every single country which might possibly ever serve it.
Really? I was not aware the UK imported any Russian gas.
Really? I was not aware the UK imported any Russian gas.
Though not supplying direct to the U.K, by controlling a large portion of the flow of gas to the European coninent, Russia wields a strong influence over gas import prices for the U.K. Only two European nations are self-sufficient in regards to gas supplies, Norway and Denmark.
Here is an indication on how strong a political-hand gas supply is becoming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,16518,1676593,00.html
As Nick Vaslov has pointed out, Britain has powerful friends. Britain should take its case to the EU and NATO — article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is relevant here — and see if a package of sanctions can be agreed on. These might include:
arresting Lugovoi if he travels abroad,
preventing all FSB agents from foreign travel,
downgrading diplomatic links with Russia (reducing the number of people with diplomatic immunity),
reducing travel opportunities for Putin’s cronies,
kicking Russia out of the G-8 (make it the G-7 again),
not buying oil or gas from Russia (bad anyway as they have a habit of turning the taps off),
basing NATO troops in Estonia
Something like this is necessary to send Putin the right message, otherwise he will continue to act as he now does.
Reading these suggestions, I am finding the suggestions unmeasured and exaggerated. The implication here is not that the Russian government ordered the attack, just that a former FSB agent committed it.
Anyone who understands contemporary Russia would realise it is just as likely a mafia hit, who regulary employ retired members of the intelligence forces and military. Litvinenko was no angel, and consorted with shady figures such as Berezovsky who yes, have many enemies in the Russian government but just as many in the Russian underworld from murky business dealings in the Perestroika period.
Litvinenko was a small proberial thorn lodged in the large bear that is Russia. Though he was a annoyance, it would have made much more sense for the Russian government to take out Berezovsky himself, who basically sponsors all these small-time dissidents and has openly called for regime change by means of revolution.
As has been said, we Brits have more to lose from fading diplomatic and business ties than they do.
Yes, it could have been a Russian Mafia hit but for the glaring obvious (or should I say ‘glowingly obvious’) way in which he was killed. Occam’s razor really does suggest that the most obvious candidate is the Kremlin.
Not really. Russia is not a big market, particularly not for Britain. Economically Russia just does not matter that much. As Nick Vaslov wrote earlier, once you discount the energy sector, the small size of Russia’s economy becomes very clear.
Moreover British shareholders have been robbed repeatedly by the Kremlin, which suggests it is foolish in the extreme to invest there.
But in any case, SO WHAT? The notion that economic ties (particularly ones so weak and problematic) justify tolerating the assassination of someone on British soil is both unwise and, for want of a better word, decadent.
In Russia, the mafia is the government.
“As Nick Vaslov has pointed out, Britain has powerful friends. Britain should take its case to the EU and NATO — article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is relevant here — and see if a package of sanctions can be agreed on.”
Britain does indeed have a powerful friend and after wasting time at the EU and NATO, she may want to give us a call. Don’t worry about all your slandering of us and our president, we don’t take it seriously. Whenever you need us, we’re with you. As we say, blood is thicker than water.
“As Nick Vaslov has pointed out, Britain has powerful friends. Britain should take its case to the EU and NATO — article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is relevant here — and see if a package of sanctions can be agreed on.”
Britain does indeed have a powerful friend and after wasting time at the EU and NATO, she may want to give us a call. Don’t worry about all your slandering of us and our president, we don’t take it seriously. Whenever you need us, we’re with you. As we say, blood is thicker than water.
Polonium is used in nuclear initiators. It’s the key ingredient in the trigger for nuclear weapons. So what was Litivenko up to that he had to be killed with this? Could it be he was connected in some deal with it – hence its appearance all over London. He had connections with the Russian Mafia who have made the UK their home thanks to Half wit Blair’s insane immigration policy. So who wanted the polonium for their bombs? Someone who doesn’t have a reactor to make the polonium but has the desire for a bomb. Litivenko & friends were in deep in some murky pie. Why does the UK let him become a citizen but kicks out British descendants from the colonies? There some reason this guy was killed, and he wasn’t telling the truth even at his death. He was not a good guy. Someone has the polonium and were seeking them as the final component in the deployment of their nuclear weapons. The keystone cops at Scotland yard should look at that.
Oh please, clearly some people are just desperate for the obvious to be ignored (the Russian government did it) and instead we should believe some fantasy conspiracy theory.
It is really really simple: Putin cannot stand people opposing him and he has such people killed when possible. Litvinenko was such a person. Anything else is a smokescreen.
Polonium is used in nuclear initiators. It’s the key ingredient in the trigger for nuclear weapons. So what was Litivenko up to that he had to be killed with this?
Simple.
He had to be killed slowly and painfully, and done in a way that left no doubt as to who was responsible. The point was to send a message to everyone else that pissing off Putin would get you a slow and painful death.
Seriously, people- mobsters would have simply beaten him to death and dumped the body in a river. Why go to the trouble and risk of smuggling radioactive substances into a country in this era of paranoia about terrorists with WMDs when you can purchase any number of blunt objects in any town?
Okay, Hank, why was Russian Romantic music so universally damn good, and why did it lead to the 1905 Revolution?
Please combine Putin’s recalcitrance to extradite with this:
http://newsbusters.org/node/12873
pietr,
I sincerely hope you don’t mean Tschaikovsky? Symphony #6 really was pathetic.
Well, after reading all those genial comments, I came to a conclusion that the best way of avoiding troubles is to let ourselves to be F****D in both holes at the same time and do NOTHING!!! Bravo!!! But that is happening al the time now, isn’t it?
Got to say Tchai is a lesser; but what about Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorsky, Prokofiev?
Maybe even Stravinsky, the arch Soviet?
Prokofiev and Stravinsky I rather like. But would you class them as “Romantic”? R-K and Mussorgsky do very little for me.
But would you class them as “Romantic”? Hell, no. Rachmaninov was the last one, AFAIK. Talk about going out with a bang, though. And don’t you dare insult Pyotr Ilyich!
Bogdan of Australia,
A defeatist attitude toward the Putins and the mad mullahs of the world is not in our interest. The West states what is civilized behavior and what is not. If it’s not civilized, it’s not acceptable.
Britain must press the Russians to extradite the accused for trial. A brazen murder on British soil cannot go unpunished.
this, too, shall pass. there was a bulgarian killed in london, with the umbrella, in the ’80’s. and there was alot of talk then, just as there is a lot of talk now.
the russians are thugs. they will always be thugs while putin–or the like–is at the helm. you can’t change how they play in the sandbox, but how long can you turn the other cheek to a bully? i am amused at how heavy-handed this is, though. they have no finesse. thank god!
this, too, shall pass. there was a bulgarian killed in london, with the umbrella, in the ’80’s. and there was alot of talk then, just as there is a lot of talk now.
the russians are thugs. they will always be thugs while putin–or the like–is at the helm. you can’t change how they play in the sandbox, but how long can you turn the other cheek to a bully? i am amused at how heavy-handed this is, though. they have no finesse. thank god!
Monika! Wow, what an agreeable surprise to get a comment from the Belle Bulgarian herself!