The Independent
Jul. 17th, 2007 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
favorovВ Британии тожже есть своя "Новая газета".
Вот пожалуйста, попирают основы государственности и правопорядка:
Mary Dejevsky: A fight with Russia we cannot hope to win
Britain somehow seems, still, to find it uniquely difficult to deal with Russia without preaching and recrimination
Published: 17 July 2007
Asked to rank the foreign policy priorities vying for space in Gordon Brown's "urgent" box, what would an informed voter say? Iraq, which has gone bad; Afghanistan, which threatens to, and the knotty question of the "special relationship", which is just irritating. As an afterthought, you might add Europe, even as it closes down for the long vacances. But Russia? Russia would come pretty far down your list.
Or it would have done until 3.30pm yesterday afternoon, when the new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, announced the first expulsions of Russian diplomats for a decade. This was Britain's response to Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, who is wanted for the murder in London last year of the former agent Alexander Litvinenko.
Now it is obviously quite unacceptable for Russians to go around murdering their erstwhile compatriots in London or anywhere else. The fact that the victim was (by a few days) a British citizen and the method (radiation poisoning) endangered many others made the crime additionally heinous.
You can imagine the ministerial conversations at the time: this sort of thing must never happen again; signals must be sent; the culprit(s) must be brought to book. And once Mr Lugovoy had been identified as the likely perpetrator, the course was set. We have independent courts, officials said. He will have a fair trial. If Mr Lugovoy wants to plead his innocence, let him do so here. The extradition warrant was issued and delivered to Moscow.
So far, so very routine in a highly unusual case. From that moment, though, things spiralled downwards very fast. Mr Lugovoy not only declined to come quietly, but publicly protested his innocence in Moscow. He claimed, in passing, that British intelligence had tried to recruit him - and not just him, but Litvinenko and his patron, the oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky.
That specific charge, by the way, has never been directly denied by anyone in Britain with the authority to do so. It was merely ridiculed by the Soviet-era defector, Oleg Gordievsky, who subsequently received a CMG in the Queen's birthday honours list - the same honour, aficionados gleefully noted, as that awarded to the fictional master-spy James Bond.
Mr Lugovoy's accusations about the intelligence services may or may not be pertinent to the anger towards Russia that seethes in official circles. But even if you discount them, there are still aspects of the British response that seem perplexing.
Yes, Mr Litvinenko's murderer needs to be found and convicted. Yes, this is a new Government, with a new, young Foreign Secretary with an interest in stamping his authority on this august department. But the apparent expectation that Russia would hand over Mr Lugovoy at the flick of an extradition warrant suggests wishful thinking, or a desire to escalate the crisis.
Describing Russia's failure to comply as "disappointing", Mr Miliband suggested that if Russia wanted to be a good European country, it should act according to EU extradition provisions. But this wilfully disregards two salient facts. Russia is neither a current nor an aspiring member of the European Union, and the Russian constitution expressly bars the extradition of its nationals. Britain is unusual in erecting relatively few obstacles to the extradition of its nationals. To Britain's periodic fury, the US, France, and many other countries are as protective of their citizens as Russia.
To take matters as far as diplomatic expulsions - risking the diplomatic damage that goes with them - would seem to make sense only if Britain has grounds for believing that the Kremlin or Russia's security services had some direct involvement. While speculation has been plentiful and the knee-jerk response at the time - "Putin did it" - was repeated ad infinitum by Mr Berezovsky's propaganda machine - there may be other explanations.
To many Russians, Mr Litvinenko was a turncoat; he was involved in unsavoury business deals. There were hints of money trouble. It is also hard to understand why the Kremlin should risk so much to extinguish an individual who was, by most accounts, low on its list of London-based irritants. It may be that British intelligence knows more than ministers have divulged. If not, then Mr Brown has consigned bilateral relations to the deep-freeze on what seems to be flimsy justification.
Post-Soviet Russia has not been an easy country for what we used to call "the West" to deal with. The past five years have been especially difficult. Russia's new oil wealth, rising living standards and President Putin's domestic popularity have combined with popular resentment of the country's shrunken size and status to foster a prickliness towards the outside world. But "the West" has not done much to help.
Abandoning even the limited sensitivity it showed immediately after the Soviet collapse, it is seen in Russia as having encouraged the Cold-War alliance, Nato, to expand to its border, aided anti-Putin forces in Russia, and fomented anti-Russian sentiment around its borders. Moscow's most recent act of protest was to give notice on the weekend that it would suspend participation in Europe's main conventional arms treaty. Although the treaty is now more symbol than substance, this gesture bespoke a new chill.
For all the tensions, however, the United States and most of our "old" European neighbours are coping. They have managed to steer a course that acknowledges Russia's defects, while also trying to coax it into modern statehood. Two weekends ago, Mr Putin was Mr Bush's guest at his father's estate in Maine. Last weekend, a group of US elder statesmen were invited for a lengthy discussion with Mr Putin. There was no quantifiable progress, but official channels were kept open.
Britain somehow seems, still, to find it uniquely difficult to deal with Russia without preaching and recrimination. We are unique, too, in pressing Western "values" as an absolute - even after Abu Ghraib. And among our specialists, the view of Russia has been uniquely split - between the enthusiastic sympathy of business and the moralistic "disappointment" of many intellectuals. This time last year, it was possible to catch hints of a more realistic approach. Then Mr Litvinenko was murdered in London, and all the old clichés returned.
For Russia, there is probably only one short-term development that might warm this cold climate. If Mr Putin believed that Mr Berezovsky - wanted for money-laundering in Moscow - was in play, Mr Lugovoy could be on the next plane. But so long as the British authorities stand by the refuge they have given him - and why should, or would, they yield? - the odds on Mr Lugovoy standing trial here are long.
m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk
Вот пожалуйста, попирают основы государственности и правопорядка:
Mary Dejevsky: A fight with Russia we cannot hope to win
Britain somehow seems, still, to find it uniquely difficult to deal with Russia without preaching and recrimination
Published: 17 July 2007
Asked to rank the foreign policy priorities vying for space in Gordon Brown's "urgent" box, what would an informed voter say? Iraq, which has gone bad; Afghanistan, which threatens to, and the knotty question of the "special relationship", which is just irritating. As an afterthought, you might add Europe, even as it closes down for the long vacances. But Russia? Russia would come pretty far down your list.
Or it would have done until 3.30pm yesterday afternoon, when the new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, announced the first expulsions of Russian diplomats for a decade. This was Britain's response to Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, who is wanted for the murder in London last year of the former agent Alexander Litvinenko.
Now it is obviously quite unacceptable for Russians to go around murdering their erstwhile compatriots in London or anywhere else. The fact that the victim was (by a few days) a British citizen and the method (radiation poisoning) endangered many others made the crime additionally heinous.
You can imagine the ministerial conversations at the time: this sort of thing must never happen again; signals must be sent; the culprit(s) must be brought to book. And once Mr Lugovoy had been identified as the likely perpetrator, the course was set. We have independent courts, officials said. He will have a fair trial. If Mr Lugovoy wants to plead his innocence, let him do so here. The extradition warrant was issued and delivered to Moscow.
So far, so very routine in a highly unusual case. From that moment, though, things spiralled downwards very fast. Mr Lugovoy not only declined to come quietly, but publicly protested his innocence in Moscow. He claimed, in passing, that British intelligence had tried to recruit him - and not just him, but Litvinenko and his patron, the oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky.
That specific charge, by the way, has never been directly denied by anyone in Britain with the authority to do so. It was merely ridiculed by the Soviet-era defector, Oleg Gordievsky, who subsequently received a CMG in the Queen's birthday honours list - the same honour, aficionados gleefully noted, as that awarded to the fictional master-spy James Bond.
Mr Lugovoy's accusations about the intelligence services may or may not be pertinent to the anger towards Russia that seethes in official circles. But even if you discount them, there are still aspects of the British response that seem perplexing.
Yes, Mr Litvinenko's murderer needs to be found and convicted. Yes, this is a new Government, with a new, young Foreign Secretary with an interest in stamping his authority on this august department. But the apparent expectation that Russia would hand over Mr Lugovoy at the flick of an extradition warrant suggests wishful thinking, or a desire to escalate the crisis.
Describing Russia's failure to comply as "disappointing", Mr Miliband suggested that if Russia wanted to be a good European country, it should act according to EU extradition provisions. But this wilfully disregards two salient facts. Russia is neither a current nor an aspiring member of the European Union, and the Russian constitution expressly bars the extradition of its nationals. Britain is unusual in erecting relatively few obstacles to the extradition of its nationals. To Britain's periodic fury, the US, France, and many other countries are as protective of their citizens as Russia.
To take matters as far as diplomatic expulsions - risking the diplomatic damage that goes with them - would seem to make sense only if Britain has grounds for believing that the Kremlin or Russia's security services had some direct involvement. While speculation has been plentiful and the knee-jerk response at the time - "Putin did it" - was repeated ad infinitum by Mr Berezovsky's propaganda machine - there may be other explanations.
To many Russians, Mr Litvinenko was a turncoat; he was involved in unsavoury business deals. There were hints of money trouble. It is also hard to understand why the Kremlin should risk so much to extinguish an individual who was, by most accounts, low on its list of London-based irritants. It may be that British intelligence knows more than ministers have divulged. If not, then Mr Brown has consigned bilateral relations to the deep-freeze on what seems to be flimsy justification.
Post-Soviet Russia has not been an easy country for what we used to call "the West" to deal with. The past five years have been especially difficult. Russia's new oil wealth, rising living standards and President Putin's domestic popularity have combined with popular resentment of the country's shrunken size and status to foster a prickliness towards the outside world. But "the West" has not done much to help.
Abandoning even the limited sensitivity it showed immediately after the Soviet collapse, it is seen in Russia as having encouraged the Cold-War alliance, Nato, to expand to its border, aided anti-Putin forces in Russia, and fomented anti-Russian sentiment around its borders. Moscow's most recent act of protest was to give notice on the weekend that it would suspend participation in Europe's main conventional arms treaty. Although the treaty is now more symbol than substance, this gesture bespoke a new chill.
For all the tensions, however, the United States and most of our "old" European neighbours are coping. They have managed to steer a course that acknowledges Russia's defects, while also trying to coax it into modern statehood. Two weekends ago, Mr Putin was Mr Bush's guest at his father's estate in Maine. Last weekend, a group of US elder statesmen were invited for a lengthy discussion with Mr Putin. There was no quantifiable progress, but official channels were kept open.
Britain somehow seems, still, to find it uniquely difficult to deal with Russia without preaching and recrimination. We are unique, too, in pressing Western "values" as an absolute - even after Abu Ghraib. And among our specialists, the view of Russia has been uniquely split - between the enthusiastic sympathy of business and the moralistic "disappointment" of many intellectuals. This time last year, it was possible to catch hints of a more realistic approach. Then Mr Litvinenko was murdered in London, and all the old clichés returned.
For Russia, there is probably only one short-term development that might warm this cold climate. If Mr Putin believed that Mr Berezovsky - wanted for money-laundering in Moscow - was in play, Mr Lugovoy could be on the next plane. But so long as the British authorities stand by the refuge they have given him - and why should, or would, they yield? - the odds on Mr Lugovoy standing trial here are long.
m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk
