To understand why three people lie stricken in Salisbury, look at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions inside Russia. On Monday, he was proclaimed the winner of an election that resembled a coronation, complete with a triumphant ceremony outside the walls of the Kremlin.
Putin’s leading opponent had obviously been banned from standing. “A choice without a real competition, as we have seen in this election, unfortunately is not a real choice,” was the verdict of the observer mission from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Putin is taking his country in a dangerous direction. Throughout his rule he has eroded the liberties of the Russian people and hunted down supposed foes. When a leader starts behaving in this way then no one should be surprised if many of his compatriots feel drawn to the example of countries that observe a different scale of values.
They will notice that plenty of nations hold elections where no one knows the result in advance.
They will understand how an independent media exposes the failings or evasions of democratic governments. And they will wonder why Russia cannot have the same?
Putin cannot give the straight answer, which is that he must deny Russia those freedoms in order to guarantee his perpetual rule. Instead, he has to send an emphatic message that asking awkward questions carries a terrible price.
Which brings us back to Salisbury. The use of a Russian military grade “Novichok” nerve agent against Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, was very deliberate. As Ken Clarke pointed out in the British parliament last week, the obvious Russian-ness of the weapon was designed to send a signal to anyone pondering dissent amid the intensifying repression of Putin’s Russia. The message is clear: We will hunt you down, we will find you and we will kill you — and though we will scornfully deny our guilt, the world will know that Russia did it.
There was a hint of this in Putin’s first public response to Salisbury. He denied Russia’s culpability — of course — while carefully injecting a note of menace. “If it was military grade agent,” he said, “they would have died on the spot, obviously.” Obviously. He had already told state television that traitors would “kick the bucket” and “choke” on their “pieces of silver”.
Yet, the Kremlin, accustomed to a tame official media, is clearly struggling to get its story straight.
Since the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey were struck down on March 4, Russian officials and the state media have claimed variously that “Novichok” never existed, or the stockpiles were destroyed, or they weren’t destroyed but mysteriously escaped to other countries.
Alexander Shulgin, the Russian Ambassador to The Hague, told Sky News: “I’ve never heard about this programme, about this Novichok agent. Never.” But his memory suddenly improved when he appeared on Russia Today and said that Novichok had been developed by the Soviet Union. “There never was such a programme under such a code name in the Russian Federation,” he said. “However, in Soviet times, research began to produce a new generation of poisonous substances.”
Meanwhile, other Russian officials have sought to conjure doubt and suspicion out of thin air. Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Ambassador in London, questioned the absence of photographs of the Skripals in their hospital beds. His counterpart in Brussels, Vladimir Chizhov, accused Britain of breaking “consular conventions” because Russian officials had not been able to visit the Skripals.
The response to the two envoys is so obvious that I can scarcely believe they require instruction. Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been in a coma since March 4 — as you would expect from victims of a nerve agent attack.
They cannot give their consent to be photographed or receive visitors. Under the National Health Service Code of Practice, hospitals must have their patients’ permission before allowing this to happen. And I will make the point as delicately as possible: It is not obvious that the Skripals, of all patients, would welcome a visit from Russian officials.
The Russian state is resorting to its usual strategy of trying to conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies. But when I met my European counterparts in Brussels, what struck me most is that no one is fooled. Just about every country represented around the table had been affected by disruptive Russian behaviour. Most had endured the kind of mendacious propaganda onslaught that the United Kingdom is experiencing today. This is how Putin behaves at home; we should not expect anything different abroad.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2018
Boris Johnson is Britain’s Foreign Secretary.
