Though the British Government and the Kremlin appear to be in conflict, Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu trace the underlying currents of oligarchy that unite them
Whether the apparent withdrawal of the biggest concentration of military forces since the Cold War by Russia is permanent or not; or whether Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts some other proxy or cyber attack to destabilise encircled Ukraine, the events of the past six months have made his long-term goals clear.
Ever since the Maidan Revolution of 2014, when Ukrainians ejected the bloody kleptocratic regime of Viktor Yanukovich and his pro-Russian oligarchs in favour of the values of the European Union, the Kremlin has seen the pro-democracy ‘colour revolutions’ in former Soviet republics as a major threat to its oligarchic power – and sought by various covert and ingenious means to subvert both the EU and the transatlantic alliance of NATO.
In this new clear light, the Kremlin’s financial support for far-right Eurosceptic parties in France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands made complete sense strategically. So too, the weaponisation of refugees in 2015-16 during Putin’s intervention in the Syrian civil war, which figured so prominently in the rise of the anti-immigrant right in Europe.
And, of course, the transparent interference of Kremlin media outlets, and the more covert influence operations of its online troll farms and hack attacks during the 2016 Brexit Referendum and the election of Donald Trump, are all part of the same plan.
Putin has been trolling the EU and NATO ever since he invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula. His long-term strategic goal has been to reassert Russian priorities on former Soviet republics.
The difference six years on is that, with no placatory and compromised Trump in the White House, both the US and the EU have been on the front foot, countering the Kremlin’s ‘alternative measures’ and information warfare with their own signalling devices – reinforcing NATO defences in the Baltic states, withdrawing embassy staff from Ukraine, cancelling flights, and releasing early intelligence assessments about the disposition of Russian forces and potential ‘false flag’ pretexts for Russian intervention.
Two can play the ‘hybrid warfare’ game, and – at least at the time of writing – this has forestalled the devastation of what Putin called his “military technical” solution: the carnage of war.
We have not only laundered at least half the stolen assets of Russian oligarchs, we have also begun to import their values
If Putin has stepped back, it will be up to historians to determine what the turning point was. Was it his inability to drive a diplomatic wedge between France, Germany and the US? Was it the rapid armament of the Ukrainian forces with anti-tank weapons? Or was it the threat of stern economic and financial sanctions on Russia, with a particular focus on the wealth of a small number of Kremlin-connected billionaires?
Whatever the cause, one thing is certain: post-Brexit Britain has been increasingly irrelevant, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss shouting loudly from the touchlines, but not being players on the field.
The UK is now punching well below its weight – especially given that London is the global haven for the wealth exfiltrated from the Russian people by its ruling elite, and the Conservative Party is heavily indebted to Soviet-born oligarchs for millions of pounds in donations.
Johnson’s reluctance to deal with Russian money flooding into London and into this own party’s coffers is more than just greed or opportunism: it’s an affinity, unwitting or not, of conviction and instinct – because Vladimir Putin’s billionaire-based oligarchy holds up a dark mirror to the same tendencies within the British state.
In a major intervention this month, former Conservative Prime Minister John Major exposed the dangers of British exceptionalism, with its ‘mother of Parliaments’ and democracy defined by reverence to the rule of law.
Vested interests wielding influence through party funding and the reality that there is one rule for Johnson’s Government and another for everyone else are both “politically deadly”, he said. “Our democracy is a fragile structure. It is not an impenetrable fortress. It can fall, if no one challenges what is wrong or fights for what is right.”
For a number of years, Yale professor and acclaimed historian Timothy Snyder has warned the West against complacency that its democratic nature is an inevitability. He has drawn particular attention to the post-USSR path of Putin’s Russia – an oligarchy, in which a small, elite group hold political power, with the interests of the state geared towards their personal enrichment.
The line between democracies with some oligarchical features turning into oligarchies with some democratic features is a fine one indeed, according to Snyder. That we here in Britain are now treading that line – and losing our balance as we teeter on the edge – can be witnessed under Johnson’s regime.
In recent years – and certainly accele