Theresa May, as prime minister, had her first conversation with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Meanwhile, UK defence chiefs have been muttering that Russian troops could outgun the British army; and over in the Olympic pool US swimmers were taunting their Russian rivals on their doping record.
According to the Kremlin, the May-Putin chat went well. “Both sides expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of cooperation,” it said. Downing Street seemingly agreed. British and Russian citizens “face common threats from terrorism”, it stated. May and Putin will now meet next month at the G20 summit in China.
All the signs suggest that May is willing to try to “reset” relations with Moscow, a policy pursued – without any palpable results – by her predecessor, David Cameron. For nearly a decade relations between Russia and the UK have been frosty, ever since the murder in November 2006 of the dissident and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
One of Gordon Brown’s early acts as prime minister was to expel four Russian diplomats from London, in protest at Putin’s refusal to extradite the two men, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, who slipped radioactive polonium into Litvinenko’s tea. Brown refused to meet Putin. The government’s private view was that this was a Russian state plot.
In 2010, however, Cameron signalled a fresh approach and indicated that the Litvinenko affair could be “negotiated” around. Cameron’s foreign policy priority was mercantilist: to sell stuff to foreigners. As part of his reset, Cameron invited Putin to watch the judo with him at the 2012 London Olympics. It was a gruesome moment, with the two sitting awkwardly as contestants rolled around a yellow mat.
May’s own record on Russia shows the same depressingly accommodationist instincts. As home secretary, she turned down a request by Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, to hold a public inquiry into her husband’s death. She admitted that “international relations” were a factor in her decision – in other words, it might annoy Putin.
This was shameful stuff. As Marina Litvinenko put it: “As one woman to another, I ask her [May] to consider how she would feel in my position. If her husband had been murdered in this horrible way, wouldn’t she want to get to the truth?” The high court overturned May’s ruling, and a public inquiry opened last year. The evidence presented to a retired judge, Robert Owen, was sensational. The two assassins brought polonium to London several times, we learned, only poisoning their target on the third attempt. They left an extraordinary radioactive trail: in their hotel rooms (they chucked the polonium down the U-bend), restaurants and a gentleman’s nightclub in Jermyn Street.
Owen’s report in January went further than anyone had imagined. Based in part on secret UK intelligence reports, it concluded that Putin had “probably approved” Litvinenko’s murder, together with his spy chief, Nikolai Patrushev (then head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB). Afterwards, May met with Marina but politely declined her request to ban from the UK those involved in the murder, including Putin.
Russia’s president, then, is “probably” a murderer, who wipes out his personal enemies in spectacularly vindictive fashion. Putin’s critics at home have an uncanny habit of ending up dead. What made the Litvinenko case unusual was its target (a British citizen) and its location outside Russia (which meant an evidence-led Scotland Yard investigation).
As May knows perfectly well, there are many forms of terrorism, including the state variety. According to Downing Street she and Putin agreed that “cooperation on aviation security in particular was a vital part of the international counter-terrorism effort”. She seems to forget that Litvinenko’s killers flew from Moscow with British Airways; polonium was discovered on Lugovoi’s seat, 23D.
And what of Malaysian Airlines MH17, shot down two years ago over eastern Ukraine? According to Dutch investigators, pro-Russian rebels – or Russian soldiers – downed the jet by mistake, using a Buk missile system smuggled across the Russian border. Ten British citizens were killed. Their families are demanding justice.
Putin views western leaders such as May as weak and ephemeral. He’s not greatly interested in notions of “cooperation”. Rather he has a concrete goal: to end EU sanctions against Russia, imposed after his 2014 annexation of Crimea. Meanwhile, Russian troop buildups in Crimea this week have raised fears of further military moves against Ukraine.
Brexit opens up new political possibilities for Moscow, and badly undermines European unity at a time of multiple global crises. May needs to emulate another leader to whom she’s superficially compared: Angela Merkel. The chancellor grew up in East Germany, speaks Russian, and understands Putin’s dark KGB world-view perfectly.
