UK Edition
In response to Russia’s obfuscation and lies, today the Prime Minister and Scotland Yard laid out hard facts and a comprehensive body of evidence. The two Russian men charged with the Salisbury poisonings have been identified as agents of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service. CCTV evidence places them in Salisbury at the time of the attack on the Skripals.
Details of how the Novichok poison was brought into the UK, in a counterfeit bottle of perfume, were also released. “This was not a rogue operation,” Theresa May told the Commons yesterday. “It was almost certainly approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.”
The GRU resembles a conventional spy agency attached to a conventional government, with at least some of the trappings of democracy and legitimacy. But its behaviour shows how, under Vladimir Putin, Russia has become, in the words of Dominic Grieve MP, a “gangster organisation”.
Since passing a law in 2006 which authorised the assassination of “extremists” abroad – just months before the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London – the Russian president and his capos have spirited away enormous sums in offshore havens, while authorising a series of invasions, killings, cyber-attacks and other provocations that more than justify Russia’s pariah status.
Most worrying is how confident the Russians identified yesterday were that they would get away with it. Scotland Yard has produced two names – almost certainly aliases – and a pair of mugshots. But the two killers travelled to Britain directly from Russia, carrying lethal poison on a commercial flight and then on a train from Waterloo Station to Salisbury.
Russia appears to believe that it can act with impunity. One of the men named as responsible for killing Mr Litvinenko, Andrey Lugovoy, is now a member of the Russian parliament and a minor celebrity. The other, Dmitry Kovtun, is a businessman in Moscow.
The UK will not request the extradition of the two men charged with the Salisbury poisonings, because Russia does not extradite its citizens. The Prime Minister, however, has promised to increase Britain’s security cooperation with other nations and to step up the UK's efforts against the GRU itself. It is to be hoped that the UK’s European allies will commit to supporting any measures the Prime Minister proposes at an EU level. The United States imposed much tougher sanctions on Russia several weeks ago.
There are measures which need attention in the UK, too. Clearly Russia has exploited our relatively open borders, visa system and economy to attack our citizens and solidify its power. We should look carefully at whether this privilege should be restricted. Clearly, too, the killers were not recognised when they entered the country. What systems are in place, or could be put in place, to make sure that the same thing does not happen again? Are we doing enough to combat Kremlin disinformation?
It was predictable to hear the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, respond to the Prime Minister with pettifogging stipulations which seemed to imply that she was being bellicose. Had we properly engaged with the Russian government, he asked (of a state which has responded to the poisoning with obvious deceit)? What are we doing to ensure its cooperation? At one point, he asked what we would do in the UN Security Council (where Russia has a veto).
The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, was a warlike act. Preventing such acts in future will require unanimous condemnation. Anything less will send a message to Russia that its campaign to shirk and displace responsibility still has a ready audience outside its borders. It would say to the GRU that Britain, Europe and the West are weak, divided and ripe for disruption. That, in turn, would not prevent or limit further crimes, but incite them. It cannot be allowed to continue.
This was a warlike act by Russia