The Telegraph, United Kingdom
Nov 25 2006
The West is losing patience with Putin
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/11/2006
There is, as yet, no evidence linking the poisoning of Alexander
Litvinenko to the Kremlin. While many commentators believe that there
is a connection – the former spy had been consorting with exiled
opponents of the Putin regime – hearsay does not constitute proof.
We do not know for sure that Mr Litvinenko was murdered and, if he
was, the deed may have been done by his ex-KGB colleagues acting
without higher authority. It is important to make this qualification
because, if Mr Litvinenko was indeed assassinated on the orders of
the Russian state, the consequences will be huge.
We are talking, after all, about a man living under the Queen’s
peace. When one government deliberately uses lethal force in
another’s jurisdiction, it commits an act of terrorism – arguably of
war. Libya and Sudan were bombed in retaliation for such ingressions,
Afghanistan occupied.
advertisementVladimir Putin’s regime is not, of course, in the same
category as those of Gaddafi, Omar Bashir or the Taliban. But it is
showing increasingly autocratic tendencies. Opposition figures are
jailed on pretexts. Independent television stations have been
virtually eliminated. Just weeks ago, a respected journalist, Anna
Politkovskaya, was gunned down in broad daylight after criticising
the president.
Abroad, too, Mr Putin is throwing his weight about, meddling in
Ukraine and in the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He is
conducting a bestial war against Chechen separatism, but is happy to
sponsor South Ossetian separatism in Georgia.
Why this new-found swagger? Because Russia is suddenly, as Mr Putin
likes to remind us, "an energy superpower". His defence minister is
even more direct: "In the contemporary world, only power is
respected." Perhaps. But, in any commercial transaction, power lies
ultimately with the customer – in this case, Western Europe. Until
now, the West has tended to overlook Mr Putin’s authoritarianism,
largely for the sake of a quiet life. But there must come a point
when our patience runs out. It is one thing to tyrannise your people;
quite another to presume to do so on British territory.