By Collin Bonnell
On March 4, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who was living in exile in Britain, and his daughter Yulia, were mysteriously poisoned in a Salisbury cafe. Just over a week later, on March 12, another Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov, was found dead in his London home. The Metropolitan Police Service later released a statement attributing the death to severe “compression of the neck.” These events are just two of dozens of suspicious deaths or injuries suffered by Russian exiles living in the United Kingdom since the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian ex-spy who defected from the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2000.
Since the death of Litvinenko from polonium-210-poisoning, a suspiciously high number of Russian exiles living in Britain have died under strange circumstances. In 2013, Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch and close associate of both Litvinenko and Glushkov, was found hanging in his home in Berkshire. Other Russian critics of Putin’s regime have been shot, poisoned, or found having allegedly killed themselves. Most of these cases appear isolated, but they all share a common thread: past criticism of the Kremlin.
Whereas early instances of these attacks, such as the killing of Litvinenko, were carried out with surgical precision and done in a fashion that would maintain plausible deniability, recent cases have become increasingly more brazen. For example, political activist and Putin critique Boris Nemtsov was shot four times in full view of the Kremlin. The British government found that the chemical agent used in the attempted assassination of Skripal and his daughter was Novichok, a highly toxic and rare nerve agent manufactured exclusively by the Soviet and later Russian governments. Russia’s apparent use of Novichok forfeits any possibility of plausible deniability on behalf of the Kremlin. It also sends a message to Russian exiles living in Britain that Putin is no longer afraid of diplomatic consequences of killing his critics outside of Russia. Being an exiled critic of Putin’s regime has now become one of the most dangerous occupations in Europe.
Although Russia’s past use of deniable assassination of exiled critics on foreign soil has rarely led to any diplomatic consequences for Putin, Theresa May’s government promised a direct retaliation against the Kremlin. Yet the ultimate action taken by May, the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats, is insufficient to dispel future attacks. May’s lackluster reaction to Putin’s blatant violation of foreign sovereignty shows why the Russian tyrant is so willing to commit political assassinations outside of Russia.
Instead of taking the reserved approach implemented so far, the United Kingdom and the governments of western Europe must issue a blanket moratorium on travel within Europe of all officials linked to the Russian government and expel those already in Europe. Furthermore, to stem Russian aggression in other European spheres of diplomacy, NATO should also dramatically increase its troop numbers stationed in the Baltic states and show Putin that the alliance is willing to pursue brinkmanship in order to contain his expansion. Internally, they ought to clamp down on their former allies which have warmed up to Putin’s authoritarianism, including the governments of Hungary, Turkey, Poland and most recently Slovakia, where an investigative journalist was recently killed under mysterious circumstances, provoking massive anti-government protests and the resignation of the Slovakian Prime Minister.
NATO’s response to the newest wave of authoritarian political impulses championed by Putin has so far proven inept, short-sighted and overly cautious. Rather than treat Russia as a possible friend and limit our response to basic economic and diplomatic sanctions, NATO must instead stand united in defense of Europe’s current liberal democratic order and in opposition to those who would like to see its succession by autocracy.
The democracies of Europe must remember that the wars of today are not those of territory and nationalism, but those of ideology. As Churchill once said, “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” If the democracies of eastern Europe are allowed to slowly erode, we may find that the struggles of the Cold War never really subsided, but rather took a brief hiatus. In time, we may also find that all democracies – even those long assumed invincible — are vulnerable to a populist wave of autocracy.
Collin Bonnell, FCRH ’21, is a history and political science major from Hingham, Massachusetts.
