An attempted murder in Britain makes clear that Russia is not a reliable peace partner

Melanie Phillips:
What’s that deafening noise of squawking and screeching and flapping that we can now hear all around us? Why, it’s the West’s chickens finally coming home to roost.

In Britain, a retired Russian spy and his daughter, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, remain critically ill in hospital after being poisoned earlier this month in the quiet cathedral city of Salisbury by a rare, military- grade and deadly nerve agent.

Skripal was a double agent who had worked for British intelligence. The poison used against him reportedly could only have been produced by Russia. Although there’s no conclusive proof of Kremlin involvement, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament this week the attack was an “unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the UK.”

In 2006, another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, died after being poisoned in a London hotel by a rare, highly radioactive isotope – a murder that a British public inquiry decided was likely ordered by President Vladimir Putin himself.

There has been a subsequent string of suspicious deaths in Britain of Russians and others who may have fallen foul of the Kremlin – mysterious suicides, heart attacks while jogging, falls from buildings. Yet only now is Britain looking again at these bizarre coincidences.

It has been all too keen to host an influx of Russian oligarchs – some of them allies and some enemies of Putin – who moved to London, buying up British assets such as football clubs or newspapers, hosting fawning politicians on their yachts and bringing with them unimaginable wealth, including dirty money, on which the City of London has been happily floating.

So Britain allowed itself to become a kind of offshore island of the Russian mafia state. It was a case of never mind the gangsterism, just pocket the cash. Is it surprising, then, that Putin now curls his lip in contempt? The EU has said it will support Britain against Russia. Since the EU is hard-wired against confrontation, this is likely to cause Putin less discomfort than a pot of caviar past its sell-by date.
...
There is more.

Britain has allowed the welfare state to sap its military potential.  It is soft at its core in dealing with both the Russian threat and the war being waged against it by radical Islam. Its former partners in the EU have also misjudged Russia.  Ironically, it is Trump and the US that stands between Russia and its domination of Europe and the UK, despite the caterwauling of the Democrats who tried to make Trump out as a traitor.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains