The shameful murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which his widow Yulia believes was carried out with the nerve agent Novichok, has immediately raised questions.
How can the West best retaliate?
Foreign Secretary David Cameron warned the Kremlin that there would be “consequences”, adding: “We will not announce in advance.”
President Putin believes this is an outrage and that the West will do little about it. He is worried that what he says is right. He has watched us stand by while he destroyed Chechnya, bullied Estonia, invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea, and propped up a fascist dictatorship in Syria.
Even when President Assad gassed his own people with Russia’s connivance, we only wringed our hands.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in custody at a prison about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle and has been sentenced to 19 years in prison.
“Many would say that President Putin’s assassination of Mr. Navalny, the killings of other adversaries, and his warmongering all made Mr. Putin himself a legitimate target,” says Edward Lucas.
True, the West has provided billions of dollars worth of arms, supplies and training to Ukraine since the dictator’s all-out invasion nearly two years ago, but war fatigue has set in. Further support from Western countries is at stake, especially due to: Partisan deadlock in Washington, DC.
Still, if the Kremlin gang thinks we can do nothing about this most despicable murder, they are gravely mistaken. First, if Navalny’s death has any significance, it should be to galvanize support for Ukraine.
After all, there is no other reliable force that can stand up to the Russian dictator, only a brave and tenacious army fighting against overwhelming odds.
The Ukrainian people have amazed the world with their tenacity, but they are increasingly being abandoned by the West and are at risk of losing this war – with a heavy heart. Most of the time it’s our fault. They asked us for weapons again and again. We staggered and winced.
President Zelenskiy and his people urgently need Western artillery shells to repel the invaders and long-range missiles to neutralize the Kremlin’s war machine. We must supply them immediately.
But in addition to strengthening Ukraine, we can do more to directly hurt President Putin, first and foremost in his pocket.
The time has come for Western countries to seize the Russian Central Bank’s frozen overseas assets worth $300 billion.
Approximately two-thirds of this income is held at Euroclear, a Belgium-based “stock depository”. Russia’s state assets include cash and government bonds denominated in euros, dollars and other currencies.
Central bank assets are generally protected by international law. Confiscation could scare countries such as China and Saudi Arabia into switching their assets away from pounds, euros and dollars, potentially destabilizing global finance.
But when dealing with rogue states, legal expediency and economic disruption must not be paramount. The obstacles to taking this action may be daunting, but they can be overcome.
Third, it has become commonplace to say that Western sanctions are not working in Russia. Moscow’s elite are finding it harder to travel abroad (though Russian voices can still be heard in Dubai’s shopping malls and Turkish beaches).
But the Kremlin can still sell much of its vast mineral wealth, including coal, oil and gas, on global markets.
No sanctions will be effective until this transaction is stopped.
Cutting off the tentacles of the Kremlin’s economic octopus would hurt Putin personally and increase tensions within his inner circle. It would also provide military funding for the fight and eventual reconstruction of Ukraine.
Fourth, we should be tougher on Putin’s international “enablers” – the bankers, lawyers, accountants, spivs, creeps and scammers who undermine Western sanctions. is.
Among them are oil traders in the United Arab Emirates, money makers in offshore financial jurisdictions in the Caribbean, those who set up shell companies and trusts to hide ownership, and deals with other rogue states such as Russia and Venezuela. It also includes intermediaries who make this possible. Dictatorships in Myanmar and Africa.
Embarrassingly, many of these people are British and should face criminal penalties for supporting Putin.
People from all countries must face visa bans if they try to travel to other Western countries. US passport holders will find that they cannot visit the UK and vice versa. Europe may also impose additional sanctions.
So I came up with the final possible course of action. Probably the most outlandish one. Many will say that Putin’s assassination of Navalny, the killings of other opponents, and his warmongering all make him a legitimate target himself.
Put bluntly, is it time to help Ukraine assassinate the Russian dictator?
Kiev’s drone strikes on Moscow buildings last year showed President Zelenskyy’s readiness to pinpoint targets inside Russian government complexes. It’s natural to think that if his elite team of assassins could defeat their own country’s tormentors, they would try.
Many would argue that the Russians have launched a deadly brutal operation and hope that our intelligence services will give them the necessary support. They now have to play by their own rules.
Of course, assassinating President Putin will be difficult. He is famous for using Kagemusha, and it will not be easy to ensure that he kills the real tyrant.
Most importantly, Putin is just one man. Our real problem is Russian imperialism. It was before him and will outlast him. This is the real confusion and one of the problems we have created.
On Sunday, former President Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, threatened nuclear retaliation against Britain, Germany and the United States if Kremlin occupation forces were driven out of eastern Ukraine.
“Russia’s attempt to restore its borders in 1991 will result in only one thing: a world war with the West, which has mobilized the full force of our strategic weapons against Kiev, Berlin, London and Washington,” he bellowed.
This apocalyptic threat is due not only to the Ukraine problem, but also to the weakness of the West due to greed and complacency during the 30 years when Russia turned from communism to gangsterism.
From the early 1990s until almost two years ago, I and others were patronized and belittled for warning that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was weakened but not friendly.
As a result, Western countries systematically underestimated Moscow’s military and other threats and failed to strengthen themselves for a changing world. There are now unseaworthy aircraft carriers, warships without adequate crews, fighter jets without pilots, and regiments without enough soldiers.
Stockpiles of spare parts and ammunition were so limited that within a week or two of the outbreak of war, front-line troops were reduced to repairing bayonets.
The situation is strikingly similar to 1938. But what was different just before the outbreak of World War II was that the Spitfire could be built from scratch in a matter of weeks. Procuring today’s high-tech weapons can take years.
We have to face a new world. The American security for Europe that began with D-Day and the Berlin Airlift has disappeared. The dark truth is that we can no longer trust Americans to protect us, perhaps even before President Trump returns to the White House.
Meanwhile, Europe’s allies are hopelessly divided into those who will fight at all costs, those who will fight under any circumstances, and a confused middle class who do not know what they are thinking.
Now may be the moment for Britain to take the lead in Europe and be at the heart of the continent’s security.
We must do everything we can to confront President Putin directly. And don’t shrink from doing so.
Edward Lucas is the author of The New Cold War: Russia and Putin’s Threat to the West.