Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 14 – Many Russian
officials have insisted that it is a mistake to draw parallels between the
Litvinenko case where a former Russian citizen was murdered with polonium and
the Skripal case where another former Russian citizen is now near death as a
result of a chemical attack.
Moscow does not want the parallels
to be drawn because the British government and courts have documented Moscow’s
direct involvement in the Litvinenko case; and to admit the existence of
parallels makes it easier for those who are convinced that the Kremlin is
behind the attack on Skripal to gain acceptance for their charges.
That Moscow was involved in both
cases is beyond question, but as Moscow commentator Ilya Milshteyn points out
today, there is one important difference between the two, a difference that has
extremely frightening implications for Russian behavior in the future (graniru.org/opinion/milshtein/m.268278.html).
The difference is this: in the
Litvinenko case, Moscow sought to hide what it had done and the English discovered
the polonium its agents used “almost by accident.” But in the Skripal case, Moscow acted more
boldly. While it continues to deny the obvious, it is clear that it expected
and even wanted to be exposed as the author of this crime.
The murder of Litvinenko, the author
of The FSB Blows Up Russia, was like
the bombings of the apartment houses in 1999: everything pointed in one
direction, but it was circumstantial rather than definitive; and thus his death
became as it were “part of the psychological war of Russia and the West and its
own compatriots.
But the special operation carried
out against Skripal “has different goals.”
That is why everything was done so that the evidence would lead back to
Russia, and the target of the operation was someone who had not engaged in any
public political activity or direct attacks on Putin. This was far more
cold-blooded and calculated, Milshteyn suggests.
According to Milshteyn, the Kremlin’s
latest murderous attack had both foreign and domestic goals. “It is not
excluded,” he says, that Moscow wanted to test the personality of the British
prime minister who had to be forced to pursue the Litvinenko case but now is
prepared to be more forceful, something that in this case fits in with the
Kremlin’s plans.
That may seem counter-intuitive, he
implies, but it makes perfect sense. Russia is going to be caught up in a long
struggle with the West that will condemn it to failure just as something
similar condemned the Soviet Union. “The
economy will stagnate, prices rise, people and money go abroad, and sanctions
and counter-sanctions will destroy what’s left of the market.”
And then Milshteyn gets to the heart
of the matter: “Life in a besieged fortress,” he says, “is filled with enthusiasm
when the enemy it shooting at it. But a fortress which everyone has forgotten
about … is a sad spectacle.” To ensure that attacks keep coming, the master of
that fortress must continue to launch attacks of various kinds in order to get
a reaction.
These attacks may take radical forms
like video game presentations on the destruction of the enemy or challenging
NATO airspace, and “an attack on a former GRU officer and his daughter are of
the same kind.” Taking steps like that
guarantees a response and the response is something the Kremlin ruler can make
use of to defend his “besieged fortress.”
“Without waiting for the results of
the voting, [Putin] already is hurrying to show his plans for the next six
years,” Milshteyn says. He wants to orchestrate “a permanent Caribbean crisis”
and he thinks that the West will ultimately fold “out of fear of a nuclear war
and because for the reason just outlined above, this game doesn’t offer many
prospects for Putin’s Russia.”
But it is the only game Putin can
play without losing face and without losing his ability to keep the Russian
population mobilized, and consequently, what has happened in Salisbury will
happen again in one form or another as long as the Kremlin leader is in office,
a pattern that makes the world a far more dangerous place.
Moscow will continue to deny what it
is doing because that will confuse some, but it will continue to act and thus
send messages intended to intimidate first the West and then the Russian
people. One piece of evidence for this comes not from Milshteyn’s thoughtful
essay but rather from another article published on the same day.
The Politikus portal publishes a
roundup of the latest Russian denials of involvement with the Skripal case but
makes it clear what is really going on by illustrating its story with a picture
of a 1982 classified Soviet volume on the destruction of the United Kingdom in
a nuclear war (politikus.ru/v-rossii/105502-mid-rf-vyrazil-reshitelnyy-protest-velikobritanii-iz-za-ogulnyh-obvineniy.html).
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