July 19, 2007
Russia-Britain Spy Probe Row More Than Just A Spat
Russia and Britain's diplomatic tit-for-tat is just the latest sign of escalating distrust between the former communist superpower and the West.
Moscow has expelled four British Embassy personnel in retaliation for Britain's decision on Monday to expel four Russian officials. That move was itself in retaliation for Russia's refusal to allow extradition of a former KGB officer who has been charged with a high-profile murder in London.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned Russia's response.
"We are disappointed that the Russian government should have signalled no new cooperation in the course of the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi," he told reporters. "We obviously believe that the decision to expel four embassy staff is completely unjustified."
Miliband also reminded Russia that most of the world community was siding with the U.K. in this fight. The EU called on Russia to hand over Lugovoi, as did Washington.
"This is an issue of rule of law to our minds, not an issue of politics," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters at a conference in Portugal. "It is a matter of Russia cooperating fully in what is simply an effort to solve what was a very terrible crime committed on British soil."
Lugovoi, a former KGB officer, is charged in the radiation poisoning murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy turned dissident. Litvinenko had been living in London after being granted asylum. During the course of his very public and prolonged death last year, he accused President Vladimir Putin of engineering his murder.
Russia's experiment with democracy has been a rocky one, and corruption has taken hold of nearly every aspect of public life there. Rather than isolate the country for bad behavior, however, the West has sought to bring it into the international community fold.
Probably the biggest reason for that is the war on terror. Putin seemed a steadfast ally in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but later became alienated with both President Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq war. Since then, Russia has refused to sever ties with a variety of nations that the West considers bad actors, the biggest offender being Iran.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said that Britain's expulsion of Russian diplomats would "make it impossible to develop anti-terrorist cooperation between Russia and the UK." That's got to be worrying to U.S. and British officials. Russia's own issues with terrorism in Chechnya are pretty well confined to that region, but Moscow's tighter relations with countries including China, Iran and North Korea have been a diplomatic asset.
Because of that, full-on isolation of Russia will never be an option. But as the West seeks to persuade Putin to come back off the ledge, they will get no help from the Russian people; Putin remains wildly popular there.
Serge Schmemann examines the puzzle that is Putin in the International Herald Tribune. Highlights from the recent deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations can be found here, here and here.
Posted at 1:00 PM
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Russia, U.K., Vladimir Putin
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