The Russia Conundrum

The world was taken aback by the February invasion. Putin had previously massed troops on the Ukrainian border in the spring of 2021, but withdrew them after ratcheting up tensions. When troop deployments resumed in December 2021, the global community assumed that this time, too, Putin was bluffing. There was speculation about his aims, some sympathy for his complaints about NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and discussions of concessions that the West might make. All the sympathy – and all the suggestions among Western liberals that Putin should be given the benefit of the doubt – evaporated when Russian tanks rolled over the border.

The world’s shock and horror left me a little bemused. Unlike those who have persisted in appeasing Putin, turning a blind eye to his provocations in the hope that he might be mollified into ‘being nice to us’, I don’t harbour any illusions about him, although I admit that the methods and the scale of his invasion were a surprise to me. My long and painful personal experience of dealing with Vladimir Putin showed me that he can never be trusted, that he is capable of the most terrible crimes, and that his smiling promises of cooperation and understanding have always been less than worthless.

Today, I am more convinced than ever that he is a dictator who must be stopped, regardless of the risks and regardless of the costs that we will have to bear; our sufferings pale by comparison with the shelling and bombing of innocent civilians. For if we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, he will inevitably lead us into global war. Comparisons to Hitler may seem exaggerated to some, but we should be very wary of appeasing Putin in the manner that gave Hitler free rein in the 1930s. We must not repeat that mistake – it will be too costly for all of us.

My purpose in writing this book is to explain the damage that two decades of Putin have inflicted on Russia and on East–West relations, and to suggest constructive ways forward now that the international community is aware of the truth.

21 March 2022

INTRODUCTION

I’m a fairly calm fellow; I don’t usually get wound up about things. But I was, let’s say, concerned when I tuned in to the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head.

‘It has been stated,’ said the radio, ‘that a bounty of five hundred thousand dollars will be paid for the capture of the former head of the Yukos Oil Company, Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, who is currently hiding in London. The reward will be payable to any Russian citizen who brings the former oligarch back to Russia.’

The announcement didn’t quite say ‘Dead or alive’, but it came close.

This was in March 2021, after I had completed my ten years as a political prisoner in Vladimir Putin’s jails and seven years after I had been exiled to the West. My understanding has always been that serving a prison sentence – even those imposed for non-existent crimes – means the end of the matter, but that is evidently not the Kremlin’s view. Sergei Skripal had served his term and been released, but it didn’t stop Putin sending GRU killers to try to poison him, so why would I be any different? The radio announced that the bounty on my head had been promulgated by a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, so it was clear that it came from the top.

In functioning democracies – among which I number most Western nations – people are protected from abuse at the hands of their rulers. The people vote politicians in and they can vote them out. There are safeguards that prevent the accumulation of excessive power by potentially unsuitable individuals and stop them exploiting that power for personal ends.

But this is obviously not the case in authoritarian states like Putin’s Russia. It pretends it is a democracy, but in reality it is a personal dictatorship. And that makes it vitally important for Russians and the world to learn as much as possible about the character of the individuals who run the Kremlin. My own history has forced me to pay more than passing attention to this, and what I have learned is not reassuring. The extent of institutional criminality in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is staggering. The oligarchs of the 1990s, myself among them, were reproached for accumulating wealth, but they did so through the cut-and-thrust of business. Now, the oligarchs are inside the Kremlin and their wealth is derived from the brazen abuse of power.

It has reached the point where Putin and his cronies will fight any fight, commit any crime, destroy any opponent in order to preserve their wealth and keep the nation in their pernicious grip. Their bunker mentality and fear of what might come afterwards make them cling to power. The methods they are using to do this increasingly put the Russian people and the world in danger.