Putin is welcomed at Ankara airport earlier - any the start of two day visit. Photo via PA Images.
Pity the forthcoming travails of the hypothetical Orlov family. That would be father Alexei, his wife Evgeniya, and their spoiled brat daughter Oksana. There they were, happily shopping in Bond Street or the Rue de Passy, for the life of a GRU or SVR officer in London or Paris has its off-duty compensations. Try the salt beef sandwich counter in Selfridges or the dual Novikov restaurants in Berkeley Street to witness their leather-jacketed bulk and blank eyes at close quarters.
Following the attempted murders in Salisbury, the Orlovs and 120 of their colleagues will be heading home – as, in the opposite direction, will 150 of their western counterparts expelled from Russia. With their identities known and their covers blown (for Alexei Orlov was never just the protocol officer) Evgeniya and Oksana will have to make do with postings where the host nations will not investigate their backgrounds. Pity Evgeniya and Oksana searching for that special frock or handbag in Ashgabat or Ouagadougou. The domestic grief Alexei will suffer is unlikely to be pleasant.
As a former spymaster, President Putin will feel the Orlovs’ pain, but his response will be on the global stage (although he’ll pursue s more personal vengeance towards the more cartoon-blimpish members of the British government). He will also have noted those eight EU members, as well as Israel and Turkey, which expelled no Russian ‘diplomats’.
We can safely rule out (very probably) any resort by Putin to the new generation of hypersonic missiles, torpedoes and laser guns, which he advertised in videos shortly before his re-election last month. Even though one or two of these ‘science fiction’ weapons were part of UnHerd’s end-2017 “under-reported” series, arms experts say that they probably don’t work1.
Putin’s main response is likely to be strategic – focusing in the parts of the world where Russia (and its senior partner, China) are already most involved. He might start by making concessions in eastern Ukraine, where he has achieved his objective of sowing dissension from Kiev, while making difficulties elsewhere.
(1) North Korea
The most obvious place to start is North Korea. Expect Putin to soon host Kim Jong-un, following up on the latter’s visit to President Xi. That signals that China and Russia have interests in North Korea (Russia borders it on the Tumen River) and that Trump can’t unilaterally meddle there with impunity. Both Putin and Xi may chuck Kim economic lifelines to bolster his confidence in any summit with Trump.
(2) Iran
Trump is also threatening to rip up the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, if the three European signatories (the UK, France and Germany) can’t ‘fix’ the deal by 12th May2. The Europeans are trying to find a form of words to mollify Trump (who they privately compare to the demented member of a family which owns a joint holiday home – which he periodically threatens to burn down). President Macron will be trying to persuade Trump to change his mind on the Iran deal when he visits Washington later this month.
Trump seems to forget that China and Russia also signed the 2015 deal, and that Russia is a military partner of Iran in Syria, while Iran is also pivotal to China’s ‘One Belt’ Initiative. Putin has already told Ayatollah Khamenei that he “won’t betray Iran” in the interests of a grand bargain with the US. China is also selling Iran advanced weapons, and buying its oil and gas.
(3) Turkey
Moscow can also use Turkey to cause the US major headaches in Syria and on a two day visit to Turkey, starting today, Putin will take part in the ground breaking ceremony for the new nuclear plant at Akkuyu, before joining a summit with President Erodgan and Iran’s President Rouhani. Syria, as well as the US challenge to the 2015 nuclear deal, are likely to be topics of interest.. Having reduced his own forces in Tell Rifaat3, Putin will probably urge the Turks to venture from Afrin across the Euphrates to Manbij, where the Kurdish YPG host 2,000 US special forces ‘advisors’. A clash between Turkey and the US would be like an early Christmas gift to Putin, whose strategic aim is to prise Turkey out of Nato.
(4) Qatar
While we are still in the Middle East, let’s not forget the nation hosting the World Cup after Russia. Qatar’s Emir – Tamim bin Hamad al Thani – visited Moscow in late March (and not to talk about football). Thanks to the ineptitude of the Saudis and Emiratis, a besieged Qatar is well on the way to joining the Iranian-Turkish camp, which also includes Russia. It will help Putin in getting Syrian rebel groups it bankrolls to the peace table with Assad, thereby isolating Saudi-backed rebel groups. Like Turkey, Qatar also wants to buy Russian armaments, after seeing live fire demos in Syria and Ukraine, and as the biggest sovereign Gulf investor in Russia already. Its swanky Qatar Airways will help modernise the third and fourth largest Russian airports.
(5) Libya and Egypt
Russia has also been quietly active in Libya4, where Putin supports the military strongman General Khalifa Haftar. Moscow is using basing rights it has acquired in neighbouring Egypt to pump in arms and special forces, with a view to sidelining the US, discombobulating the EU, and winning oil, defence and railway contracts should Libya ever achieve stability.
(6) Subverting elections
Meddling in elections is also a cheap option for Putin. The focus can be shifted too, now that Europe’s major electoral cycles are largely over. There are eight big elections in Latin America this year, including Brazil and especially Mexico. Before they left office, both the former US National Security Advisor H R McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned of Russian interference in Mexico, where Moscow supports the anti-American left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who has led the polls since last October for an election happening on 1st July). With Trump in power, it may be third time lucky for ‘AMLO’ as he is known.
(7) Africa
Finally, the smooth and capable Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has recently been busy touring what Trump called “shithole countries”, and in the wake of Tillerson’s vain attempt to repair relations (Tillerson was called home from Africa and sacked before he’d finished). The Russians want to sell arms (to Angola, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) and nuclear power plants (especially to Nigeria) while offering their expertise in counter terrorism against Boko Haram as well as in Chad and Somalia. Maybe some of the relocated GRU/SVR expellees will find their skills with nerve agents useful there?
***
In the short term, Putin has many options to cause trouble, though they will elicit counter responses that will further entrench ‘fortress Russia’. He will not be too bothered by being cut off from western finance – though this will limit his ability to modernise and diversify Russia’s economy – since China can surely help, but that only underlines Russian dependency and ‘tier two’ status in the evolving new order. As long as Xi does not make that explicit, Putin can pursue his grand illusions5
FOOTNOTES
- The Intersection Project outlined the weaknesses of the Kremlin’s new military technologies in an article last month – referring to them as “straying into science fiction”.
- ‘Fixing’ means including Iran’s ballistic missile programme – in a separate fresh agreement – and extending the 10-15 years ‘sunset’ clauses for when Iran can legitimately resume nuclear research
- For some more background on this subject, read Metin Gurcan’s “Deciphering Russia’s delivery of Tell Rifaat to Turkey” from Al-Monitor on 29th March.
- See background reporting in the New York Times from February: “In openly courting General Haftar, the Kremlin was testing one of the incoming American president’s guiding foreign policy assumptions — that he could work with Mr. Putin to tackle thorny issues in the Muslim world — and instead sent a signal to the world that Russia would continue to pursue its own interests there. Yet, as has often been the case when it comes to Mr. Putin, there has been little to no resistance on Mr. Trump’s watch. The president himself has said nothing, and the State Department seems at odds with the Pentagon’s wary assessment of the Russian threat.”.
- The best book on Putin is Michel Eltchaninoff, Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin(London 2018).
Michael Burleigh is an historian and commentator on world affairs. His 12 books include The Third Reich: A New History (Samuel Johnson Prize 2001) ; Moral Combat; Small Wars and Faraway Places and The Best of Times, Worst of Times: The World As It Is which appears in November.
burlm11 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeMust watch video. It’s from 2019, but might be even more relevant today. Only five minutes.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0r7GRx8Sl-s
Wow – this is both shocking and scary!
Has everybody had enough of being told to shut up yet.
Oh for the days when the Internet was free of moderators and censorship and Overton windows.
It’s like having a bossy aunt in your ear all day long.
Do think part of the trouble is, we have censorship organisations that employ people, and in employing these people they need to give them something to do. And so what you end up with is a load of nit pickers with nothing better to do than pick over the smallest details of what people are saying, resulting in sterile online discourse that is hard to participate in because what you wrote disappears every five minutes.
Out of interest – where would you stand on the parents of Sandy Hook victims suing Alex Jones for his nonsense that it never happened and winning damages? Or fine someone can say that and have the means to spread it far and wide without any consequence?
Seems to me there are limits and Courts do occasionally have to make important judgments. To return to the subject matter more explicitly, the 1st amendment did not explain how every potential scenario would be interpreted. The subject is much more nuanced.
What does sandy hook have to do with censorship of public comment boxes/ spaces?
Somebody shared this on here the other day, thank you to that person btw:
‘The counterspeech doctrine posits that the proper response to negative speech is to counter it with positive expression. It derives from the theory that audiences, or recipients of the expression, can weigh for themselves the values of competing ideas and, hopefully, follow the better approach.’
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/counterspeech-doctrine/
Let’s address sandy hook.
Alex jones was prosecuted for DEFAMATION. Not under censorship laws. He wasn’t allowed to spread it too far and wide was he, because he got sued. So the system worked, without having to introduce draconian censorship or misinformation units. The case was bought by the families. Not the state. Again, I don’t see a problem with that.
https://apnews.com/article/alex-jones-infowars-bankruptcy-sandy-hook-0c3576e3c4bd853ac2cc5342118fca8c
So there are laws in place already, to protect people, as was proved by the Alex jones case.
What do you make of Peter Lynch, 61year old grandfather being imprisoned for thirty one months, for ‘shouting at the police’.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/21/peter-lynch-britain-first-political-prisoner/
A disgusting example of state over reach. He passed away in jail last week. I was glad to see people protesting about it in London yesterday.
Trigger warning: this comment has been sent to moderation. The irony.
Please feel reassured you being kept safe from the likes of me.
Lynch incited violence. You need to read the full judgment not a politically warped opinion piece.
I rest my case though – there are limits to free speech and you seem to concur.
I can’t wait to see how long Mike Amesburys sentence is then.
It better be quite a stretch longer.
Inciting violence is different to actually punching your voters isn’t it.
Unlike in nu Britnstan Draconia…
Unlike in Draconia nu britn
I think that *opinion* can be completely free, but any material that is to be officially or de facto treated as factual (curricula, etc.) must be under constant review, as is opinion, but whereas opinion should not be subject to removal/restraint, but factual sources must be subject to removal when objectively demonstrated to be false.
I an American – there is no issue more important than free speech (and by that I mean the real kind not the double speak definition we often get from ignorant politicians)
Though I have little faith in our society to learn quickly, it seems apparent that people here might easily be misled by unhindered free speech in the near term. However, lessons learned would quickly be realized, so that in the mid-term people might really begin to understand the need for validation of rumors from multiple sources. With luck, the long-term result may be a more savvy populace (or perhaps a bunch of suspicious, contrarian stoics). The benefit of this exercise in projecting the future may be realized by considering the alternative: A Fahrenheit 451 future in which video screens were useless unless one actually desired to watch a spongy, purple dinosaur dance across the screen all day.
Why do they tell them to remain silent when arrested when reality kicks in?
I’m an American, but can someone (British) tell me if Britain has the equivalent to our First Amendment? Our right to free speech is 100 percent (except the fire in a theater thing). Anything goes, including hate speech. Is it the same in Britain? From what I’ve read, it seems like you have more restrictions.
In UK ‘Hate’ speech; is criminalised, defined as speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something like race, religion, sex or sexuality. There have been a few high profile cases resulting from the summer riots, for example a wife of a Tory councillor getting a stretch for encouraging violence against migrants, but in prior decade Courts more often threw out cases where a person had called homosexuality or suchlike a sin etc. There is also a Football Order Act which bans racist chanting at matches.
The most high profile cases, such as Islamist Anjem Choundary, tend to be where the perpetrator is also supporting a proscribed organisation and here the sentences are much higher and cross over into anti terrorism laws.
There are decades of case law behind the 1st Amendment in the US with multiple Supreme ct rulings. A simple read of the text of the amendment isn’t sufficient to understand how it’s currently applied. Amongst a range of rulings one can still be sued for libel in the US and of course that costs a lot of money so those with money can threaten to bankrupt those without in order to suppress some things. Always worth pondering this before assuming it’s equal for everyone.
‘Anything goes, including hate speech. Is it the same in Britain? From what I’ve read, it seems like you have more restrictions.’
We are being suffocated by hate speech laws and draconian censorship of the Internet. We have hate speech laws that should never have been introduced.
I know people that struggled with censorship throughout covid and I have trouble posting on here frequently, especially when talking about immigrantion or the Ukraine war. It seems we have centre for disinformation or something, independent organisations that are policing us like a load of n*zis.
Their ability to control dialogue should absolutely not be allowed.
All of these need getting rid of.
Fire in a theater was overturned and has been massively misunderstood and misapplied.
https://sutherlandinstitute.org/the-history-behind-shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-and-other-free-speech-phrases/
This article is particularly relevant in the transgender debate. Here those in favour of gender assignment over sex assignment, most common among the left, have strong opinions which they are free to express. However, in addition they insist that a person with a different view not only disagrees with them but is intent in harming those with transgender tendencies. Even more harmful to free speech is that the left is more intent on shutting down the speech of those who disagree with men having access to women’s toilets, sports and prisons. Some new method of ensuring free speech needs to be found rather than hateful mob speech and bullying as is present now among the transgender group in our society.
I am amazed that a poll commisssioned by a free speech organisation would find that free speech is very important to voters.
I’d love it if these articles would include how the pollsters framed the questions, who they surveyed and how many.
It would provide much needed context
I think these discussions of free speech on the internet, though important, miss the most glaring issue of free speech as it was understood by the founders. Democracy (government by the people) represents two small dots in a long history of global autocracy. Both Athenian democracy, which lasted about a century, and ours (an attempt to reproduce the former without direct verbal inclusion of common citizens opinions) were originated and sustained by citizens’ assemblies. Our face to face public citizens’ assemblies, which took place in universities and fraternities the founders attended, maintained a standard of honorable discourse for about a century, until those assemblies were ended by the mob violence preceding our civil war. So what the founders understood as free speech is no more, and our little dot of pretend democracy is fading by the hour.