Death of a Londoner

ON NOVEMBER 1st 2006 Marina Litvinenko cooked a special dinner for her husband, Alexander, to mark the sixth anniversary of their arrival in Britain from Russia (and their first since becoming citizens). In the early hours of November 2nd the spy-turned-dissident started vomiting. In hospital his condition deteriorated: his hair fell out, his skin turned yellow and he threw up parts of his stomach. After 20 days of agony he composed a statement blaming his poisoning on Vladimir Putin. He died of heart failure shortly afterwards.

Almost a decade later, on January 21st, a judge-led inquiry concluded that two Russian agents had most likely spiked Litvinenko’s tea with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope, at a meeting in London. They were “probably” acting on Mr Putin’s orders. Sir Robert Owen’s report also indicates that the murder was about more than bumping off an enemy. Its particulars—from the use of a slow-working poison to the trail of radiation through London and the decoration awarded to one of the suspects last year—amounted to an ostentatious sneer at the British state. They sent a message to other opponents: don’t think that Moscow’s jurisdiction is limited to Russia’s borders, or its citizenry.

In a statement following the report’s publication, Theresa May, the home secretary, told MPs that she had suspended both men’s assets. Ministers are now deliberating over further asset freezes, visa refusals and diplomatic expulsions. Naming those affected is “very much on the table”, says one senior source. Others, including Mrs Litvinenko, call for more: a comprehensive travel ban on Mr Putin’s coterie of politicians, spooks and oligarchs; a boycott of Russia’s football World Cup in 2018; a public inquiry into the mysterious death of Alexander Perepilichny, a Russian whistleblower who collapsed near his home in Surrey in 2012.

If the decision were just about doing right by the Litvinenko family, the government would do the lot. But the wider national interest is a rival consideration. The Foreign Office is cautious about jeopardising relations with the Kremlin on the cusp of Syrian talks in Geneva, whose outcome will affect both the refugee crisis and the threat from Islamic State terrorism, and which may turn on Russia’s influence over its vassal in Damascus. Meanwhile, as of 2014 rich Russians had some £27 billion ($39 billion) invested in London, where they come to bank, shop, educate their children and sue each other. Such interests are well-represented in Conservative circles; at a pre-election fundraising ball Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Mr Putin’s ex-finance minister, successfully bid £160,000 for a tennis match with David Cameron (in a moment of exuberance the auctioneer threw in the party chairman as a ball boy).

Politics is politics. The hard truth is that voters put jobs, investment and counter-terrorist co-operation before the welfare of Russian dissidents. So arguments for a self-interested realpolitik have often prevailed. The government has repeatedly rejected calls by MPs for Britain to emulate America’s “Magnitsky Act”, a public travel ban on Moscow officials connected with the violent death in custody of an anti-corruption lawyer. In 2013 Ms May initially refused a public inquiry into the Litvinenko case, citing “international relations”. The Ukraine crisis, it is true, put some lead in Mr Cameron’s pencil—he was relatively hawkish on the matter of sanctions—but even in 2014 an adviser in Downing Street was snapped holding notes fretting about their effect on the City. Today murky, Kremlin-linked money still sloshes through London’s housing, financial and energy markets, all with the connivance of British bankers, lawyers and estate agents (a government report published in October highlighted “significant” gaps in the country’s offensive against money laundering).

Yet the trade-off between principle and realism is more illusory than the government’s actions or words allow. Take the fight against Islamic State. Russia has an entirely different agenda in Syria from that of Britain—indeed, it has allegedly been aggravating the fallout in Europe by sponsoring hard-right, anti-refugee parties—and its intelligence agencies are not in the habit of sharing information with foreign counterparts. Where they perceive a shared interest (over security at the World Cup, for example) they will co-operate with Britain regardless of the health of the diplomatic relationship. And even if none of this were the case, tip-toeing around Litvinenko’s murder would not be the answer; as one minister points out, Mr Putin routinely defies international norms not because he is offended by the West’s assertiveness, but because he thinks it weak.

London or Londongrad?

The hard-nosed case for tough sanctions is even stronger when it comes to the economy. London’s status as a leading financial hub is not reliant on Russian dosh, which according to a study in 2014 by Open Europe, a think-tank, represents 0.5% of international investments there. Moreover, a cynical failure to respond adequately to the killing would damage that status, which depends on Britain’s reputation for straight dealing and rule of law. For this reason the proliferation of obscure holdings and stolen money in London so concerns the government that it has launched an anti-corruption drive (including a new company-ownership register), boosted the budget of the Serious Fraud Office and is considering making “failure to prevent economic crime” an offence.

Whether Britain now does something to dent the Kremlin’s sense of impunity is thus a measure of whether it believes its own schtick. Panjandrums in Westminster are forever asserting that the country’s role as a global entrepôt gives it hard geopolitical influence; that its “soft power” and knack for fair play are among its greatest assets; that trade and the rule of law go hand in hand. How it responds to Sir Robert’s finding—that a thuggish foreign state seemingly murdered a British citizen on the streets of the capital—is a fine test of how much any of this really means.

^{Economist.com/blogs/bagehot}