Salisbury Incident — House of Commons, 2018-09-12
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): I remember my first flight to St Petersburg in May 2005 as clearly as if it were yesterday. I was on my way to take up my post as director of the British Council’s operations in St Petersburg and felt a palpable sense of hope, combined with a healthy dose of trepidation. I was looking forward to improving my Russian and getting settled into my new life in St Pete, before formally starting the job in September. I was also, however, wondering what the coming years held in store for me, given the parlous state of the bilateral relationship Equally memorable, but for very different reasons, was my flight out of Russia in January 2008. The British Council had become a pawn in the stand-off that followed the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko by two state-sponsored hitmen on the streets of London, and we had been forced to close our St Petersburg office In spite of the aggression and unpleasantness that came to dominate the relationship between the British Council and the Russian authorities, Russia will always hold a special place in my heart. It is a fascinating country of contradictions, extremes, suffering and joy, and I will never forget my time there. A wise person once said, "You can leave Russia, but it will never leave you," and I can certainly confirm the truth of that statement. The world view of the Russian people is shaped by the conviction that those who seek to exploit and undermine nasha Rodina—the motherland—are constantly hovering on her doorstep, and their default position is therefore to strike first, to subjugate their neighbours and, from that platform, to build a sphere of influence. From the empire-building of Peter the Great to the establishment of the Soviet Union and its extension to the eastern bloc countries, to the constant and furious opposition to the expansion of NATO, through to Putin’s adventurism in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, the narrative of encirclement provides the backdrop to every chapter of Russia’s turbulent history and actuality; but understanding the historical, cultural and geopolitical forces that shape Russian behaviour is by no means the same as excusing it The Russian Government have literally been allowed to get away with murder for far too long. There are 10,000 dead in Ukraine, and 10 times that number in Syria. Alexander Litvinenko was brutally murdered by the Russian state; at least a dozen more adversaries of Mr Putin have died in suspicious circumstances on the streets of London; Anna Politovskaya and Boris Nemtsov were assassinated in Moscow, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin; and now we have seen Sergei Skripal, his daughter and a British police officer struck down by a nerve agent on the streets of a quiet town in Wiltshire, followed by the tragic death of Dawn Sturgess The Skripal attacks have of course provoked a great deal of speculation about why the Kremlin would choose to carry out such a high-profile hit just a few short months before the World cup. In my view, the explanation is a simple one, encapsulated in two simple words: greed and self-preservation. The Putin regime has no guiding ideology. It exists in order to protect and further the financial interests of a narrow elite, and to preserve its grip on power. It is a kleptocracy, turbo-charged by hydrocarbons.