Vladimir Putin’s plan to divide Europe is backfiring

The former Russian
prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin once famously quipped: “We wanted the best,
but it turned out as always.” When Dutch, British and US officials last week
issued coordinated denunciations of Russia’s cyber-operations – whose targets ranged
from sports anti-doping bodies to the international chemical weapon watchdog –
it felt like Chernomyrdin’s saying had been given new meaning.
For all the efforts
the Kremlin put into staging the World Cup earlier this year as a demonstration
of Russia’s openness, news seems to keep pouring in about the blunders of its
not-so-secret services. In the latest instalment yesterday, Bellingcat, an investigative
website, published the name of the second Russian agent involved
in the Skripal poisoning.
Official Russian
reactions have ranged from denouncing a “stage-managed propaganda campaign” to
sneering at “western hysteria about all-mighty Russian
cyber-spies”. But for a Russian president who prides himself on
efficiency and making Russia look powerful, it all smacks of a major setback.
Even small western European countries with no history of
tense geopolitical confrontations with Russia can find themselves targeted
As a teenager Putin
was fascinated by 1960s Soviet spy movies. In the early years of his presidency
his strong point was his efficiency. One of the reasons he became president in
the first place was that he’d proven his worth to the Yeltsin “family” (as it
was dubbed) while running the FSB secret services. His agents were ordered to
ensnare the Russian general prosecutor Yuri Skuratov in a honey trap, so as to
stop him investigating high-level graft. Soon enough, a video broadcast on
state TV had thoroughly discredited the man.
All of this is to say: the press
conference at which the Dutch government accused Russia’s military intelligence
agency, the GRU, of targeting the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons did not exactly fit Putin’s narrative of a resurgent Russia. The most
hapless detail of all was that one of
the GRU agents had kept a Moscow taxi receipt indicating that
he had travelled to the airport from a street next to intelligence agency
offices.
For all the laughs, there’s a wider
lesson to be drawn for Europe: Kremlin-fostered disruption can no longer be
mostly depicted as a strategy aimed at keeping former Soviet satellite states
under Moscow’s sway. Rather, Russia’s attempts to undermine institutions are
now evident across Europe. Since the
fall of communism, eastern Europeans have often felt that their anti-Russian
mindset was caricatured by western Europeans as hysterical and obsessed with
the neo-imperialism lurking in Moscow. After Estonia was hit by a massive
Russian cyber-attack in 2007, few in Paris or Berlin worried the danger might
one day extend further west.
Now, with the Netherlands so meticulously exposing
Russian actions, it’s become ever clearer that even small western European
countries with no history of tense geopolitical confrontations with Russia –
not just “scare-mongering” eastern ones – can find themselves targeted.
There is no legacy of great power
rivalry between the Dutch and the Russians. Nor is the Netherlands one of those
of European countries that has historically suffered the worst of Russian or
Soviet aggression, whether in world war two, during communism, or dating back
even earlier. What made the Dutch a target is that they are responsible for the
security of the OPCW, based in The Hague.
The Dutch aren’t alone in this
reckoning. Earlier this year, Greece – a culturally pro-Russian, Christian
Orthodox country – found itself having to denounce Russian meddling in its domestic
affairs over the Macedonia name dispute. Likewise, Emmanuel Macron of France
has gone on the record saying Russia seeks to “dismantle the EU” – a striking
statement from the leader of a country that has traditionally tried to keep
something of a special relationship with Moscow, if only in reference to
Charles de Gaulle. Some analysts in Berlin also detect a tougher tone in
Germany’s approach to Russia – with a new focus on keeping close to central
Europe rather than trying to engage Moscow. The Russian agents caught in The
Hague had plans to carry out further operations on a
laboratory in neutral Switzerland – hardly a country one can
claim to be part of Nato’s supposed humiliation of Russia.
When it comes to understanding Putin’s
intentions, Europe’s old east-west dividing line is fast becoming irrelevant.
What is likely to become more salient is a pattern the Kremlin has been busy
cultivating: the ideological sympathy it draws from far-right populists across
Europe, both east (Hungary’s Viktor Orbán) and west (Italy’s Matteo Salvini,
Austria’s Heinz-Christian Strache).
The long shadow of the east-west divide
won’t disappear overnight: easterners who lived in “the captive west”, as the
writer Milan Kundera once described the
Soviet bloc, have memories others don’t. If anything, the 2015 refugee crisis
made the east-west gap more visible. But as one high-level German official told
me this week, Russia’s actions may well give a boost to European unity, rather
than deepen disagreements.
It is now possible that western
Europeans will feel a new closeness to those Poles and Balts who have long
warned about Russia’s encroachments but felt (especially before the war in
Ukraine) that they were crying in the wilderness. In the end, Russian spooks
may well help bridge some gaps between European sensitivities. That’s not a spy
movie Putin would enjoy.
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