The West can remove ammunition from the Kremlin spin doctors by differentiating between the crooks in the leadership and Russia as a whole. Be clear who the opponent is; do not use Russia as a scapegoat for the West’s own problems, as has happened in American politics. Yes, the Kremlin sought to meddle in US elections, but its role shouldn’t be exaggerated. Democracy in America is put at risk by the behaviour of its own politicians, by the rise of populism and developments in global social trends, not just by the malevolent force from the East. Superhuman powers should not be assigned to a president who Navalny and many others now refer to as ‘the old man in his bunker’, a leader who makes increasingly rare public appearances and fears the world beyond the Kremlin walls. It’s a mistake to engage with the hysterical polemics promoted by Russian state media, or with the conspiracies propagated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Trying to refute spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s contention that the British state poisoned the Skripals in order to frame Russia, or that Navalny poisoned himself, only plays into their hands. It is best to deal with the realities and the facts, and to avoid playing into the Kremlin blame game. As Professor Daniel Drezner, author of The Sanctions Paradox, points out, when sanctioned regimes fear they are failing to keep their population onside by using the ‘common enemy’ tactic, they will increasingly ‘enact repressive measures’.
Recent events have demonstrated that a dictatorship has finally been established in Russia. Any hint of decorum has been cast aside. The electoral process has become a smokescreen. Putin’s political opponents are not allowed to run in the elections, criminal cases are fabricated against them; and, finally, in some cases, they are poisoned. As Putin and his stooges become increasingly helpless and desperate, they openly resort to violence to quell dissent.
Since the original imposition of sanctions in 2014, the West has got better at tailoring and explaining its measures, but there is still more work to do. The Americans gradually pivoted to individually targeted sanctions. That was very painful for those named individuals. But here, too, not enough effort was put into explaining why these particular sanctions were being applied to these people. As a result, their effect was lessened, because the Russian authorities told their citizens their own version of the story, that the Americans were punishing Russia for daring to have an independent foreign policy.
Personal sanctions that target specific people for clearly specified reasons have the potential to curb the influence of Putin, his friends and the regime’s sponsors. Sanctions should target the perpetrators of illegal orders and political repression, individuals who distort the workings of a normal state. That includes judges, security officials, prosecutors, intelligence services, as well as the sponsors and asset holders of Putin’s inner circle. The sanctions’ targets should be people and businesses who directly violate, sponsor or facilitate the spread of corruption, disinformation and illegal influence in the West, or promote human rights abuses in Russia.
Who are these people and how are they affected? Oleg Deripaska, the founder of Rusal, until recently the largest aluminium producer in the world, is an example of someone targeted by personal sanctions against members of Putin’s entourage. To remain as rich as Deripaska has in Putin’s Russia means total subservience to the Kremlin. Few of Putin’s oligarchs are more influential and loyal than Deripaska, as the Mueller Report amply demonstrated. In 2018, the United States Treasury nominated Deripaska for sanctions as a result of his ‘having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, a senior official of the Government of the Russian Federation’, as well as his ‘claims to have represented the Russian government in other countries’. This had a staggering impact on Russia’s main share index, which slumped by 11 per cent when the sanctions came into effect.
Deripaska’s public pronouncements suggest quite strongly that targeted sanctions can work. In late 2020, he complained that the measures against him were part of a ‘war’ against Russia, ‘no better than a bombing raid on our cities or direct attacks on our borders’. Deripaska’s words reflect the extent of the disconnect between the ruling elite and the people of Russia. ‘Those who directly or indirectly provoke sanctions against [us],’ he added, ‘should logically be considered to have betrayed the country and suffer the corresponding judicial consequences.’ I responded to Deripaska at the time: ‘So, [the West] preventing people from spending millions abroad while they are nominally employed as civil servants in Russia, or refusing to allow into their countries those people who go unpunished for torture and murder in Russia, amounts to a hybrid war? To me this is actually just basic morality.’
Alongside Deripaska, the US Treasury Department in 2018 targeted a number of people close to Putin: oil, gas and mineral tycoons Vladimir Bogdanov, Suleiman Kerimov, Viktor Vekselberg and Igor Rotenberg; Putin’s former son-in-law Kirill Shamalov; former prime minister Mikhail Fradkov; head of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev; Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller; and Viktor Zolotov, head of Putin’s Praetorian Guard, the Rosgvardiya. It was a warning to the corrupt officials of the Kremlin and a signal to the Russian business community that has for so long propped up this authoritarian junta that they are not safe, and Putin cannot protect them forever.
Paradoxically, the Kremlin criminals who accuse their critics of being ‘Russophobes’ and ‘foreign agents’ have nearly all stashed their cash in Western countries, via shell companies or under the names of family and friends who live abroad. They do so because they know that keeping their money in Russia exposes it to the ravages of a predatory state, renowned for its arbitrary confiscation of private property. The existential paradox of any kleptocratic system is that those who have stolen money do not trust the regime that has let them steal it. They seek to hide this dirty money where it cannot be taken from them. It is estimated that well over $1 trillion of private Russian money is in foreign banks, and, while some of it is perfectly legitimate, a very large amount of it is not. Capital outflows have increased markedly in recent times, much to Putin’s displeasure.
These thieves must not be allowed to continue hiding their money in the West, using the financial centres of London and New York to launder cash stolen from the Russian people. If the West wishes to combat the criminals in the Kremlin, it must agree to be more transparent and more decisive in its actions. During the election campaign of 2020, then President-elect Biden pledged that he would ‘issue a presidential policy directive that establishes combating corruption as a core national security interest and democratic responsibility’. He undertook to ‘lead efforts internationally to bring transparency to the global financial system, go after illicit tax havens, seize stolen assets, and make it more difficult for leaders who steal from their people to hide behind anonymous front companies’. The strengthened sanctions announced by Washington, Brussels and London in March 2022 suggest that the West is finally getting serious about ending the old practices of financial secrecy for Putin and his criminal associates. While the war in Ukraine continues to rage, while the Putin regime is killing people en masse, no sanctions can be considered too harsh. Western governments might even be criticised for leaving obvious loopholes and opportunities for circumventing them. What I am talking about is the medium-term and the longer-term future.