The UK must end its dependence on Russian money

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is very much under way, and the UK has responded by placing sanctions on a small number of banks and high-net-worth individuals, the majority of whom were already on a sanctions list in the US.

It is, without question, a response that does not meet the scale of the aggression. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is clearly disagreement within the UK government over whether to act now, with more draconian economic sanctions, or to keep some back for when the crisis inevitably escalates.

To know the correct course of action, one would have to know Mr Putin’s precise intentions, and we do not. We are, as ever, mired in indecision. Mr Putin, in turn, cannot know for certain the response with which his actions will be met. But he has ample reason to suspect he will be given a chance to push his luck.

He faced few consequences for his incursion into Georgia in 2008. He annexed Crimea in 2013. This was not deemed a sufficiently dastardly act to prevent the 2018 World Cup from taking place there. David Cameron and Barack Obama did not take action over chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Putin took the upper hand.

Mr Putin does not have voters to please. He does not have to worry, as democratic leaders must, about whether his people have the stomach for a terrible conflict in Ukraine.

It took the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a matter of seconds to abandon Nord Stream 2, the £10bn pipeline for Russian gas. For this he has been widely congratulated. It certainly stands in contrast to the UK’s more measly response. But Germany, the UK, and many other countries have made the mistake for a very long time indeed, of imagining, or rather hoping, that authoritarian, increasingly dictatorial Russia could still slot into the global market economy. Nord Stream 2 should have been cancelled long ago. This High Noon moment with Russia will come again with China.

If Germany has done the difficult thing and taken steps to end its dependence on Russian gas, the UK must go next, and end its dependence on Russian money-laundering and political patronage. Mr Putin’s cronies are not living their absurdly wealthy lives in Belgravia simply because it is their favourite place in the world. It is because we entice them here with obscene tax incentives that other European countries simply do not allow. But there are no immediate signs that such things will change.

Boris Johnson has also indicated that the UK will provide “lethal but defensive” support to Ukraine. We must hope his advisers have thought very hard about where such action will lead.

Economic sanctions might cripple the Russian people, but they may not cripple their leaders. Decades of vicious sanctions in Iraq, which deprived children of crucial medical supplies, did not topple Saddam Hussein, though they may have contained him.

When, in the wake of 9/11, the west waged wars that did not go well, it became a received wisdom that we had “done exactly what they wanted”. That we had been “drawn” into conflicts that were costly, degrading, and in some regards unwinnable. That is not quite the case. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership was, by and large, destroyed.

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Mr Putin knows his actions are a provocation. He does not know quite what he will provoke. But he has made inescapable what was already clear: that he is a lonely, isolated danger, and he cannot be ignored any more. That a European country of 40 million people can have its sovereign right to self-determination taken away by an aggressive neighbour is not an outcome that other countries can allow to happen.

Who knows what the months ahead will hold, or what will be the upper limit of UK intervention. But the government could certainly implement the easier steps a lot harder and a lot faster. Mr Putin runs a court of kleptocrats, who are loyal to him partly because he permits them to enjoy the benefits of a life of grand larceny. But he is not the only one with the power to shut that lifestyle down.

“Lethal but defensive force” may certainly be required. The UK would be right to provide it. But before it does so, it has its own dirty pipeline to shut down – the one bringing not Russian gas, but cash.