Britain’s strained relations with Russia worsened on Sunday when a Cabinet minister questioned whether Vladimir Putin’s government may have been connected with the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
The Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, also said British relations with Russia were at a very tricky stage. “The promise that President Putin had brought to Russia when he came to power has obviously been clouded by what’s happened since and including some extremely murky murders.” He referred to the death of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a friend of Litvinenko.
Under Putin “there have been huge attacks on individual liberty and on democracy. And it’s important that he retakes the democratic road, in my view.”
His remarks came as the Conservatives sought a Commons statement on Monday from the Home Secretary, John Reid, on the safety of Russian citizens in the UK following the death of Litvinenko weeks after he was poisoned by radioactive polonium 210.
Although police are resisting calling their investigation a murder inquiry, senior MPs are openly using the term. The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, said it was unacceptable for any UK citizen to be murdered inside their own country, while the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has reportedly spoken of a naturalised British citizen “murdered on British streets by foreign nationals”.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Menzies Campbell, said the government should have been “much tougher” on Putin and relations would have to be considered carefully if Litvinenko’s death was found to be the result of “state terrorism”.
The government is trying to avoid making a Commons statement on Monday, saying the issue is best left as a police matter. Reid said the police have said they regard the death as suspicious and are keeping all options open.
But, speaking on the BBC AM programme, Hain said the recent events were “casting a cloud over President Putin’s success in binding Russia together and in achieving economic stability out of chaos that he inherited”.
Hain’s remarks were unusual in voicing widely held private concerns in government. Senior Foreign Office ministers have been warning for a week that they dreaded the death of Litvinenko because it was likely to lead to an inquest and a police investigation that may find Russian secret services were implicated.
Anglo-Russian relations, and EU-Russian relations, have been in long-term decline, leading to a standoff over plans to negotiate a new comprehensive treaty between Russian and the EU to replace the one due to expire at the end of 2007.
The EU has also been pressing for years for the liberalisation of access to Russian gas pipelines and greater opportunities for European oil companies to invest in the country. Russia, aware that its energy superpower status is the way back to a wider world role after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been increasingly hostile to calls for liberalisation and feels it has been barred from buying into energy distribution companies in the West.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for a new generation of nuclear power stations, and signing of energy deals with Norway are in large part prompted by concerns over British energy security and becoming over-dependent on Russian oil and gas. A recent bulletin from the Centre for European Reform think tank noted: “While energy experts are less concerned about Russia’s willingness to sell energy to Europe, they worry greatly about its ability to do so. Oil output growth in Russia has dropped off sharply at a time of record oil prices. Similarly, Russia’s gas output has been flat for years.”
At the beginning of the year, the dominant view inside Number 10 was that Putin could be readily managed so long as he was shown respect. There is now a feeling that something more sinister may be happening in Russia, and Putin is taking the country on irreversible course away from democracy.
A Chechen separatist leader claimed on Sunday that Litvinenko’s death was a “form of terrorism” in the same vein as the July 7 bombings, and urged the British government to speak out. Ahmed Zakayev, a former actor who became the righthand man of the elected Chechen president, claimed that Litvinenko was a victim of state-sponsored assassination, who had died fighting the Russian president. – Guardian Unlimited Â