The Sunday Times November 14, 2021 21
For now,
the
Kremlin
holds
power
Lukashenko of
Belarus relies on
Putin for muscle
and cash in order
to stay in powerSERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERSLeaders
do little
but
express
concern
Thousands of people huddle in flimsy
tents and makeshift shelters enduring
freezing, squalid conditions in the
forests of western Belarus. Already cold
and hungry, some are ill. Others are
dead. More will follow in the coming
days, shipped to Minsk with the regime’s
promise of “package deals” and then
bussed to the border for a do-or-die
attempt to reach western Europe via
Poland. In this new kind of war, human
misery is ammunition.
These migrants are victims of a high-
stakes game of geopolitics played to
expose the West’s weaknesses, heighten
internal tensions, stoke divisions and
shred its credibility.
Behind all this is Russia. Inherently a
weak country, it has an economy the size
of Italy’s and abundant internal and
external difficulties. Yet it employs a
cocktail of deceit and decisiveness that
leaves us flummoxed. Proxies — such as
Belarus — give the Kremlin plausible
deniability. Putin’s spokesman rejects as
“crazy” any suggestion that Russia might
have a hand in the migrant crisis and
blames the EU for it.
Yet the truth is that the Minsk
strongman Alexander Lukashenko is
wholly dependent on the Kremlin for the
cash and muscle he needs to stay in
power. One brief phone call from Putin
would be enough to make him back off.
The Kremlin and its Belarusian
satellite state are in effect running a
protection racket: statecraft on the lines
of the Sopranos. “Nice border you have
there — shame if anyone broke it.. .”
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign
minister, has even suggested that the EU
pay Belarus to contain the migration
flows, citing a deal with Turkey in 2015.
Putin and Lukashenko can do this
because the West is impaled on a
dilemma about migration. Population
growth, climate change, war, poverty,
hunger and misrule are fuelling the
movement of millions of people from the
Middle East, African countries and
elsewhere. Yet voters in western
countries have made their opposition to
mass migration clear. Politicians cower
before their displeasure. The result is
people dying on our borders. Our
professed humanitarian values are
stretched to breaking point.
The result is to enrich private people-
traffickers and to cede political power topawns in Putin’s cold war
Like rain on a leaking
roof, Moscow reveals
our weakest points
the countries that engage in it. Russia
trialled this in 2016, shipping migrants to
its border with Finland. That ended only
when Helsinki agreed to end a freeze on
bilateral relations with Russia imposed
after its attack on Ukraine.
“In the Kremlin’s foreign policy
instruments, the threat of directing
migration flows has become a form of
pressure which can be used to shape
bilateral relations,” a report by the OSW
think tank in Warsaw said. The use of
migration undermines public trust in the
authorities and polarises political
opinion. Both suit the Kremlin’s long-
term aim to divide and rule.
Poland is a prime target for these
tactics. It is the military linchpin of
Nato’s efforts to defend the Baltic Sea
region against any possible Russian
aggression. Yet Poland is diplomatically
isolated after picking a fight with
Brussels over the government’s attempt
to politicise the judiciary. Many liberal-
minded Europeans detest its hard line
on abortion and gay rights. A state-run
media empire specialises in overblown
rhetoric.
There is indeed plenty to criticise.
The Polish authorities’ longstanding
hostility towards Muslims and non-
European migrants has intensified amid
the border crisis. Officials have blocked
media coverage and voluntary efforts to
provide humanitarian help. In the eyes
of the world Poland looks callous.
But to demand that the authorities in
Warsaw simply open their borders to
thousands of migrants is to play the
Kremlin’s game. Any success in crossing
the frontier illegally encourages more totry the same route. Controlling borders
is a key part of statehood. Poland, so
often occupied by foreign powers, will
not give in to outside pressure on this.
Western attention should focus
instead on the causes of the crisis, in
Minsk and in Moscow. Despite abundant
warnings and wake-up calls we have
failed for years to get to grips with the
threat these rogue regimes present.
Lukashenko has been murdering his
critics and rigging elections for two
decades. In May he forced down an
international flight to kidnap a critic.
Russia’s charge sheet is even longer. It
murdered Alexander Litvinenko in
London in 2006, launched a cyberattack
on Estonia, a Nato ally, in 2007, started a
war in Georgia in 2008 and attacked
Ukraine in 2014. It has repeatedly
attacked our political system using dirty
money and disinformation. Our reaction
has been feeble. The contemptuous use
of a lethal nerve agent in Salisbury in
2018 showed how little the Kremlin is
bothered by our displeasure.
Most other western countries are no
better. The failure of leadership in the
European institutions, and in France
and Germany, has been shocking, and
goes back for decades. Warnings from
the Baltic states and other countries
have been systematically ignored. The
Obama administration tried a “reset”
with the Kremlin in 2009, with
predictably disastrous consequences.
“Putin is feeding off the West’s feeble
response to his provocations from the
Balkans via Poland to the Baltics. He
won’t stop until we push back,” says
Arminka Helic, a British peer
specialising in foreign affairs.
That is certainly the story of the
migration crisis. Western countries have
done little more than express concern —
sometimes with added adverbs such as
“deeply” and “gravely” — that bounce off
the Kremlin walls like snowballs.
The hollowness of this is savagely
characterised by an anonymous Twitter
account, @DarthPutinKGB, who
lampoons not only the Kremlin
strongman but also the West’s weakness.
For now the Kremlin holds the
initiative. It can switch the migrationcrisis off. It can turn to another target,
such as Lithuania or Latvia, or to
countries further north. Or it can crank
up the exodus. For his part, Lukashenko
has threatened to cut gas transit supplies
to Europe. Russia slapped down that
warning, though it has been
systematically stoking Europe’s winter
gas crisis by its own actions.
The Kremlin has ostentatiously sent
its nuclear bombers on sorties and
ordered snap military drills in Belarus
involving elite paratroopers. This is
supposedly to counter Nato’s “military
build-up” on its borders, which includes
a small contingent of British troops.
Russian-imposed logic leaves the West in
a trap: any attempt to defend our
borders is a provocation — not to react is
to surrender.
This could flare up further, by design
or accident. Yet the real target in all this
is probably not Poland. What is really
worrying western military planners is
the situation in Ukraine, where fighting
has been sputtering since 2014, when
Russia seized Crimea and stoked an
insurrection in two eastern provinces. A
growing military presence on Ukraine’s
northern border prompted a hurried
visit to Moscow this month by Bill Burns,
the CIA chief who runs the Biden
administration’s relationship with
Russia. In a one-on-one call with Putin,
he delivered a blunt message to his host,
warning him against any aggression
against Ukraine. The Kremlin responded
by upping the pressure. US intelligence
chiefs have briefed their European allies
that Russia may be planning a further
attack on the lines of 2014.
This is part of a wider picture. Like
rain dripping through a leaky roof,
Russia’s influence penetrates the
weakest points in the landscape.
Take the western Balkans: largely off
the radar for decision-makers since the
wars of the 1990s. The tempting
prospect of eventual EU membership
was thought to be enough to encourage
much-needed economic and political
reforms, keep outside mischief-makers
away, and ensure peace. But locals’
patience and western credibility has
eroded, particularly since an EU summitin the summer put any further
membership talks on hold. Russia and
China are making hay as a result.
Europe’s most fragile country, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, is in its deepest
political crisis for more than two
decades. Even sober observers think
armed conflict is again a possibility.
Russia’s chief ally, the Bosnian Serb
strongman Milorad Dodik, is advocating
de facto secession for his ethnic statelet,
saying he will pull out of the country’s
remaining constitutional institutions
such as the armed forces, tax collection
and the legal system. That would set the
stage for more ethnic cleansing,
massacres and refugees — and even
more Russian meddling.
Dodik rules over just 1.2 million
people and an economy of £5 billion. Yet
he is able to defy the EU, which is more
than 300 times larger. As with Putin and
Lukashenko, the reason is simple: a
failure of western leadership. If the US,
the EU, Nato and this country cannot
even deal with small threats, what
chance do we have in the great
geopolitical contest of the century:
managing our relations with China?
Sanctions on the airlines that bring
the migrants to Belarus would be an easy
early step. Belatedly, that seems to be
under consideration. More important
would be a UN-backed humanitarian
intervention, providing urgent aid for
the people stranded on the border.
But these are just short-term fixes.
What the West really needs is a
systematic response to attacks that fall
short of actual fighting. The modish
term for these is “hybrid warfare”,
though the old Soviet-era term “active
measures” encapsulates them perfectly.
The arsenal of such weapons is huge,
and includes assassinations, corruption,
cyberattacks, diplomatic and economic
pressure, dirty money, disinformation,
espionage, organised crime and
propaganda, as well as the current one:
stoking migration flows. These tactics
are used in fast-changing combinations
and often outstrip individual
governments’ attempts to counter them.
Our response is fragmented.
Hopes were high that Biden would get
to grips with this. The US has made
unexpected progress in dealing with
corrupt international money flows, with
new laws against “kleptocracy” gaining
unprecedented support in Congress.
But the administration’s top priority
is China, on which it finds its European
allies mostly useless. As a result, Europe
is slipping down the agenda: why should
the US care more for the continent’s
security than the Europeans do, officials
in Washington ask.
With good reason. Germany is
leaderless until a new government takes
office, and even then is unlikely to
shoulder the political responsibilities
that go with its economic weight.
Emmanuel Macron, deep in his re-
election fight, has no spare political
capital. Britain could be moving on from
Brexit to rebuild our vital security ties
with the EU. Instead, Boris Johnson
stokes a needless row over the Northern
Ireland protocol.
While our leaders dither, bicker and
grandstand, our enemies are hard at
work. No wonder they are winning.LATVIA
LITHUANIA
ESTONIA
Russian nuclear
bombers flew over
Belarus last weekThe three Baltic states
regularly host Nato war
games to counter any
potential threat from
Moscow. Britain plays a key
roleRussia and Belarus held
huge joint military
exercises in September in
the Baltic region, Belarus
and western RussiaNOT SO QUIET ON
THE EASTERN FRONT
Russia
and alliesNato
countriesKEYRussian armour and
troop build-up on
Ukrainian border
sparked recent US
warning of invasionTURKEY
CRIMEA
Russia invaded and annexed
Crimea, part of Ukraine, in 20142 US warships
entered the Black
Sea this monthMore than 13,000 killed since
2014 in war over region of
Ukraine controlled by
Russian-backed separatistsBELARUS
Russian paratroopers
performed military drills
near Polish borderBelarus has
pushed
migrants
into the EU
for months8,500 Ukranian
troops sent
to Belarus border
CZECH REPUBLICAUSTRIA
British troops
joined 15,000
Polish forces at its
Belarus border to
give advice on
building fencesMoscow supports
Bosnian Serb
leaders pushing to
break up multi-
ethnic Bosnia &
HerzegovinaRussia has teamed
up with Serbia for
joint military drillsNorth Macedonia
has been targeted
by Moscow since
joining NatoMoldova is softening its
pro-Western stance after
being forced to sign a gas
deal with MoscowRUSSIA
Moscow
POLAND
UKRAINE
MOLDOVA
ALBANIA NORTH
MACEDONIABOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA SERBIAROMANIA
SLOVAKIA
GERMANY
RUSSIA
HUNGARY
Black Sea
EUROPE’S
FAULT LINEEDWARD
LUCAS
LAT
LITHUANIA
ESTO
NOT SO QUIET ON
THE EASTERN FRONT
RUSSIA