The world nine years ago looked rather different. The threats facing it were different. Russia was still recovering from the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union and grappling with a power structure, which included former communist officials who had managed to acquire control of former state monopolies making them super rich oligarchs, the very powerful Russian Mafia and the FSB. The government came fourth in line. Among them all were rivalries, enmities and power struggles.
An offshoot of this maelstrom was a former KGB officer who fled to England, became a British citizen, joined MI6, worked also for the Spanish security service and was a vociferous critic of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. A more dangerous combination of associations and activities is hard to imagine, heroic though the causes may have been. Somebody in Russia had finally had enough and orders were given for a sophisticated and untraceable murder using a toxic infusion of polonium in the victim’s tea in a up market London hotel.
Not for the first time the surprisingly secretive British state possessed detection skills based on science at cutting edge levels which not only identified the poison but traced its origins back to Moscow through a trail leading all over Europe, leaving no doubt whatsoever who the perpetrators were. This was all known years ago. It is indeed and affront to murder people in another country and we do not have to rehearse the very real anger that such an act invokes. Nor do we have to mince our words in telling the Russians that this is not acceptable. Unfortunately to do it nine years on creates a theatrical backdrop which diminishes the impact. It allows the guilty to claim we made it up. We really do have to reduce the extraordinary longevity of our public inquiries, which end up arguing about history from which most have moved on. Chilcot falls into this category.
That the truth is at last officially in the open will come as a late but well deserved comfort to the victim’s wife and son, who are notable for their dignity and level headedness at the epicentre of a family nightmare. There will be much expostulating, sanctioning and banning to reinforce our sense of national outrage. But at the end of the day we have to accept that Russia is Russia, over centuries fundamentally it changes little and whatever its faults and weaknesses, it has qualities and strengths upon which we depend to help sort out a good deal of trouble in the world as it is today.