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The West is losing patience with Putin

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  • The West is losing patience with Putin

    The Telegraph, United Kingdom
    Nov 25 2006

    The West is losing patience with Putin
    Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/11/2006


    There is, as yet, no evidence linking the poisoning of Alexander
    Litvinenko to the Kremlin. While many commentators believe that there
    is a connection - the former spy had been consorting with exiled
    opponents of the Putin regime - hearsay does not constitute proof.

    We do not know for sure that Mr Litvinenko was murdered and, if he
    was, the deed may have been done by his ex-KGB colleagues acting
    without higher authority. It is important to make this qualification
    because, if Mr Litvinenko was indeed assassinated on the orders of
    the Russian state, the consequences will be huge.

    We are talking, after all, about a man living under the Queen's
    peace. When one government deliberately uses lethal force in
    another's jurisdiction, it commits an act of terrorism - arguably of
    war. Libya and Sudan were bombed in retaliation for such ingressions,
    Afghanistan occupied.

    advertisementVladimir Putin's regime is not, of course, in the same
    category as those of Gaddafi, Omar Bashir or the Taliban. But it is
    showing increasingly autocratic tendencies. Opposition figures are
    jailed on pretexts. Independent television stations have been
    virtually eliminated. Just weeks ago, a respected journalist, Anna
    Politkovskaya, was gunned down in broad daylight after criticising
    the president.

    Abroad, too, Mr Putin is throwing his weight about, meddling in
    Ukraine and in the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He is
    conducting a bestial war against Chechen separatism, but is happy to
    sponsor South Ossetian separatism in Georgia.

    Why this new-found swagger? Because Russia is suddenly, as Mr Putin
    likes to remind us, "an energy superpower". His defence minister is
    even more direct: "In the contemporary world, only power is
    respected." Perhaps. But, in any commercial transaction, power lies
    ultimately with the customer - in this case, Western Europe. Until
    now, the West has tended to overlook Mr Putin's authoritarianism,
    largely for the sake of a quiet life. But there must come a point
    when our patience runs out. It is one thing to tyrannise your people;
    quite another to presume to do so on British territory.
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