The Guardian : West's muted response speaks volumes

West's muted response speaks volumes

Simon Tisdall | October 10, 2006

The weekend assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, the celebrated investigative journalist who frequently criticised Russia's ruling elite, was condemned by western media, professional and human rights groups. But it provoked a relatively muted official reaction from most western governments.

An exception was Erkki Tuomioja, the left-leaning foreign minister of Finland, which currently holds the EU presidency. "The fact that this kind of murder is possible challenges the credibility of the country's government," he said. "Let's see how willing and able Russian officials are to solve it ... wherever the track leads."

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That is challenging talk. These days most European leaders prefer to appease rather than accuse Vladimir Putin. Europe's strategically and morally debilitating dependency on Russian oil and gas is one reason. A sense among policymakers that the "new Russia" is ineluctably going its own unsavoury way is another.

Mr Tuomioja's public anger contrasted sharply with the German government's reaction. It initially declined to make any comment at all, although the issue was raised during Mr Putin's visit to Dresden today.

Angela Merkel's conservative government is busy designing a new Ostpolitik or "east politics", modelled on former West German chancellor Willy Brandt's opening to the Communist bloc. As a prime German export market and energy supplier, and a key interlocutor on Iran and North Korea, post-Soviet Russia is now too important to offend and too big to ignore.

Europe's conflicting priorities over commerce, security and human rights have also been exposed in its reaction to Russian bullying of Georgia. The expulsion of Georgians working in Moscow has been likened by Russian commentators to ethnic cleansing. The EU has largely looked on in silence.

According to Dmitri Trenin, writing in Nezavisimaya Gazeta earlier this year, Russia's leaders - like America's before them - increasingly believe theirs is the world's "indispensable country".

Georgia and Ukraine had already been targeted for re-absorption into Russia's sphere, he said. Belarus, where Moscow is determined to pre-empt another pro-western "colour revolution", was next.

Looking at the situation inside Russia, Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Endowment decried a "widening crackdown on democracy and individual freedoms" that amounted to a "systemic crisis in the field of human rights and democratic institutions" and undermined the rule of law.

Opposition parties, independent media, the judiciary, and the electoral system were all under consistent attack in the name of reform, she said. A system of imposed or so-called "sovereign democracy" was being instituted that enabled the ruling political and business elites centred on the Kremlin to justify its monopoly of power without running serious risk of losing it.

Andrei Illarionov, a former presidential economic adviser, has described the new Kremlin credo as "an ideology of 'nash-ism' (ours-ism) offering privileges, subsidies, credits, powers and authority to those who are 'nashy' (ours)... It is an ideology of aggression to 'others'. It is a return to barbarism." Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, pointed to "endemic corruption (that) adds to overall civil insecurity".

Gary Kasparov, the former chess champion who leads the opposition United Civil Front, said this week that Ms Politkovskaya's murder was part of the overall slide towards intolerant, centralised control. "With the assassination, the forces of corruption and repression in Russia have now made it entirely clear that there is nothing they won't do to stay in power," he said.

This is a fight even the battle-shy EU will find it difficult to duck.