The UK authorities have moved with impressive speed to identify the individuals who attempted to murder Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in the March poison attack. The presentation of hard evidence has left the Kremlin looking flat-footed – it had openly mocked the British government’s assertions that Russia was behind the plot.
Will anything change as a result?
Bilateral relations are currently so poor that they can hardly deteriorate further. In March, the UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats believed to be undercover intelligence officers claiming that this would “fundamentally degrade” Russia’s intelligence capability in the UK for years to come. Announcing the expulsions in March, the prime minister said it was in the UK’s national interest to have a dialogue with Russia. Yet in the current atmosphere, neither side is seeking what diplomats call engagement.
By contrast, the government claims that it is strengthening the UK’s defences against similar activity in the future, although the new measures remain unspecified.
It sent a warning signal to Moscow in March when border officials briefly searched an Aeroflot passenger plane that had arrived from Moscow. However, it is not clear how far it wants to go to make its point with this approach. It has good reason to fear a symmetrical Russian response.
Efforts to target dirty Russian money in the UK for the moment remain disappointingly vague. In her statement to parliament after the Skripals’ poisoning, Theresa May said that the National Crime Agency (NCA) would lead an effort to deploy all the law enforcement instruments available to target corrupt elites who park their money here.
Commenting shortly afterwards on the newly introduced unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) that aim to expose money laundering, a senior NCA representative said that he could not see them being used in significant numbers against Russians.
In response to the Skripal affair, the Home Office is re-examining the applications of 700 Russians who received investor visas before 2015 to identify cases of illicit funding coming to the UK – but there is no indication that action will be taken against specific individuals. The police and MI5 are also investigating 14 other deaths of Russians in the UK because of suspicions of Russian state involvement, but there is no news yet of any breakthroughs.
To show the Kremlin that it is serious about protecting the UK from malign Russian influence, the government needs to make a concerted effort to clean up the City of London. The signals so far are mixed: the listing on the London Stock Exchange late last year of En+, a company owned by Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with close links to Putin, showed that the City regulator and the Foreign Office were asleep at the wheel. The purpose of the listing was to repay a loan from a Russian state bank on the US and EU sanctions lists.
By contrast, parliament voted after the Skripal poisonings to require British Overseas Territories, including the British Virgin Islands, to establish public registers of beneficial ownership. This step will make it impossible for Russians, among others, to enjoy anonymity of investment in the UK. However, the registers will not become mandatory until the end of 2020.
The UK has already received the strongest possible support from its EU and Nato allies in response to the Skripal affair. It was a rare triumph for British diplomacy to encourage other countries to follow suit and expel Russian diplomats.
The identification of the main suspects responsible for the Salisbury poisoning will contribute to keeping in place US and EU sanctions over Ukraine, and slow down efforts by President Trump and some countries in Europe to improve relations with Moscow.
Brexit notwithstanding, the UK is likely to continue to enjoy the support of its European partners in confronting the Russian threats it faces. Washington’s latest sanctions, adopted in August in response to the use of a chemical weapon in Salisbury, show that UK and US security interests remain closely aligned.
The level of solidarity the UK has been able to muster will have taken the Russians by surprise.
• John Lough is an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, and a former Nato representative in Russia
