We yearn to help. Wrong must be put right. Something must be done. The agony was plain on Boris Johnson’s face as a Ukrainian berated him for refusing to impose a no-fly zone on Russia. When an outrage is being perpetrated and untold numbers of people are dying hourly on our screens, impotence is misery. So we loudly voice our support of Ukraine. We hate Vladimir Putin, hate oligarchs, hate Russians. It eases our pain.
The early stages of war are always moments when reason is told to leave. As the drums of battle roll, courage demands emotion and unity is all. The only resolution is death or glory. Talk of compromise is treason. This is especially true in Europe, with its long history of bilateral conflicts that demand to be seen as “world wars”.
There are specific actions that Britain can take to ease Ukraine’s suffering, and Britain has been clearly reluctant to take them. The most immediate is to throw open Britain’s borders to Ukrainian refugees, as EU countries have done with their plans to allow Ukrainians to live and work in the EU for up to three years. London’s Home Office, clearly under orders, turned back desperate refugees in Paris, demanding work-related visas and “security clearance”. There are also reports of border bureaucracy at the Channel stalling humanitarian supplies from local aid centres. The sacred rituals of Johnson’s Brexit must outrank even Putin’s war.
Beyond that, horror at what Putin is doing must be expressed through the instrument of economic sanctions, the hope being that he will see the error of his ways or be toppled in a coup. The difficulty is that the very fact of war as the ultimate expression of a nation’s will reduces all other aspects of statehood to irrelevance. Once under arms, a ruler such as Putin, who has been the target of severe sanctions for eight years, is plainly deaf to their impact.
Democracies allow dissent – though even Britain seems unable to tolerate RT’s pro-Russian propaganda – but dictatorships tend to be strengthened not undermined by economic siege. Coups are always unpredictable, and we can only pray that Moscow 2022 will be the exception that disproves the rule. It is puzzling, therefore, that the west is weakening its case by continuing to buy Russian oil and gas.
Most bizarre is the fate of the eccentric bystanders of this drama, the so-called oligarchs. This freemasonry of mostly expatriate Russians has, for 20 years, been feted with open arms in London, with gilded retinues of lawyers, accountants and lifestyle consultants. Their “golden visas” and party donations enable them to come and go as they please. They are permitted to hide from taxation, regulation and scrutiny behind shuttered Georgian windows, empty tower blocks and in secretive British Overseas Territories.
While in times past Putin is known to have had links with such people, I have seen no report out of Moscow that indicates they nowadays enjoy any access to or influence over him, let alone the power to reverse war or depose him. Recent books by Catherine Belton, Oliver Bullough and others depict him rather as a mafia boss, terrorising the oligarchs with a mix of extortions, bribes, imprisonment and attempted murder. But to a desperate British government they are the only manifestations of Russian power to hand, and must be hurled symbolically on to Putin’s pyre.
This is not an attack on Russia so much as a massive course correction in Britain’s attitude to foreign money. It would be truly ironic if it took the invasion of Ukraine to cure London of its favouritism towards money launderers, many of whom are Ukrainian. No one can calculate the sums appropriated to Britain from Russia’s sovereign assets since 1989, as from other sources of dodgy cash from Africa, the Gulf and the far east. The British Treasury has long been a co-conspirator in depriving countries around the world of their rightful revenues.
The manifestation of this in London is the conversion of its more salubrious districts into storehouses of vagrant money. It remains outrageous that individuals can buy and leave vacant whole streets and tower blocks in the middle of a capital city. They are charged less than £3,000 in annual council tax for multimillion-pound properties that in New York would be taxed at 50 times that, with local and national income tax on top. The latest research from Transparency International estimates that 40% of luxury properties on the London market now go to “suspect” buy-to-leave investors.
Johnson has long been wildly in favour of this racket. As mayor of London he called these luxury properties a “thrilling inward investment”. He toured Malaysia to help sell empty properties at Battersea Power Station and dismissed any critics as “gloomadon poppers”.
As many have found, nothing is more dangerous than to have Johnson as a fan. If he cannot topple Putin, he is determined to at least humble some of his former associates. But what will he do? Confiscate private houses, fine their owners for being Russian, expel them from the country? Unless they are criminals, we surely do not punish people for their nationality.
I enjoy the company of many Russians and, unlike the government, I do not hold them responsible for their monstrous ruler. News that Roman Abramovich feels he must sell his London palace and football team will not lift spirits in a Kyiv bunker or lose Putin much sleep. If this really signals the end of a long-running London scandal, then good. But what is needed is action, not words.
The current economic assault on Russia and Russians is unprecedented and its outcome is therefore impossible to predict. Feelgood sanctions in the past have inflicted poverty and injustice on peoples around the world to no political or other benefit. We can only wait to see if Russia capitulates to them. For the time being, I am left hoping only that a few oligarch mansions in Kensington find their way into the hands of Ukrainian refugees.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
