Britannia Radio

This is a salutary reminder of just what we must now confront in the 
new and supremely nasty Russia.  The fact that British society is 
riddled with equally nasty people acting as 'fellow 
travellers' [Remember them ? ]  should concern us even more.  And 
then we have the Kremlin satellites in the Russian oil dependent 
countries like Germany and Italy backed by France (always a Russo-
phile country) to contend with in the EU, where they are in control.

This latter is exemplified in the French Les Echos today where it 
says - -
"La Russie crie victoire après le sommet de l'Union européenne
La Russie a estimé, hier, avoir remporté une victoire après que les 
dirigeants européens se furent abstenus, lors du sommet de lundi, 
d'imposer des sanctions à Moscou à la suite de l'occupation partielle 
du territoire géorgien par des troupes russes."
= "Russia cries victory after the EU summit"       Russia believes  
it carried off a victory when the European executives at Monday's 
summit abstained from imposing sanctions on Moscow following the 
partial occupation of Georgian territory by Russian troops"

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GUARDIAN 'Comment is free' Blog  3.9.08
To Russia, with love
Why has an odd alliance of leftwingers, Tories and bankers come out 
for this fascist kleptocracy?

On Russia, at least, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg think 
alike. Belatedly and perhaps emptily, all three party leaders have 
condemned the invasion of Georgia and demanded a tough response. Yet 
a different and even odder alliance is taking shape on the other 
side. Its members include such unlikely figures as Andrew Murray of 
Stop the War Coalition, David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, and 
historian Correlli Barnett, as well as anonymous but influential City 
bankers and lawyers.

The Kremlin's most constant allies are the old pro-Soviet left: 
people such as Bob Wareing, the veteran leftwing MP for Liverpool, 
West Derby. He recalls warmly the wartime alliance with Stalin's 
Soviet Union, and the promise of social justice in the communist 
system. In the Morning Star, Andrew Murray blames the war in Georgia 
on American imperialism and contrasts it with the success of "Soviet 
nationalities policy" in promoting "the cultural, linguistic and 
educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or 
how historically marginalised". Chechens, Crimean Tatars and other 
victims of Stalin's murderous deportation policies presumably don't 
count.

A simpler approach is pure Russophilia: people who love Russia's 
culture or language, and rejoice in what seems to be a national 
rebirth under Vladimir Putin. A wider group is sparked chiefly by 
anti-Americanism. If you hate George W Bush then you may cast a 
friendly glance on the people who make life difficult for him, such 
as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, or Putin in Russia. It is countries such 
as Russia, however spiky and unattractive, that can derail the new 
world order. Yet that's odd. If, say, you feel that Muslims get a 
hard deal from America, then surely the Russian torture camps in 
Chechnya should make your blood boil?

In odd alliance with the anti-globalists are the champions of 
international business: those who do well out of selling goods and 
services to Russia. In the City, investment banks, law firms, 
accountants and consultants have enjoyed a bonanza thanks to their 
Russian clients. Auditors such as PricewaterhouseCoopers have not 
flinched at doing the Kremlin's dirty work - for example in 
withdrawing their audit of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company, 
which conveniently coincided with Kremlin allegations of fraud. For 
this pinstriped fifth column, business is business, and worries about 
human rights or the rule of law are tiresome distractions.

David Wilshire, a leading Conservative member of the Council of 
Europe parliamentary assembly, has lobbied hard to make Mikhail 
Margelov, a pro-Putin Russian parliamentarian who used to be a KGB 
language instructor, the next president of the organisation, which is 
supposedly devoted to promoting human rights. Then come those such as 
the polemical Peter Hitchens, who have no great liking for tycoons, 
but a deep admiration for the nation-state. He writes: "I often wish 
we were more like Russia, aggressively defending our interests, 
making sure we owned our own crucial industries, killing terrorists 
instead of giving in to them, running our own foreign policy instead 
of trotting two feet behind George W Bush." Russia, he says, has come 
to stand for national sovereignty and independence, while we give up 
our own.

Correlli Barnett praises the regime in Russia in a similar vein. In 
the past few days, for example, Barnett has said: "World peace? Give 
me Putin any day!"; and "the West should jettison moral indignation 
and global do-goodery as the basis of policy, and instead emulate 
Russia's admirable reversion to 19th-century realpolitik". The main 
motive here is dislike for the whole apparatus of modern diplomacy - 
multilateral organisations governed by international treaties and at 
least a notional commitment to human rights.

It is all very odd. Russia is an oil-fuelled fascist kleptocracy 
ruled by secret police goons and their cronies. It is 
authoritarian:   critics risk forcible incarceration in psychiatric 
hospitals, or are simply murdered - such as the shooting dead in 
police custody of Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush journalist, this week. 
It is imperialist:   bullying neighbours with oil and gas cut-offs, 
let alone the occupation of Georgia, where Russia's proxies have 
practised ethnic cleansing on a scale that recalls the atrocities of 
the wars in former Yugoslavia. And it is deeply corrupt and lawless: 
something that even Putin's successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, 
has acknowledged publicly. However bad other countries may be, it is 
hard to find anything there worth emulating.

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· Edward Lucas is the author of The New Cold War: How the Kremlin 
Menaces Both Russia and the West