Putin’s propaganda machine is in overdrive. But why is a Conservative MP buying it?

written for The Telegraph, 6 March 2014

Putin’s propaganda machine is in overdrive. But why is a Conservative MP buying it?

If anyone was in any doubt of Russia’s expansionist aims in Eastern Europe, Vladimir Putin’s rambling press conference on Tuesday should have made things clear. One direct claim emerged from Putin’s ethical morass of doublespeak:  international agreements are his to tear up at whim. The new regime in the Ukraine, he argued, has effectively created “a new state with which we have signed no binding agreements”, a completely different entity from the Ukraine of 1994 whose territorial integrity Russia swore to uphold in the Budapest Memorandum. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus told us no man can step into the same river twice: Putin’s Heraclitus knockoff is the geopolitical equivalent of a stoned student droning on the college bar, explaining he can’t be held to an old rental contract he’s signed “because me two years ago was a whole different soul, man”. But Putin is not a mere student welshing on a trivial debt. The Budapest Memorandum didn’t just fix borders in Eastern Europe, it also reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. So yesterday’s test of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, routine or not, should concentrate our minds.

At times like this, you can usually rely on Brooks Newmark, MP for Braintree, to tell it like it is. Newmark put in a superb performance on Channel 4 last night, explaining exactly how and why Britain needs to target economic sanctions so that Putin’s entourage feel the pinch. Up against him was Putin loyalist and revisionist Russian historian Natalia Narochnitskaya, who has previously called for greater Russian control over the Baltic States, “for full legal continuity with the Russian Empire”.

And the Baltic States, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, are well aware that they’re Putin’s next targets. Each has seen intense debates in recent years over the legality of dual citizenship: Latvia, for example, now permits dual citizenship with EU countries, but not with Russia. It sounds arcane, but what’s at stake is the position of thousands of Latvians of Russian descent, just like the Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine whom Russia claims as citizens. In practice, hundreds of thousands of people in the Baltic continue to hold dual citizenship without any consequences. Estonian citizenship is alienable, for example, so you can’t be stripped of it for “illegally” holding a Russian passport. It’s likely that in the next few months we’ll see moves in each country to tighten up these last loopholes – the question is whether it can be done without provoking Putin.

As Newmark made clear last night, with South Ossetia, Assad’s Syria and the Crimea, Putin is rolling out ever more direct control over his empire. Newmark has been the staunchest parliamentary advocate of direct support to Syria to counter Russia’s influx of weapons  – his face was a picture when the preposterous Narochnitskaya claimed the compromise over Assad’s chemical weapons was a model for Russia working with the West.

So it’s odd that some of his Conservative colleagues seem to be buying Putin’s propaganda. Tory MP Mark Pritchard asked a question in the House yesterday about how far we can trust Germany’s motives when dealing with Russia – a fair question, perhaps, if it weren’t for a couple of bizarre Tweets issued by Pritchard over the last week. On Monday, Pritchard criticised John McCain for meeting anti-Russian protestors in Kiev last December, comparing them to the SNP:  “Wonder if John McCain regrets meddling in Ukraine politics – able politician – but? – imagine Russian deputy speaking in Edinburgh with SNP!”

It’s an odd claim by most standards. Kiev is the capital of an independent state, whereas Edinburgh has been part of the United Kingdom for over 300 years. So SNP moves to break up the Union are hardly comparable to Ukrainian desires to maintain their existing, if frail, independence from Russia. Even Putin doesn’t claim to have rights as far west as Kiev (yet). But Putin’s propaganda has taken root: despite clear evidence that “volunteer brigades” who have taken over checkpoints in the Crimea are in fact Russian military, Pritchard seems confident that “majority pro-Russia populations in parts of Ukraine want Moscow not Kiev”.

With the Scottish referendum coming up, Pritchard is unlikely to be the last person to draw a link between the SNP and Ukrainian nationalists. But the Ukraine has more in common with the Republic of Ireland. Dominated for centuries by powerful neighbours, both cherish a hard-won independence. That legacy has left both with an uneasy pluralism: Ireland’s “first official language” is Gaelic, but the 94 per cent of people who speak English, also an official tongue, no longer question their Irishness. Moscow’s argument in the Ukraine is that all who speak Russian belong in Russia. I’d love to see the world’s reaction if London sent troops into the Republic of Ireland “to defend English-speakers”. Unlike Russia, we’ve come a long way since the Sixties.

To be fair to Mark Pritchard – an able man who has done sterling work to champion smart spending on rehabilitation facilities for criminals, and much besides – Putin’s PR machine is relentless, if creaky. Russian and Ukrainian nationalists are falling over themselves to blame each other for attacks on synagogues: Jewish leaders blame Russian provocateurs. Putin himself insisted three times during yesterday’s press conference that he needs to protect Crimean Jews from Ukrainian anti-Semitism, but he couldn’t stop himself accusing Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a prominent Jewish-Ukrainian politician, of being a “crook” and “a scammer”. Old stereotypes die hard. And Putin has a long history of manipulating anti-Semitism, using popular prejudice as political cover to confiscate the assets of oligarchs of Jewish heritage, men like Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovksy and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, while leaving their non-Jewish counterparts untouched.

The West can’t rush to do business with Ukrainian nationalists – there’s plenty of extremism to go around, and the country’s endemic corruption will remain a barrier to trade with the EU. But for all his bluster, Putin’s motives have nothing to do with liberating ethnic minorities, whether Russian-speakers or Ukrainian Jews. And one thing is clear: British MPs should know better than to give him cover.