Crimes must be punished. Without punishment, there is no rule of law only the law of the criminal. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has broken international laws and treaties. Punishment by economic sanctions has failed. His crimes escalate.
His wars kill tens of thousands and destroy millions of lives. He attacks friendly air and sea routes, abducts, murders, exports terror, supports other dictators and keeps punishment away by threatening nuclear annihilation. Like his guru, dictator Joseph Stalin, President Putin believes treaties, agreements, and cease-fires “are like pie shells, meant to be broken.”
He wages cyber warfare, destabilizes states, manipulates elections, buys into positions of power and spreads fake news and lies. He perverts international institutions and boasts that liberalism is outmoded and that elections are a trick. The impeachment hearings show just how far he’s wormed his way into America’s democracy. Clearly, all democracies are at risk.
Yet he continues to be rewarded. President Donald j. Trump is offering cooperation in cyber-security and to reinstall Russia in the G7, the organization of the largest and most powerful democracies.. Germany’s forfeiting energy independence by embracing Russia’s Nord Stream2; France wonders about ending sanctions. This is lunacy.
Russia even gets to judge its own crimes. As a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe it “monitors” its war in Ukraine, ensuring many cease-fires and thousands of convoys of Russia’s illegal weapons to the war zone are “unseen.” This week nine Ukrainian soldiers were wounded; one killed; last week four and one.
This corruption of democratic institutions will allow Russia to sit in judgment of Ukraine in resolving Putin’s own war. The cease-fire is a pre-condition to the peace talks on Dec. 9. There is pressure from respectable states that Ukraine should capitulate along the Steinmeier formula. This is rewarding Russia for killing some 14,000 and wounding over 30,000.
France and Germany—the other participants in the Normandy talks—need to turn their backs on Russia and side with Ukraine and uphold international law on sovereignty. Or Ukraine should walk out.
Similar perversions exist in other international institutions like the United Nations Security Council. Here Russia protects its violations with vetoes while condemning others. This legitimizes its terror and provides cover. Russia– no state– can be allowed to be both criminal and judge.
In America, Russia has had shocking success in penetrating its democracy. Various investigations — including the impeachment hearings– show how its money, enticements, and lies are succeeding. Nonetheless, Putin still fears America and tries to weaken it with non–military warfare, fake news, propaganda, and social media. He knows that mind control works. Russia subdued some three hundred million people for nearly century in the USSR and neighbourhood proving that on-military occupation is as effective as bullets.
Democracies need a renewed effort to punish violators of international law, exclude criminals from international fora, and prevent them from being both criminal and judge and come to grips with mind control.
This means targeting Putin’s weaknesses to advantage.
Ukraine is his Achilles’ heel. A prosperous Ukraine aligned with the West will escalate demands for greater liberalization throughout Russia, remove access to his and his cronies corrupt wealth said to be in the hundreds of billions, and overturn the last vestiges of global colonialism. He fears that losing Ukraine will shatter the vozhd-chief-myth of his supposedly unbeatable power. Ukraine, therefore, must be protected.
He fears its membership in NATO; blocks it by creating war, smearing it with corruption—yet he’s the main driver pocketing half of the oligarchs take– and blustering with nuclear threats. Ukraine needs NATO and NATO needs Ukraine. is. Global security is more important than his blackmail to preserve personal power.
Striking at these weaknesses calls for renewed action. Like-minded states must agree to move beyond punishing individuals as the current sanctions do but push back at the offending state. This is already done by the world community states as in the case of Cuba and Iran. Russia is a much greater threat. It needs containment.
The severity of the punishment will be the deterrent. Sanctions will increase–not decrease–with violations or obfuscation. Russia must feel greater isolation and expulsion from international entities including the UN, G20, OSCE. If it persists in terror it must know that removal from SWIFT, the international financial system for transferring money electronically, is next. It is highly unlikely that if Russia had been removed from SWIFT it would still be committing murder in Ukraine.
Putin—the key culprit—must be placed on sanction lists and his financial assets frozen. Accomplices to the crimes—countries doing business with Russia and removing violators from the lists– will also be punished.
Presently, the missing link to corralling Russia is the failure on the part of democracies to administer a continuum of steeper punishments commensurate with the crimes to obtain compliance. Rather they are caving and Putin knows it. Until this changes, he’s in charge.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, former senior policy advisor to the government of Canada, and president of a consulting firm, is a founding member of the Canadian Group for the Democracy in Ukraine.
