Cancel the timeshare apartment in Novosibirsk. Abandon those cherished plans for an idyllic retirement in Rostov-on-Don. Empty the investment account with the Oligarch Bank of Siberia.
If I possessed any of the above – and I hasten to add that I do not – then all my hopes would have been dashed by one terse announcement from the Russian foreign ministry.
Somewhere within this glowering Stalin-era tower block, which still displays the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Communist Party, the loyal functionaries of Vladimir Putin’s regime have been reading my work.
Alas they are not pleased. In fact, they have decided that your humble commentator is spreading “disinformation and unfounded accusations against Russia”, particularly “in the context of the special military operation”, by which they mean the invasion of Ukraine.
The servants of the leader who started this war, laying waste to entire cities, casting millions from their homes and igniting Europe’s bloodiest conflagration for 80 years, think that I have been “destructive” and “irresponsible”, a charge that might betray a certain lack of self-awareness.
They are convinced that I have been part of Britain’s “efforts to demonise our country” by “actively fabricating anti-Russian narratives”.
And so there I am: number nine on a list of 21 British journalists and think tankers who are punished with “retaliatory personal sanctions” and “barred from entering the Russian Federation”. To which I am minded to reply in the spirit of Monty Python: “Oh no! Not the comfy chair!”
It’s always tempting to be flippant and dismissive when you find yourself among the targets of a philippic which contains all the most preposterous tropes of the authoritarian regime. Whichever Russian official wrote this particular statement achieved a masterpiece of the genre.
There is the casual conflation of the leader and the nation, meaning that any critic of Putin and his war of conquest must be “anti-Russian”. There is the blind conviction that all journalists in free societies are really government propagandists in disguise, forbidden from writing what they genuinely believe. After all, how could anyone genuinely believe that Putin is wrong?
And there is the instinctive use of the regime’s own propaganda, even in what is supposed to be an indignant riposte to the propaganda of others, hence this statement refers to the “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv”.
But despite all these absurdities – and the gratifying fact that my words have clearly struck a nerve in Moscow – I am still inclined to take this seriously.
There is something deeply sinister about a state imposing “retaliatory personal sanctions” on foreign journalists working for independent news outlets in distant countries simply because they have written something the regime’s leaders consider disobliging.
It is also extremely rare. As a foreign correspondent, I reported from almost 60 countries without always being complimentary about leaders or governments. Yet none of them responded by formally and publicly sanctioning me.
Long ago Robert Mugabe’s regime forced me to leave Zimbabwe, but only after I had lived in the country for over two years and reported day after day on the dictator’s brutality and folly.
Now, without even visiting Russia, I have been targeted for sanctions. Consider the mindset behind that decision. The Kremlin clearly regards any criticism anywhere as deserving of official retaliation. Repressing the domestic media is not enough: this regime aims to extend its repression beyond Russia’s borders.
Does that not provide conclusive proof of the central charge against Putin: that he really is an aggressive imperialist who wishes to expand his dominion as far as possible? Hasn’t the foreign ministry with its hackneyed statement unwittingly given the game away?
The Kremlin’s apologists will doubtless point out that Britain, too, has sanctioned some Russian journalists. But they will carefully overlook the crucial point that those journalists were serving Russia’s state media and really were instruments of official policy.
And the foreign ministry statement has revealed something else. For all its calculated displays of indifference, the Kremlin still cares about international criticism. Putin’s regime is capable of being stung. The truth cannot fail to hurt. Otherwise, why respond at all?
So everyone on the sanctions list should be mightily encouraged. Our words have clearly had an effect, creating the greatest possible reason to write more of them.
Cancel the timeshare apartment in Novosibirsk. Abandon those cherished plans for an idyllic retirement in Rostov-on-Don. Empty the investment account with the Oligarch Bank of Siberia.
If I possessed any of the above – and I hasten to add that I do not – then all my hopes would have been dashed by one terse announcement from the Russian foreign ministry.
Somewhere within this glowering Stalin-era tower block, which still displays the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Communist Party, the loyal functionaries of Vladimir Putin’s regime have been reading my work.
Alas they are not pleased. In fact, they have decided that your humble commentator is spreading “disinformation and unfounded accusations against Russia”, particularly “in the context of the special military operation”, by which they mean the invasion of Ukraine.
The servants of the leader who started this war, laying waste to entire cities, casting millions from their homes and igniting Europe’s bloodiest conflagration for 80 years, think that I have been “destructive” and “irresponsible”, a charge that might betray a certain lack of self-awareness.
They are convinced that I have been part of Britain’s “efforts to demonise our country” by “actively fabricating anti-Russian narratives”.
And so there I am: number nine on a list of 21 British journalists and think tankers who are punished with “retaliatory personal sanctions” and “barred from entering the Russian Federation”. To which I am minded to reply in the spirit of Monty Python: “Oh no! Not the comfy chair!”
It’s always tempting to be flippant and dismissive when you find yourself among the targets of a philippic which contains all the most preposterous tropes of the authoritarian regime. Whichever Russian official wrote this particular statement achieved a masterpiece of the genre.
There is the casual conflation of the leader and the nation, meaning that any critic of Putin and his war of conquest must be “anti-Russian”. There is the blind conviction that all journalists in free societies are really government propagandists in disguise, forbidden from writing what they genuinely believe. After all, how could anyone genuinely believe that Putin is wrong?
And there is the instinctive use of the regime’s own propaganda, even in what is supposed to be an indignant riposte to the propaganda of others, hence this statement refers to the “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv”.
But despite all these absurdities – and the gratifying fact that my words have clearly struck a nerve in Moscow – I am still inclined to take this seriously.
There is something deeply sinister about a state imposing “retaliatory personal sanctions” on foreign journalists working for independent news outlets in distant countries simply because they have written something the regime’s leaders consider disobliging.
It is also extremely rare. As a foreign correspondent, I reported from almost 60 countries without always being complimentary about leaders or governments. Yet none of them responded by formally and publicly sanctioning me.
Long ago Robert Mugabe’s regime forced me to leave Zimbabwe, but only after I had lived in the country for over two years and reported day after day on the dictator’s brutality and folly.
Now, without even visiting Russia, I have been targeted for sanctions. Consider the mindset behind that decision. The Kremlin clearly regards any criticism anywhere as deserving of official retaliation. Repressing the domestic media is not enough: this regime aims to extend its repression beyond Russia’s borders.
Does that not provide conclusive proof of the central charge against Putin: that he really is an aggressive imperialist who wishes to expand his dominion as far as possible? Hasn’t the foreign ministry with its hackneyed statement unwittingly given the game away?
The Kremlin’s apologists will doubtless point out that Britain, too, has sanctioned some Russian journalists. But they will carefully overlook the crucial point that those journalists were serving Russia’s state media and really were instruments of official policy.
And the foreign ministry statement has revealed something else. For all its calculated displays of indifference, the Kremlin still cares about international criticism. Putin’s regime is capable of being stung. The truth cannot fail to hurt. Otherwise, why respond at all?
So everyone on the sanctions list should be mightily encouraged. Our words have clearly had an effect, creating the greatest possible reason to write more of them.