Russia Should Be Held Accountable
T
his week, the British government expelled 23 Russian diplomats from British soil, declaring each of them to be persona non grata. This was Britain’s form of retaliation for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England on March 4. Skripal was a Russian military intelligence officer formerly convicted of treason for acting as a British double agent, and he was recently found poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent developed as a chemical weapon by the Soviet government.
In return, the Russian government expelled British diplomats and shut down the British Council in Russia, which was originally introduced to advance “a greater understanding of the UK and the English language.” Although Russia has vehemently denied the allegations against it, Skripal’s condition comes as the latest in a long string of previous incidents where politically prominent people have died, been injured or disappeared in suspicious circumstances.
In this case, Britain’s actions so far have been completely appropriate and necessary, if not slightly inadequate. The Russian government’s brazen meddling in the affairs of other countries has grown exponentially and dangerously in the last few years, and the government must learn that their actions will be met with stern consequences. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats for cyber attacks against American systems, explaining his reasoning behind this by saying, “These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.” This, combined with Russian interference in the latest US presidential election, proves that we are not dealing with low-level hackers wanting to stir up drama in the global political landscape. The highest ranking officials in the government—the ones with access to the most technologically advanced cyber-weapons—are orchestrating these attacks, and we need to be prepared to fight back.
"If Western politicians imposed easier punishments on the Russian government for the sake of international relations, it would be at the expense of the values that we deem paramount to our way of life."
Yes, this is an inevitable deterioration in the relations between these countries, but if Western politicians imposed easier punishments on the Russian government for the sake of international relations, it would be at the expense of the values that we deem paramount to our way of life. The politicians’ insufficient actions and the lack of widespread public outrage is contributing to the erosion of global democratic values and is only paving the way for a new global order that will ultimately be headed by an authoritarian country. This is the greatest threat to democracy and the rights that our system grants every citizen, such as freedom of speech, freedom to protest, the freedom to vote and many others that should be held as basic, standard rights granted to every human being instead of special privileges. Russia’s growing influence is slowly changing that.
The Russian government has proved time and time again that its goal is to spread Russian influence across the globe, regardless of the many spoken and unspoken international rules of diplomacy it breaks in the process. We are not tackling this issue with the same fervor that they are presenting it with—we need to take more serious, concrete action. Soon, America and Britain may literally run out of diplomats to expel, but what grave damage will already have been inflicted on our democracy by then?