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Alexander Litvinenko

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By William Tucker
Contributor, In Homeland Security

It’s been 10 years since Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer, was assassinated in London by Russian agents.

Though an investigation was conducted and a suspect identified, Litvinenko’s widow pushed hard for a public inquest that was finally granted in January 2015. Yesterday, the UK judge tasked with the inquest published his findings and stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin most likely gave the approval for the operation to kill Litvinenko.

For most Russia watchers this finding didn’t come as a surprise, but speculation based upon past behavior is not sufficient evidence to accuse a head of state of complicity in an international murder. Thus, the findings of the public inquest are particularly important.

What was, and still is, problematic isn’t the investigation itself, but the UK’s response to the killing. Russian agents entered the UK with polonium 210, a toxic radioactive substance, and used the material to kill a former Russian agent who had just been granted UK citizenship. The murder of a UK citizen in the UK should have caused a greater outcry from the powers in London; however international politics are greater than one individual, and the relations between Russia and the UK temporarily cooled, i.e., nothing drastic happened. Unfortunately, this only served to support the Russian belief that it could carry out such operations without any significant blowback.

In the time since Litvinenko was killed, several other assassinations have been carried out against Russian dissidents within Russia and also abroad. Perhaps the most famous was the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was killed just a few months prior to Litvinenko.

The more recent assassination of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition figure, in Moscow demonstrates that this campaign of murder is hardly over. Other assassinations from Politkovskaya on show that even the most absurd causes of death are hardly enough to spark a stronger international response. For example, Oleg Zhukovsky, an executive at VTB Bank managed to commit suicide by tying himself to a chair, gagging himself, then jumping into his swimming pool and drowning.

If the UK’s response to the Litvinenko assassination is troubling, then the lack of international condemnation toward the continued killing of Russian dissidents has led to a wider disaster. Since the 2008 invasion of Georgia, Russia has played a role in subverting the Kyrgyzstan in 2010, the annexation of Crimea, support of separatists in Ukraine, shooting down a civilian airliner, and finally the intervention in Syria causing the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Russian airstrikes without any meaningful action taken against Moscow. Aside from sanctions, Russia has been shown that its actions rarely bring consequence which can lead to a greater problem still. As I previous discussed in exploring the concept of Russian weakness, nation-states will play to their strengths to compensate for weakness, and now that Russia is having a difficult time of keeping their weak spots in check they will likely move towards an even more aggressive stance in their foreign policy.

If Russian actions over the past decade are any indicator of what’s to come, then we can expect more aggressive adventurism until the West finally decides to push back.