Sanctions against Russia are working, but they alone can’t end kleptocracy
UKRAINE
It is now almost exactly a year since Russia launched its unjustified, vicious and — even judged on Vladimir Putin’s own terms — deeply counterproductive war on Ukraine. The most important conclusion anyone can draw from the last year is about how profoundly everyone underestimated the Ukrainians’ willingness to defend their nation. Yes, Russian leadership was bad, Russian plans were dreadful and Russian kit has proved unreliable, but Ukrainians have fought heroically and will be remembered by history as heroes.
The second most important conclusion is that the West has acted with greater resolve and unity than many of us anticipated. We had all — including, of course, Putin — become accustomed to the fact that, when forced to choose between their values and their revenue streams, Western politicians routinely prioritized the money. That has, for the most part, not happened, and those leaders deserve credit too.
But this newsletter is about oligarchy, and I want to talk about how well Western countries have done in responding to the threat posed by weaponized corruption to the heart of our system.
Over the decades of his reign, Putin has transformed Russia into one of the world’s purest examples of kleptocracy — “a crime that requires the use of multiple jurisdictions to hide crooked politicians’ money” — and as such he and his cronies have relied on the greed of Western enablers, the complacency of Western politicians and the inadequacy of Western law enforcement agencies to move, hide and spend the stolen wealth. We therefore all share some of the blame for what he built in Russia and therefore for what has happened to Ukraine. We should all be improving our systems to prevent another kleptocracy like Putin’s from forming, and here we have been found deeply wanting.