Putin's Killers: The Kremlin and the Art of Political Assassination

"In more recent times, there has been a lot of attention on Russia in both public and academic circles. What’s interesting is the frequency with which Russia relies on state-sponsored assassinations. There’s a big debate among experts as to why Russia is doing it, and why Russia gives the impression of being bad at it, especially when it is done internationally. So, plenty of experts think that Russia is trying to send a message, to oligarchs and political dissidents inside and outside Russia, that wherever you are, we’ll get you. It’s being broadcast to state authorities, to say: look, we will carry out the most brazen assassination attempts in your cities. The methods used—polonium or novichok—are incredibly sophisticated weapons that can only have been produced by the state, so the hand of the state becomes clear. So there’s a lot to be said for the argument that Russia is trying to send a message. I should point out that not all people believe this argument. Some people with past experience in US counterintelligence, for example, have been arguing that, actually, we don’t really know whether Russia is sending a message. There are other explanations. For example: Russia is unaware of the political, strategic and diplomatic consequences of what they do. That they are indifferent, that they simply don’t care, or that they do care but that they are just incompetent. For example, in the Skripal case, the suspects were basically tracked around Salisbury on CCTV camera, then they were put in front of cameras by Putin to say they were only in the city to look at the cathedral… which leads us to another debate, about Russian disinformation, which is generally seen as something that favours Russia because it blurs Russian responsibility. And I’m starting to have the impression that Russian disinformation could also be somewhat welcomed by western states that have to respond to these provocations, because they can always fall back on the argument that we are not 100% certain that it was Russia—so how can we take serious counter-measures? “There’s a big debate among experts as to why Russia is doing it—and why Russia gives the impression of being bad at it” It’s a working hypothesis at the moment. But I am of the impression that blurring the lines of responsibility is beneficial, both for the state carrying out an assassination and for those who find themselves in the position of having to respond to such an attack. I think Knight’s book does an exceptional job in tracking the history of, briefly, Tsarist Russia, then Soviet Russia, then the Putin regime , in carrying out assassinations of a very different set of targets—from journalists, to competing oligarchs, to leaders of insurgencies and political opponents. What the book does well is stay within the boundaries of what we know and not fall for the more sensationalistic accounts, which are quite prevalent when it comes to state-sponsored assassination, and in particular Russian-sponsored assassination."