Putin must pay for black ops

Far more than a forceful response from just Britain is needed in the aftermath of the outrageous poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. With investigations putting the Kremlin firmly in the frame for a brazen act of intended political assassination on British soil by Vladimir Putin’s notorious operatives, it is imperative all countries that value freedom and democracy and oppose terrorism join London in retaliating in the hope of bringing the Russian ruler to his senses. This must include the Trump administration, which has been largely silent about an attack against one of Washington’s closest allies.

Mr Skripal, a double agent who spied for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, is not the first Putin opponent to be targeted on British soil. Moscow is suspected in the killing of at least 14 other dissidents in Britain in recent years. Among them was Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent who suffered an agonising death in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium at a London hotel. An inquiry named two Russians who administered the poison and concluded the murder was probably approved by Mr Putin.

As a former KGB colonel, Mr Putin is well versed in the art of diverting blame. The 2015 killing of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was carried out by hired Chechen assassins. The invasion of eastern Ukraine was led by a former Russian intelligence officer at the head of an “informal” army, thereby providing Mr Putin with cover that enabled him cynically to deny Russian involvement in the appalling shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters’s hopelessly naive view expressed in an interview that there is “no evidence” of Russian complicity in the MH17 attack bears no relation to reality.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has options for intensified sanctions and must not shrink from immediate expulsion of senior Russian diplomats and spies as well as the revocation of the visas of Mr Putin’s oligarch cronies living in London. Mrs May needs to show the steely determination demonstrated by Margaret Thatcher when confronting the Soviet regime.