Why Boris is right to resist calls for tougher sanctions on Russia

Did Boris Johnson fail to put his money where his mouth is when it came to hitting Russia with sanctions? The Prime Minister's critics think so: they argue that the targeting of five Russian banks and three oligarchs as a response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine was too little, too late. These cries came not only from Labour, and from the Green party's Caroline Lucas (who scandalously accused the PM, without a shred of evidence, of wanting to appease would-be Tory donors), but from his own side. Tory backbencher Iain Duncan-Smith demanded a more general blacklisting of Russian banks and plutocrats, while his party colleague Nickie Aiken went so far as to suggest forcibly expelling oligarchs’ children from English fee-paying schools. Overseas, Bill Browder, the moving force behind the Magnitsky sanctions laws in the US, immediately condemned the moves as 'tepid'.

Boris remained unfazed. While promising further measures later, he warned hawks of the dangers of 'casual Russophobia' and gently expressed distaste at the idea of bringing schoolboys into the equation. Not surprisingly this enraged his attackers further, with both sides accusing him of complacency and pusillanimity. Understandable, you might think, save for one thing: when we get raw political emotion out of the way, Boris is right.

Take first the banks. Limiting sanctions to those Russian financiers who have openly supported expansionism in Ukraine will have an uncomfortable, but ultimately wholesome, effect on the others. Why? Because they now know perfectly well they are being watched; they will be all too aware that any support they show for Moscow’s malpractices could lead to them being blacklisted too. This will split their boardroom loyalties most satisfactorily. There will, after all, be a lot of profitable foreign business to be scavenged from the bones of banks such as Rossiya Bank and Promsvyazbank, who will now have no choice but to give it up. In such a case the incentive will be ever more irresistible to keep out of the fight, and instead to gorge quietly on the spoils abandoned to them, even if this does mean being politely non-committal when they receive a call from the Kremlin. All this would, however, disappear were the hawks to achieve their aim and cause a general boycott of the Russian financial system. If this happened, banks would immediately cosy up to Putin from necessity, since he would be their only hope of salvation.

As with banks, so too with the oligarchs. By all means put the screws on the most unpleasant of Putin’s plutocratic pals, making their finances sclerotic and their wives and girlfriends peevish for lack of a ready supply of Jimmy Choos and Hermès handbags. However, for the present leave the others alone, with a mere warning that if they get too close to Putin, or to those already under sanctions, they could be next. That will give them a similar choice to the banks: keep Putin and his friends at arm’s length and knuckle down, or risk their glamorous lifestyle for a politician looking increasingly dodgy and unstable. It’s all very well for politicians in need of a soundbite to call for an all-out attack on the kleptocrats of Moscow and St Petersburg, most of whom are indeed an extraordinarily unprepossessing bunch. But as with any kleptocrats, encouraging a bit of dishonour among thieves is more likely to get the results we want.

With the children it’s even easier. Not only is Boris morally right to jib at expelling a child from a good school as part of a political campaign against his parents; it is also foolish. True, these days the posher the school the more woke its ethos seems to be: but at least we can still trust Eton or Winchester not to teach their pupils the manners and politics of graceless nouveau-riche warmongers in Moscow. Whereas if schools in the West were closed to such people, that is exactly the education they would be likely to get back home in Russia. Avoiding this, and assuring a liberal education to at least some of Russia’s overprivileged youth, is well worth the risk of adding slightly to the social cachet of the families concerned.

But all this misses the most vital point. The bien-pensant sabre-rattlers who want to sanction anything that moves provided it is connected to the Russian state on the basis that financial brute force is the only language its strongmen understand, need to remember one thing. The object of these sanctions is not to bring Russia to its knees or show it who’s boss. Even were the West impeccably united, this is patently impossible. After all, Russia is a colossal country that is self-sufficient in food, fuel and natural resources. And if things get desperate for Russia, it knows it can rely on the support of another vast and equally mischievous neighbour to the east with a sophisticated financial system of its own.

What we need is not force but finesse: an exercise in the gentle persuasion of Putin’s political and financial backers to call it a day and say the Ukrainian game isn’t worth the candle. And for that you need careful targeting: not an indiscriminately-aimed cannon, but a carefully-modulated sniper’s rifle to pick off selected victims. That is exactly what Boris is promoting, and why his approach demands our full support.