Bob Seely: Putin’s poison is a mixture of message and menace, which is why he likes using it
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
Dr Robert Seely MBE is author of ‘The New Total War’, ConservativeHome foreign affairs columnist and a former Conservative MP.
What makes a man want to assassinate an enemy with the poison from an obscure, jungle frog – especially when your target is already rotting in one of your country’s most brutal penal colonies?
Last weekend, Britain, with four others, announced that deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been murdered with a unique poison, extracted from the dart frog, found only in the South American jungle. Tribes from that continent use the poison in their darts to kill prey, hence the name. Only one man would have ordered this execution, Russian president Vladimir Putin, for whom Alexei Navalny had become a fixation.
State-sponsored assassination, especially from Russia and especially with poisoning, is making a comeback. What’s behind it?
First, assassination fits into Russia’s highly flexible theory of warfare, where all the tools of state power can and are used against an adversary. Putin believes he and his nation have been in conflict with Ukraine since 2005 and the West since 2007. As a former KGB – Russian secret service – operative, he was trained in political warfare: not only assassination but disinformation, subversion, blackmail, as well as terrorism, to name but a few. He knows these tools and appreciates them.
Second, if you are a dictator who cannot stand opposition and is not constrained by traditional morality, killing your enemies is, at least in the short term, an effective way of silencing them. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last dictator to do so. The Iranian regime, for example, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, murdered many Iranian dissidents across Europe. Putin, since the early 2000s, has used assassination liberally, aided by the Russian state. In 2006, Russia’s Parliament passed Federal Law No. 35-FZ “On Counteraction Against Terrorism” legalising foreign assassination. The same year saw the dramatic killing in London of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with a radioactive substance, polonium-210 (the 210 refers to the specific isotope).
However, there are other forms of assassination used by Russia apart from poison.
Shooting is an obvious choice. However, it is not subtle, you generally have to get close to the target to conduct the assassination, and given that CCTV is now commonplace throughout Western cities, getting away can be complex even if you can jam some cameras.
Shooting has its use. Russia’s ability to conduct complex overseas operations was thought to have suffered badly after the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from Europe and the US after the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal in 2017. Now, Russia’s alphabet soup of secret agencies; internal spies …
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
Dr Robert Seely MBE is author of ‘The New Total War’, ConservativeHome foreign affairs columnist and a former Conservative MP.
What makes a man want to assassinate an enemy with the poison from an obscure, jungle frog – especially when your target is already rotting in one of your country’s most brutal penal colonies?
Last weekend, Britain, with four others, announced that deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been murdered with a unique poison, extracted from the dart frog, found only in the South American jungle. Tribes from that continent use the poison in their darts to kill prey, hence the name. Only one man would have ordered this execution, Russian president Vladimir Putin, for whom Alexei Navalny had become a fixation.
State-sponsored assassination, especially from Russia and especially with poisoning, is making a comeback. What’s behind it?
First, assassination fits into Russia’s highly flexible theory of warfare, where all the tools of state power can and are used against an adversary. Putin believes he and his nation have been in conflict with Ukraine since 2005 and the West since 2007. As a former KGB – Russian secret service – operative, he was trained in political warfare: not only assassination but disinformation, subversion, blackmail, as well as terrorism, to name but a few. He knows these tools and appreciates them.
Second, if you are a dictator who cannot stand opposition and is not constrained by traditional morality, killing your enemies is, at least in the short term, an effective way of silencing them. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last dictator to do so. The Iranian regime, for example, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, murdered many Iranian dissidents across Europe. Putin, since the early 2000s, has used assassination liberally, aided by the Russian state. In 2006, Russia’s Parliament passed Federal Law No. 35-FZ “On Counteraction Against Terrorism” legalising foreign assassination. The same year saw the dramatic killing in London of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with a radioactive substance, polonium-210 (the 210 refers to the specific isotope).
However, there are other forms of assassination used by Russia apart from poison.
Shooting is an obvious choice. However, it is not subtle, you generally have to get close to the target to conduct the assassination, and given that CCTV is now commonplace throughout Western cities, getting away can be complex even if you can jam some cameras.
Shooting has its use. Russia’s ability to conduct complex overseas operations was thought to have suffered badly after the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from Europe and the US after the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal in 2017. Now, Russia’s alphabet soup of secret agencies; internal spies …
Bob Seely: Putin’s poison is a mixture of message and menace, which is why he likes using it
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
Dr Robert Seely MBE is author of ‘The New Total War’, ConservativeHome foreign affairs columnist and a former Conservative MP.
What makes a man want to assassinate an enemy with the poison from an obscure, jungle frog – especially when your target is already rotting in one of your country’s most brutal penal colonies?
Last weekend, Britain, with four others, announced that deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been murdered with a unique poison, extracted from the dart frog, found only in the South American jungle. Tribes from that continent use the poison in their darts to kill prey, hence the name. Only one man would have ordered this execution, Russian president Vladimir Putin, for whom Alexei Navalny had become a fixation.
State-sponsored assassination, especially from Russia and especially with poisoning, is making a comeback. What’s behind it?
First, assassination fits into Russia’s highly flexible theory of warfare, where all the tools of state power can and are used against an adversary. Putin believes he and his nation have been in conflict with Ukraine since 2005 and the West since 2007. As a former KGB – Russian secret service – operative, he was trained in political warfare: not only assassination but disinformation, subversion, blackmail, as well as terrorism, to name but a few. He knows these tools and appreciates them.
Second, if you are a dictator who cannot stand opposition and is not constrained by traditional morality, killing your enemies is, at least in the short term, an effective way of silencing them. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last dictator to do so. The Iranian regime, for example, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, murdered many Iranian dissidents across Europe. Putin, since the early 2000s, has used assassination liberally, aided by the Russian state. In 2006, Russia’s Parliament passed Federal Law No. 35-FZ “On Counteraction Against Terrorism” legalising foreign assassination. The same year saw the dramatic killing in London of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with a radioactive substance, polonium-210 (the 210 refers to the specific isotope).
However, there are other forms of assassination used by Russia apart from poison.
Shooting is an obvious choice. However, it is not subtle, you generally have to get close to the target to conduct the assassination, and given that CCTV is now commonplace throughout Western cities, getting away can be complex even if you can jam some cameras.
Shooting has its use. Russia’s ability to conduct complex overseas operations was thought to have suffered badly after the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from Europe and the US after the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal in 2017. Now, Russia’s alphabet soup of secret agencies; internal spies …
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