Here’s my piece today for the Daily Telegraph on the mighty Owen Report on the murder by polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. With added Katyn:

For anyone interested in the way governments operate, there is nothing more astonishing than the policy memorandum sent from Beria to Stalin in 1940, tersely recommending a colossal war crime.

The Russians themselves have published the original text. It’s laid out in a dry, methodical way familiar to anyone in public service. It describes the problem, then makes the formal recommendation: that 25,000 Polish and other prisoners be summarily murdered “without the convicts being summoned and without revealing the charges; with no statements concerning the conclusion of the investigation and the bills of indictment given to them”.

The agreement of other top Soviet leaders is recorded, including that of Mikhail Kalinin as nominally the most senior person in the USSR. My final FCO telegram to London from Warsaw in 2007 reminded Whitehall that part of Europe (Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave) is named after this Soviet war criminal.

Note that many of the odious if not deranged ‘comments’ make the case that he was a traitor who deserved to be murdered. So that’s OK then.

How should the world respond to the careful and devastating case made by Sir Robert Owen that points the finger of responsibility unambiguously at Russian intelligence operatives ? Hmm:

UK allies wanting more quiet details about our findings on the Russian intelligence services’ overseas machinations will quietly be briefed, but they will not want to get involved. Beyond that, the British government will not find it easy to come up with any new action against Moscow, even though the Owen Report makes such a compelling case for official Russian involvement in a murder on British soil. How to tackle the Litvinenko case in any way that makes a difference, while we are working with Russia at the UN and elsewhere on Iran, Syria and terrorism? No good answer, because there isn’t one.

Russia’s economy is already under significant economic sanctions because of its brutal involvement in Ukraine, with the falling oil price adding new pain. Further UK targeted financial sanctions or asset freezes here and there won’t make any real difference to the Kremlin’s calculations. Tempting though it is to clear out a swarm of Russian spies based in London, that too merely prompts Moscow to retaliate in kind against British officials and wider UK interests in Russia.

London also knows that down the centuries the Russians have developed a highly specific approach to negotiation. It comes in two stark propositions:

“Whatever you do to try to hurt us, we’ll do worse to you … We can take more pain than you’re ready to inflict.”

Hence the noises from No 10 that it is “weighing options carefully” (diplo-speak for “this is all very difficult – we’ll get back to you”).

It’s worth reading the Report, as it is unusually clear and comprehensive and in some places gripping (see esp the descriptions of the complex detective work). The more so since (for example) it carefully looks at the various plausible claims linking the polonium 210 directly to a specific Russian reactor and finds them ultimately unprovable. But there is so much more evidence that in itself and when combined with other established facts builds a massive case against Messrs Lugovoy and Kovtun and other FSB people, going right to the top of the Russian state.

While we are on the subject of murky (or otherwise) Russian deaths, here is an intriguingly long list of Russian generals who have died ‘unexpectedly’ in recent years.

The British Government has already taken flak from all sides in Parliament for its apparently weak response to this report. It’s easy to hoot that More Must be Done! in a case like this. But what by way of More is likely to have any impact on Russia/Putin that in fact inclines them towards better behaviour, as opposed to making things worse? No-one can say.

Maybe the best course is to let ‘life itself’ (as the Russians say) work out the most appropriate consequences for the wretched policies being pursued by the Kremlin under current management:

“I don’t think you can underestimate how bad the situation in Russia is right now, you’ve got oil below any measure where the budget can survive and you’ve got sanctions from the West. Russia is in what I’d call a real serious economic crisis”.

No obvious reason for this dismal situation to get better quickly?