Mirror, Mirror on the World Stage: Are Russian and Western Tactics More Alike Than We Think?

It's fair to say that Russia is not the most popular country in the West these days. It's president, Vladimir Putin, is often portrayed as a kind of mafia boss/KGB agent hybrid and, in fairness, its not hard to see why.

A brief step back however allows us to see that many of the more notorious actions of Putin's Russia are barely distinguishable from those conducted by the US and its allies.

1. Attacking Ukraine

It's been nearly three years since Russia launched what it calls the "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine, or as the BBC likes to say, "full scale invasion".

There is no doubt that this has caused untold suffering to the people of Ukraine, not to mention many in Russia. The ongoing nature of the conflict makes it practically impossible to know with surety the exact death toll, but it is safe to say it's well into six figures.

The Wall Street Journal estimate that the number of dead and wounded at over a million. In addition to this almost seven million Ukrainians have fled their homeland as refugees.

Why did Russia do this? Russia has characterised Ukraine as being under the control of a hostile and even "Nazi" regime and has said that its actions in Ukraine are in defence of Russian security. They have also made questionable claims that Ukraine is developing biological weapons.

Is it possible that Putin learned from George W. Bush that invading a sovereign nation is acceptable if you don't like its regime, and can claim it represents a security threat that is developing weapons of mass destruction?

The US led invasion and occupation of Iraq cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, displaced many more, and while it officially ended in 2011, its effects are still being felt.

2. Dissidents Mysteriously Dying

When Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash last year there were few in the west who doubted that Putin or those close to him were involved. Similarly, the death of Alexei Navalny in prison this year, led to much finger pointing at the Russian president.

Putin of course denies ordering the death of either individual.

No such denial however was made by Ukrainian secret services when it came to the lesser-known death of Illya Kyva. Kyva was a member of the Ukrainian parliament with pro-Russian sympathies. He was killed in Moscow last year by the Ukrainian SBU, who far from issuing denials, boasted about it on TV.

Questions have also been asked about the fate of US citizen and YouTuber Gonzalo Lira. Lira was arrested by Ukrainian authorities for supporting the Russian attack on Ukraine. Lira later died of pneumonia in prison, with his father laying the blame on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and US president Joe Biden. His father also claimed his son had been tortured, something Ukraine denies.

3. Airspace Fun and Games

For many years now it's been common to read accounts of Russian military aircraft flying suspiciously close to British airspace and indeed to the airspace of other NATO countries. Often this results in a story about RAF fighters being used to escort or warn away the offending Russian.

What is less commonly reported however is that British planes also engage in excursions near Russian airspace. In 2022 Russian fighter jets, in an incident that could easily have become deadly, fired missiles in response to an RAF surveillance mission over the Black Sea. The Black Sea is a lot closer to Sevastopol than it is to Southend.

4. Spies, Diplomats and Journalists

Earlier this year Russia and the USA conducted a prisoner swap. Among those exchanged were Russian FSB agent Vadim Krasikov and Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was being held on espionage charges by Russia. The Wall Street Journal denied that Gershkovich was a spy and the US government declared that he was being "wrongfully detained" by Russia.

Russia and Britain have also been engaged in tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, with each claiming that the expelled diplomats are actually engaged in espionage. Britain has denied that its diplomats were engaged in espionage.

We have no reason to think that Gershkovich or anyone else detained or expelled by Russia are spies. He was almost certainly arrested so that he could be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the US.

However, let us ask ourselves the following questions. Is it likely that Britain and the US have spies or intelligence assets active in Russia? If they do, is it possible that sometimes Russian intelligence might catch them? If they were caught, could we expect British or US authorities to admit that those caught, were in fact spies?

Logic would suggest that sometimes scenarios like the above could play out.

5. Russian Interference

A Romanian court recently ordered the complete re-running of the country's first round of presidential elections, citing Russian interference in the now annulled vote in November. Similarly, circa 2016 it was a commonly held view in certain sectors that Russian interference allowed the first election of Donald Trump as US president.

By 2021 however casting doubt on the legitimacy US presidential elections had become highly unfashionable, mainly because Trump himself started doing it, albeit for different reasons.

Russia, of course, has denied interfering in either election.

One of Russia's grievances against the West and one of the justifications it gives for the current conflict, is Western support (interference?) for the 2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. The protests led to the deposition of the pro-Russian, but elected, president of Ukraine of the time, Viktor Yanukovych.

US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, visited the protestors and handed out food parcels to them, while former Republican presidential candidate John McCain also gave a speech to protestors where he urged Ukraine to embrace a European future.

There are many other examples of Britain and the US acting, either openly or behind the scenes, to remove leaders they do not approve of in countries that are not their own.

The point of this is not to say that Russia is in fact good, and the West is bad, nor vice versa. The point is to demonstrate that both Russia, the US and Britain are playing the same game of international politics.

It is sometimes a very rough game that can cause misery for ordinary people around the world. Perhaps the ends each power has in mind are different, but the means used to get there do occasionally appear to be very similar.