For all of Scott Morrison’s chest-thumping rhetoric about how “Australians always stand up to bullies and we will be standing up to Russia”, the sanctions against the Putin regime announced by the prime minister are limited and hardly world-leading. In fact, they strongly parallel those of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has come under serious criticism for the lack of bite in the sanctions he announced on Tuesday.
Johnson and the UK Tory party have close links with several Russian oligarchs and have taken £2 million in political donations from Russian sources. His government has imposed sanctions on five banks — Rossiya Bank, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and Black Sea Bank — and three Russian oligarchs close to Putin.
Morrison — who doesn’t even have the excuse that Russian oligarchs are significant political donors — barely went any further. He has sanctioned the same five banks and imposed “travel bans and targeted financial sanctions on eight members of Russia’s Security Council”.
The US and Europe went further. The Biden administration blocked two banks, VEB and Promsvyazbank, from US financial markets and froze their assets, and restricted access to any funding of Russian government debt. US sanctions on individuals also extend to the head of Promsvyazbank. The EU cut Russian access to European financial markets and imposed sanctions on 351 members of the Russian Parliament that supported Putin’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as a further 27 people.
Russia experts say targeting the elites that support and enable Putin inside Russia is a far more effective way to undermine the autocrat than targeting oligarchs, even if they’re close to Putin.
Plainly European sanctions on such individuals are far more effective given they often hold assets in Europe and send their children to study there (though about 1000 Russian students came to study in Australia in 2019). Australia is a bit player, even if our economy is approximately the same size as Russia’s (and we’re a fossil fuel dependent economy as well). But the argument that the sanctions are just the beginning and will be ramped up if Putin invades more areas of Ukraine doesn’t hold up well compared to the actions of the Europeans and the Biden administration.
Could it be that Australia’s heavy trade surplus with Russia is holding Morrison back? Here’s where we’re no bit player. We have a $500-million-a-year surplus with Russia. Made of what? Alumina. We’re the world’s biggest exporter of alumina and Russia is our third-biggest export market, taking over $450 million in exports a year. Indeed, Russian aluminium giant Rusal owns 20% of the Gladstone refinery operated by Rio Tinto, which is one of two in Queensland. Another four refineries operate in Western Australia.
Where else does Russia get alumina from? We’re its second-biggest source of alumina, after… Ukraine. If Morrison wants to live up to his tough talk on Putin, he can dramatically cut Russia’s alumina supplies (and send Rusal’s stock price tumbling even further).
But $450 million in exports, coming from refineries in regional and rural Australia, is valuable in electoral terms. Throw in that we make another $100 million exporting live animals to Russia and you’re talking some electorally potent economic sectors threatened by a real sanctions regime.
But we always stand up to bullies — don’t we?
The Russian influence in the UK goes much further than a mere £2 million in donations to the Tories. Private Eye magazine has been reporting the growth of Russian influence as its money floods into London for many years. The Center for American Progress thinktank was looking at sanctions options a month ago and wrote:
“The United Kingdom, in particular, has become a major hub for Russian oligarchs and their wealth, with London gaining the moniker “Londongrad.” Uprooting Kremlin-linked oligarchs will be a challenge given the close ties between Russian money and the United Kingdom’s ruling conservative party, the press, and its real estate and financial industry.”
Exactly. Russian influence and Russian money, much of it from very questionable sources, is now firmly embedded in the British establishment as well the Tory Party and there is no realistic chance PM Johnson or anyone else in the UK government will rock that boat. Russian money goes into buying British property, particularly in the most pricy bits of London. Russian money makes unprincipled British lawyers very rich as they harass their Russian client’s enemies through the British courts. The UK is now mostly a haven for dodgy financial services, money laundering and tax avoidance, and the UK also protects many overseas tax havens. Senior Tories have colossal wealth invested in this area, it is the Tory Party’s mission, it’s how it attracts the ‘donations’ that keep it going, it’s how senior Tories secure places on company boards when they leave politics, and Russian money is an essential part of it.
Leached out Russian money from “fellow travellers” inot London is similar to intrusive Saudi and Jewish money in USA domestic and foreign affairs. Cancerous, untrustworthy, sinister, highly unfair.
And Russia seems to be able to literally get away with murder when it comes to Russians in the UK who fall foul of the Kremlin.
Russia funded much of the Brexit campaign of Farage. This weakening of EU solidarity was Putin’s plan surely. Boris is a traitor, so is Rhys-Mogg
Farage to lead the campaign, along with Arron Banks and others to handle the funds channeled into UKIP, LeaveUK, the Tories etc., the legality of it all very much open to dispute but not being investigated with any enthusiasm.
Private Eye #1566 has one of its familiar photo cartoons using an image of Putin and Johnson sat side by side. It is headlined ‘JOHNSON AND PUTIN ADDRESS CRISIS IN UK (SURELY ‘UKRAINE’? – ED)‘ There is speech bubble on the image of the two men, “You are a discredited leader of a corrupt country trying to distract attention with a foreign war”
Can you guess which of the two is accusing the other? That’s right, it’s both of them.
And the think tanks informing Brexit also just happen to be in the US Koch Network (IEA, Global Warming Foundation/NetZeroWatch, Taxpayers’ Alliance etc.) i.e. worship fossil fuels, deny climate/Covid science or measures, avoid regulation, taxes and govt., while one in Tanton Network does the anti-immigration, Islamophobic etc. agitprop for media content, which finally got Brexit over the line.
These think tanks (along with Tanton’s mob) like Russia, (till very recently Poland & Hungary), Fox and GOP Trumpers despise the EU for representing liberal democracy, open society, social mobility, immigration, diversity, science, empowered citizens, environmental standards, renewable energy (vs. fossil fuels) etc.; constraints on local and international oligarchs ‘freedom & liberty’.
These UK think tank influencers, are according to The Byline Times and The New European, all based in the same building at 55 Tufton Street London. Cute, but they have been there all along without any media interest like the Australian end, which is even more embedded influence in politics, media and policy making?
Also a shared interests with Putin’s Russia, ERG (Rhee-Mogg) being influenced by US Koch Network think tanks supporting fossil fuels, climate science denial, minimal environmental, financial etc. regulation backed by authoritarianism e.g attacks on civil society, free speech, universities etc.; both Russia and US linked think tanks cannot tolerate the EU, open society, liberal democracy and empowered citizens for its sensible regulatory constraints on their ‘freedom & liberty’.
Farage and his ilk provided the nativist agitprop to motivate and spook oldies, getting Brexit (finally) over the line informed by the US Tanton Network; the deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton was known as ‘the racist founder of the modern anti-immigration network’ (SPLC), proponent of ‘the great replacement’, muse of Steve Bannon, advised Trump and viewed environmental ‘hygiene’ through a ‘immigration-population’ prism, but not fossil fuels…
In the UK related think tanks are all in one building in London, 55 Tufton Street; investigative journalists (remember those?) at UK’s Byline Times and New European have highlighted these dynamics in recent months.
Morrison was happy to abuse China and destroy our agri markets there, most of which went to our great ally , USA.
That was a brilliant trade policy master stroke, mouth off on behalf of Pompeo et al. and the Trump administration vs. ‘Chaina’, then the US takes up slack of our lost trade, ‘bait and switch’?…. However, I’m not sure the base is concerned if they follow legacy media; an agricultural friend whose business was hurt a bit, is compelled to read the Melbourne ‘Hun’ for footy and racing, hence, does not criticise Morrison but echoes the ‘China Covid’ message….
A bully running a bully govt that relies on media & fossil fuel bullies for support always stands up to bullies? Makes as much sense as the rest of his schtick.
We never stand up to the biggest bully of them all.
Dutton is a scary guy
I was contemplating the relative difference between the Coalition of the Willing invading Iraq and Russia invading the Ukraine, and came up short. /whataboutery
Because we’re more often than not the bully.
“We always stand up to bullies”? ….Like they did Robodebt?