Theresa May’s package of diplomatic and economic measures against Russia is measured, focused but unlikely to put additional economic pressure on either Russia or Vladimir Putin’s entourage, British defence and diplomatic analysts have said.



Jonathan Eyal, an associate director at the military thinktank Rusi, said he had expected a stronger reaction. “There may be an element of seeing whether anything can be saved from the relationship. Simply blowing everything up to satisfy a media clamour is not the most sensible way of dealing with Russia.”

Rusi’s deputy director general, Malcolm Chalmers, said: “None of the measures in themselves will have any impact on Russian economic performance.”

Mathieu Boulègue, a Russia expert at Chatham House, another thinktank, said: “The Kremlin will understand this as a very mild response. Putin is unlikely to be worried by this.”

British officials described the package as calibrated, calm and fair, and said further options were on the table if the Kremlin did not change its behaviour.

Diplomats

The expulsion of 23 of the 58 accredited Russian diplomats is numerically smaller than a similar move by Alec Douglas-Home, the foreign secretary in Ted Heath’s government, in 1971. But since then the Soviet Union has collapsed and the Russian embassy in London is now commensurately smaller. Expelling 40% of the embassy over seven days is very significant, and the largest single expulsion in 30 years.

The decision to allow Russia’s ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, to remain reflects the fact that if he was expelled Russia could simply apply to replace him. Any decapitation of the Russian embassy would only lead to reprisals in the UK, and the UK still needs an interlocutor on Syria, even if many of the discussions on this occur at the UN.

All embassies are a mix of commercial, political and military attaches, but it is surprising that the UK believes that as many as 40% of Russian embassy staff were involved in intelligence. The Foreign Office said they will not be replaced for the foreseeable future, so crippling the Russian operation.

Closer monitoring of individuals

Chalmers said long-term measures such as greater monitoring of private jets and freight, alongside new powers to stop people on borders, were “an implicit admission that the intelligence services have been focused on counter-terrorism as opposed to state threats, notably from Russia.”

Financial crackdown

May stressed that there was no desire to target Russians in the UK, and the scale of the financial measures is limited. Neither the government nor independent experts regard a British version of the Magnitsky Act, now to be inserted in the sanctions bill at Commons report stage, as likely to change the government’s investigatory or judicial powers. The measures underline the power to freeze assets and impose visa bans.

Chalmers argued that unexplained wealth orders, a new tool that came into force this year and has been used only twice, on non-Russian citizens, may be more productive in helping the National Crime Agency to lift the lid on money laundering and organised crime.

There are dangers that someone subject to Magnitsky Act-style legislation could demand to see the intelligence material on which any prosecution was based. It was noticeable that no individuals were named by May on Wednesday.

Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, raised the delay in the establishment of a public register of beneficial share owners, an idea first set out during David Cameron’s G8 chairmanship in 2013.

Sport

As expected, the boycott of the World Cup is limited to ministers and members of the royal family. Intelligence-led cooperation about possible clashes between Russian and English football hooligans must now be in question.

Media freedom

Ofcom, the media regulator, acting independently of the government, has already announced that it will investigate whether the Russian broadcaster RT’s licence should be revoked on public-interest grounds. The Foreign Office is running a global campaign promoting press freedom, and a state-engineered shutdown of Russian media outlets in the UK would leave ministers open to charges of hypocrisy by countries such as Turkey.

Chemical weapons

Russian ministers insist that Russia destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles last year, and have said the Soviet-designed nerve agent novichok, which Britain said was used to poison the former spy Sergei Skripal, was not part of an international ban on chemical weapons. The UK will now press the international forums to demand that Russia come clean on its stockpiles.

Multilateral action

The UK is using its convening powers to the full at the UN, the EU and Nato, but May in her statement was careful not to make any specific demands of other world leaders. Rusi’s Eyal said: “Perhaps we did not ask because refusal often offends,” pointing out that France and Germany are keen to open dialogues with Putin.

Chalmers said the statements of solidarity from UK allies were robust, apart from “the Trump wobble”, but added: “It will be much harder for other states to take the same concrete steps as the UK, such as cutting off diplomatic ties.” The French president, Emmanuel Macron, for instance, will not cancel a state visit to Moscow in the late spring alongside an army of French businessmen. But Eyal said: “The true litmus test will be the maintenance of existing EU sanctions.”

Officials admit the practical support the UK will gather in the months ahead will depend in part on convincing its partners that Russia, rather than an unknown non-state actor, was responsible for the attack. The scepticism of the Labour opposition hardly discourages scepticism in Europe.

Chalmers said that despite Russian declarations that it had destroyed all its chemical weapons, there were longstanding suspicions that it had held some back. “By contrast, there is no reporting that other ex-Soviet states have retained stockpiles of chemical weapons, and are all signatories to the [chemical weapons] convention”.

Eyal dismissed the notion that the attack could have been mounted by a rogue element in the Russian elite. “The implications of this baroque attack and the chances of being caught were so high and the target of the assassination so low that it is inconceivable that someone in Moscow would undertake this operation, risking the anger of Putin, without having authority.”