Your long articles on money laundering by Russia (From Russia with a love of anonymity, 21 March) make a powerful case for action, but we must go back to its origins if we are to understand how it happened and to avoid any repetition.

The fact is that the west failed Russia at a crucial time – and encouraged the fatal opening to external exploitative capitalism at a time when Russia and the other Soviet republics had no effective means of regulating incoming financiers with an eye to the main chance. Nor did the initial Russian governments have the strength to prevent the exploitation of its natural resources by its own skilful capitalists. The problems we face today with Russian politics and economics stem directly from this western failure. It is interesting that George Soros is on record as making the same analysis.

We should have supported Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989, not least with a version of a Marshall Plan to aid the weak Russian economy and prevent the eventual collapse of the rouble in 1998. Had the US and the EU acted in the early days of Gorbachev’s attempts to transform the Soviet Union, its dissolution might have taken place smoothly. Instead, the cataclysmic implosion destroyed Gorbachev’s standing among the electorate. By the presidential election of 1996, at which I was the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s chief observer, Gorbachev could only manage a derisory 0.5% of the poll.

At a diplomatic reception at that election I was asked by a Russian oligarch what my role was. When I told him, he laughed. “I do not know why you are bothering. We are making so much money that we will not let the country fail, whatever the elections do.” Faced with their situation and the disrespect increasingly shown to them by the west, it is no wonder that the Russians looked for a strong leader – and found one in Vladimir Putin. Having sown the wind, we are now reaping the whirlwind.

Michael Meadowcroft

Leeds

• So justification for our participation in Nato’s provocative enhanced forward presence into the Russian near abroad is that “Britain and Estonia have a long history of defence cooperation – in November 1918 a Royal Navy squadron was deployed to the region to support the independence of the Baltic states.” Weren’t we also involved in Murmansk at about that time? Should we perhaps also be sending troops there to defend them from Soviet/Russian aggression?

Robin Hudson

Southwell, Nottinghamshire

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