The U.S., EU and other Western allies announced Monday that they would expel a total of more than 100 Russian diplomats they claim are spies, in retaliation for the nerve agent attack on former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain. The U.S., UK and many other European governments have called it “highly likely” that the attack was a Russian assassination attempt. The U.S. will also close a Russian consulate in Seattle.
Russia has vowed to reciprocate what it views as a “provocative gesture” by the Western nations.
We asked a number of our experts with deep experience in Russian intelligence activities to comment on how the Kremlin might respond. Their thoughts are adapted for print below:
Steven Hall, former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service
It’s a good thing in that it sends a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin which needs to be sent. There are some downsides, however.
In the ‘win’ column, we send a strong message to Russia and we decrease their capability to collect intelligence here in the United States because the people who will be expelled will most likely be intelligence officers. Importantly, this is done in harmony with our NATO and other Western allies, who are pursuing similar lines of response to the attempted killing of Sergei Skripal.
In the ‘lose’ column, however—whenever we get into these expulsion battles with the Russians, we pay a significant price because they will in turn reciprocate by expelling American diplomats, and they will try to expel as many intelligence officers as they can identify. And if we’re talking about closing a Russian consulate in Seattle, then they are going to be looking at perhaps closing a U.S. facility in Russia.
Expelling diplomats is a good first step, but it is a little bit of fighting the war with very old weapons when the Russians have already moved on to the next generation—and that’s my biggest concern. Russia is defining this new form of warfare with hybrid warfare, attacking Western elections and at least attempting and setting the battlefield to conduct cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the U.S.—and we’re responding by expelling diplomats, which is a Cold War era tactic.
We need to find better ways to push back against specifically Vladimir Putin, for example keeping them out of the SWIFT international banking system for a specific period of time to show how serious this is. We need to have a conversation about perhaps removing Russia from international organizations where they value their participation greatly because it gives them a sense of being a great power.
Will this action hurt the Russians in any significant way?
I think any time the Russians lose intelligence capability in a place like New York, or other Western countries where they’re going to have intelligence officers expelled—that’s not something Putin wants. But even more concerning, if I were Putin, would be the coordination and cooperation between NATO and other Western allies shown by this response. That’s something Putin is working very hard to split, and it seems his attempted poisoning of Skripal served in some sense to unify the West a bit. So that’s in the ‘lose’ column for Russia.
And how would you judge the coordination of this response by NATO and other allies?
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being absolute coordination where all presidents of those countries get on TV at the same time or issue a statement under NATO letterhead—I would give this maybe a 5 or a 6. Not bad, definitely on the good side of things, but I always wish it were stronger, and more importantly that—led by the United States—the Europeans and other Western democracies could come up with some new, creative ideas that would actually level the playing field, as opposed to playing Cold War tactics.
John Sipher, former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, who served in Russia
I’m skeptical of these tit-for-tat expulsions. We always seem to come out on the short end.
There has been a disconnect between President Trump's rhetoric and impulses—which are almost solely pro-Putin—and those of his national security team. It is surely as hard for Russia to comprehend as it is for our allies and others. The expulsion of Russian diplomats is a positive move in that it is being done in concert with our allies.
However, it is also something very easy for the Russians to reciprocate. In the past, the Russians have simply matched our actions - or even take harsher measures, so often we end up in the same place or worse off than before our action. It’s obviously a less-than-ideal way to "punish" another country when you end up worse than the actor being punished. From my perspective, we have to take action with our allies to impact things that matter to Putin – to his power and money. I don't think throwing out diplomats is something that will change behavior. We have done it now numerous times and it has had little to no effect. Punishing diplomats is far less effective than hitting Putin where it really hurts.
As a former intelligence collector, I also worry how this will affect our ability to monitor Putin and Russia. Putin will surely kick out the remainder of our intelligence assets in Moscow, leaving us blind at an important time. If one wanted to look at this in a more cynical light, this action makes it less likely that our spies in Russia will uncover possible activity between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign team.
Rob Dannenberg, former Chief of the Central Eurasia Division, CIA
With the decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats from the United States and to close the consulate in Seattle, we could be witnessing the first indications of Amb. (ret.) John Bolton’s influence on national security decision-making. Although apparently less hawkish on Russia than some other issues such as Iran and North Korea, Bolton may be pushing the president to be tougher on Russia as a means of demonstrating broader resolve—and perhaps as a signal to Putin that there is a price to be paid for Russia’s unhelpful actions in a number areas outside the European theater such as assistance with North Korean sanctions-busting, assistance to the Taliban, violence in Syria and the list goes on.
I think it is significant that President Trump is showing support for the United Kingdom and other European allies who are really on the front line of Russian misbehavior, both cyber and kinetic as the Skripal attempted murder, following that of Alexander Litvinenko, possibly Boris Berezovsky and others demonstrate. Moreover, willingness by Trump to take this small step may pay benefits the next time the U.S. argues in favor of pushing the European NATO members to meet defense spending obligations. At any rate, showing Putin our support for European allies is a helpful reminder to Putin of the linkage between Russian actions against U.S. allies and the effect those actions have on damaging relations with the United States. The expulsion of the diplomats will no doubt be met by equivalent Russian retaliation.
Ultimately, do you think this will change the behavior of the Kremlin?
I think it is unlikely this diplomatic action will have much effect on Kremlin thinking. Putin seems committed to the course of making Russia a rogue state. There is no doubt he is deeply committed to a course of confrontation with the West in general and the United States in particular. Frankly, it is difficult to find an area where Putin has chosen a path toward accommodation with the United States in the past decade. The 2007 cyber assault on NATO member Estonia, the August 2008 invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and support for the insurrection in the Donbass, cyber espionage and massive use of cyber to disrupt elections in the U.S. and elsewhere comprise a short list of Russian misbehavior.
The Litvinenko assassination, Skripal poisoning, interference in the U.S. election, Putin’s March 1 speech with a mock-up of a cruise missile targeting what appears to be Florida did not happen by accident but rather by design. And that design is nothing short of confrontation.
Putin, the hardline Siloviki (security services), and the oligarchs who compose the ruling class of Russia are deeply committed to and sustained by the system Putin has created. This group needs the situation perpetuated in order to survive. Any path toward accommodation with the West ultimately has the consequence of forcing the eventual rule of law and an open society in Russia and thus is an anathema to them. Deterring an autocrat like Putin requires both allies and resolve. The sanctions we have applied to Russia to this point have not been effective and have arguably been so weak they have encouraged Russian misbehavior. If the decision to expel 60 diplomats is an indication of a first step toward a meaningful sanctions regimen that will deter Russia, then we should be encouraged.
Daniel Hoffman, former CIA Chief of Station
It’s a message to Russian spy services, that, ‘We know who did this. It’s Russia.’
It’s a rejection of Moscow’s disinformation ploy of portraying this to the Russia people as Brits doing this themselves in order to cause some bad relationship between Russia and the UK and the West writ large in advance of the Russian elections.
This is also a message to all of Skripal’s former colleagues in the Russian intelligence services that we know what really happened, and this is our first step in showing you that we’re defending somebody who worked against Putin’s nefarious game.
Third, it’s directed at European Union allies as a show of support to the UK and rest of the EU in supporting their policies.
This is meant to disrupt Russia’s intelligence collection in the United States. Russia’s intelligence collection has been key for enabling their election meddling in the United States. Russia relies on intelligence to conduct attacks on our social networking/media sites – even if the hackers are based inside Russia, the intelligence Russia collects helps inform them of the fault lines in our political system, which they seek to exploit.
The attack on British soil should be ringing alarm bells for all the NATO allies that Russia could try to do the same thing inside the United States, and the Russians rely on their intelligence agencies to make the attacks happen.
So, this is also important to keep similar attacks from happening in the future—reducing the Russians’ ability to collect the intelligence on which an attack would be based, whether the attack is within our social networking media sites, or literally an attack on somebody.
As far as whether this move is going to deter Putin, I think that Putin’s attack on Skripal was just an existential element of Russia’s foreign policy and Putin’s regime security. He needed to do it in advance of the elections, first as a message to his own intelligence services— ‘Don’t cross me, or I’ll eliminate you anywhere, there’s no such thing as safe space’ —and secondly to his own people in Russia. He made them all think that this was just a British attack on Russia. He wanted Russia to be perceived as a besieged fortress, and the only way to defend it is Vladimir Putin.
So, we’re not going to deter Russia from doing anything. We need to pre-empt them at the point of attack, and the way to do that is with great intelligence collection.
Will Russia respond in kind, kicking out a whole bunch of European and American intelligence officers?
I would expect Russia to respond in kind, yes. And that suits Putin; he needs a degree of animosity between Russia and the West, again to support this narrative of Russia the besieged fortress, enemy-at-the-gates from the West. What he wants to do is conflate that supposed threat with our ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy so that his own people who might support those ideals would be branded a fifth column in support of the enemy—the UK, the European Union and the United States. Putin needs a bit of that.
What COULD make Putin sit up and take notice?
When something like this is an existential part of Putin’s regime security and foreign policy, you’re probably not going to get him to stop.
One last comment, for what it's worth... it's not productive for a retired senior official to "speculate" that the Russians have something on POTUS as former CIA chief John Brennan did. Our allies, the Russians, and our citizens are watching. If Brennan has something on this topic to say, he should avoid the media and instead talk to the Special Counsel.
