In this Moscow Station brief, former member of CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, Steven Hall pieces together the stories from the headlines as Putin sees them, and it turns out, its shaping up to be a pretty good year for the Russian President.
The Cipher Brief wanted Hall’s reaction to news from Whelan’s lawyer that his client was given a thumb drive with compromising material and was essentially set up in what insiders call a standard way of operating in Moscow.
Hall: The Russian treatment of Whelan is really nothing more than elaborate staging. There is no significant or real rule of law in Russia. So, when you hear things like this lawyer took the following action, the judge did something, an injunction, or denied him bail, those are all designed to play to a western audience where all those terms actually mean something. Where judges are independent, where lawyers actually try their best to defend their clients and so forth. And that simply doesn't happen in a meaningful way in Russia.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"What will determine Paul Whelan's fate is Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, not any sort of pseudo Russian legal system. Because of course, there really is no independent judiciary, no independent judge, or lawyer, or anything. They are all vulnerable to essentially do whatever Vladimir Putin wants to do."
The Cipher Brief: How does that play out on a practical level? How does Putin actually manage that process?
Hall: What generally happens is you have this pseudo-system in place that takes care of matters that are not important to the Kremlin or to Putin himself or to the other power players in the Russian government. So, if you get a traffic ticket, if you're convicted of some sort of burglary or something like that, then that system simply cranks it through with no focus from the top.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"If it's something that has more significance, either internal to Russia or something that, even more importantly, has an international angle to it, then Vladimir Putin will be briefed, or his lieutenants will be briefed, and then decisions are made directly from the top. Hence the popular phrase in Russia "The Power Vertical"."
The Cipher Brief: Let’s talk a little bit about the Skripal story where it’s been reported that the EU has now sanctioned multiple Russians, as well as Syrians, in what is the EU's first sanctions involving the Skripal case. The list includes the head and Deputy of the GRU, as well as people from Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre. Will these sanctions have any meaningful impact, and how do you see this playing out?
Hall: It's good on a number of different levels, but more needs to be done. The Director of the GRU, the Deputy Director of the GRU and the two buffoons that were sent out to try to pull this off and didn't manage to do it in terms of killing Sergei Skripal, will of course, feel a very direct impact. Russians are very, very fond of international travel, especially to Europe, and many senior Russians, including within the GRU, also have a tendency to keep money in foreign banks, specifically European banks, and even more specifically, British and German banks. So, it's going to impact those people directly. They won't be able to travel in the EU or in the UK. So that's good. I was very pleased to see that the EU grouped the Skripal people together with the Syrian people and essentially accused all of them of being involved in chemical warfare, or the use of chemical weapons. So that also sends a message.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"It's more than just sanctioning individuals of an intelligence service, it's grouping them together in a group of people that are involved in abhorrent behavior, behavior that the international community at large is highly critical of, and correctly so. Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin, and other senior leaders in Moscow, don't care that much about the Russian population."
Putin doesn't really care about the individuals who are being sanctioned. He probably doesn't even care that much about the GRU seniors that were named. But what will come into play is if more and more power members of the Kremlin and Putin's lieutenants and oligarchs, if they start to pay a heavy price either financially or via curtailing their air travel, then the Kremlin and Putin will sit up and take notice. So more needs to be done than just relying on some of these sanctions. It's a good step, it sends a good message, but there need to be larger measures that are taken when something like this happens.
The Cipher Brief: You and some of your colleagues have previously talked about that with The Cipher Brief, the issue of making Putin feel some type of pain as an effective way to manage his behavior on the global stage. Short of military action, is there anything else the International community can do? What does Putin care about?
Hall: If you take it from your basic question, which I think is the right question to ask: what does Putin care about, first and foremost, Putin cares about himself and retaining his power over the Russian federation and his place in the world. And then there are other things that spin off of that. But that's the thing he cares about most, like all autocrats. So, anything that threatens that is going to have Putin's attention. Sanctioning even the Director of the GRU, and much less these buffoons who went out and tried to pull this off, he knows he can control that, so that's not a big deal. Even if it’s one or two oligarchs, you know we've seen in the past that he can take strong measures, Mikhail Khodorkovsky being the best example. Putin can throw an oligarch in jail for 10 years if he wants to. But if you start to get a larger group of oligarchs that start to pull themselves together and say, "Hey wait a second," then that could be a significant threat to Putin. Likewise, I guess if you had massive protests, and I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of people throughout Russia, more than just the normal couple of thousands that you get sometimes, that would also catch Putin's attention. But really, he's looking at his own internal viability.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"And the only way to go after him is to do things that would threaten that. And so the west, if they really want to send Vladimir Putin a message they need to come up with stronger measures."
The Cipher Brief: How does Putin see what’s happening inside Syria right now, particularly with what seems to be more offensive action taken by Israel? And then, what about the ongoing Mueller investigation? How concerning are these issues for Putin?
Hall: If you really step back and look at things from a 30,000 foot view for Vladimir Putin, things are really going extremely well for him. Because again, if you look at things that threaten Putin, and things that he wants to accomplish, he's already significantly managed to divide not only the United States political system, but the west, whether you're talking about the Brexit fiasco or whether you're talking about all of the elections that he’s managed to influence. And as a result, you've got this increase in populism and nationalism worldwide, which is really, really good for Vladimir Putin.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"Things that are really bad for him are when you have a unified west, when you have a values-based system. And of course, Putin and China I think both want to return to a day when everyone had their own stream of influence like in the 19th century."
So, things are moving in that direction, even in Europe, even in the United States, and that's a really good thing for Putin. I can't help but think he's pretty positive with regard to the way things are going worldwide for himself personally and for Russia at large.
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