Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Nice update James G

One of the main reasons the Russians have not marched into the Ukraine now is that when they sent in soldiers initially and when some started coming back in body bags and people were quite upset by this, they quickly realized that there is little support in Russia for outright war with the Ukraine. You are going to have to find a trigger that would break that opposition. The current formula of mercenaries and pro-Putin Chechenyans has support because it has no real cost in blood to Russians. But the thought of reservists and conscripts dying in the Ukraine is another matter.

Fourteen

Throughout the Autumn of 2009, the UK’s Ministry of Defence issues several press releases concerning military activity on the edges of British air space and sovereign waters. Enquires from journalists and media speculation drove this effort at supposed transparency though it was hardly desired within the confines of the MOD nor the top ranks of the Government either. However, official comments were made and these were meant to set the record straight and cut out that speculation. Instead, it only added fuel to the fire. The defence secretary, Labour’s Bob Ainsworth, got plenty of air time too when responding to questions asked in the House of Commons. He confirmed what those press releases said. Yes, there had been that Russian military activity but at no point did their submarines nor aircraft directly cross the twelve-mile territorial limit. Furthermore, naturally there had been no armed engagements which had taken place. That Russian military activity was heavily monitored in a responsible manner, Ainsworth would add just as the press releases did too, to make certain that Britain’s interests weren’t harmed and the country was kept safe. The tone of the press releases and statements made from the defence secretary attempted to play down what was going on. These events occurred away from the sight of the vast majority of the general public while offshore so that helped somewhat yet there were glimpses of what was going on that were seen, thus leading to the media asking questions. The RAF many times scrambled fighter jets. Mariners were witness to actions undertaken by the Royal Navy. Reports from both France and the Netherlands, coming from their media where questions were asked of their government about their own military activity in response to where they also met with Russian military activities, played into what was available back in Britain in terms of news too. Politicians and civil servants continued to try and keep the news low-key on this matter. Out there, in the skies and seas through the North Atlantic and the North Sea, even the Irish Sea and on one occasion the English Channel, the Russians showed up with their weapons of war.

No official exercises were announced and international groupings such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) weren’t informed either. When official diplomatic questions were asked for concerning Russia’s military activity, nothing of substance came in reply. Russia did its talking with its flights of bombers heading West and its submarines popping up everywhere. Again and again, Britain and its European neighbours in NATO were tested by the arrival on the edges of their sovereign offshore territory by the Russian Armed Forces. Their missile-bombers flew long missions westwards and then turned back around. Long-range submarines went past listening devices and would later surface to physically broadcast their presence before diving once again to try to disappear. As the other NATO countries did, Britain reacted. To not do so would be stupid and dangerous too. Newer Typhoons strike-fighters and older Tornado interceptors climbed into the skies to give the Russian aircraft offshore a friendly hello… as friendly as a pair of armed aircraft could ever be. Sometimes the RAF raced to put their fighters into intercept position in record time; on other occasions they slowed down and would stay just out of sight. The Russians were testing the RAF’s reaction times but the RAF wouldn’t play their game for them nor make their own tasks easy. The Royal Navy met with those submarines too, when they could catch them that was. The one submarine which made an appearance down in the English Channel, off Devon, was one which the Royal Navy was fast all over following its arrival. Intimidation was done back to the Russians where the Royal Navy attempted to make them understand that these were dangerous waters for them.

The issue with Russian military activity came at an uncomfortable time for the government of Gordon Brown. The prime minister was leading an embattled administration which was facing a general election the coming Spring. War games with the Russians just wasn’t wanted. There was already a diplomatic stand-off with Moscow stretching back right to the early years of Putin’s presidency and made far worse by recent events with Medvedev’s assassination followed by the recalling of Britain’s ambassador. Information on what Britain knew of what had really happened came from the country’s own sources and those of its allies. Putin had killed his successor and taken back control. There was no doubt over this. There was also other things that the Kremlin had done and was doing too. One of those, of concern to Brown’s government, was the attitude to Russian exiles residing in the UK with threats from the Kremlin against their lives. It had been those which had soured relations starting in 2003 and only continued. There were many Russian nationals who choose to make their home and living in the UK. Some of them were very rich and secretive; others rich and with a high-public profile such as the owner of a London football club. Britain welcomed Russian money. What the country had also welcomed was those exiles too though and there were many of them with their number recently increasing. The billionaire Boris Berezovsky was chief among those and it was the granting of him refugee status back in ’03 where this had all started. Litvinenko, a member of his circle, had then been murdered with a radioactive substance – used on the streets of Britain in violation of all norms of proper behaviour among nations – three years afterwards. Russia had long demanded Berezovsky’s extradition for crimes alleged committed at home. He responded by funding opposition to the Kremlin and, more than just sending money, by making that very public to rub Putin’s face in it. Attempts had been made on his life yet he remained alive, thumbing his nose at the Kremlin and making his open accusations concerning first Litvinenko’s murder and now Medvedev’s death.

The thing was that Berezovsky and others like him weren’t Russia’s real opposition. Those back home in Russia had no love for him: he was regarded as a ‘robber baron’ type figure, a symbol of everything that was wrong with Russia before Putin. The issues with the current regime were separate in the minds of Russians from how they viewed Berezovsky. The people didn’t like either choice. He was abroad in a foreign country attacking their country and the ordinary Russian reacted like anyone else would in such a position: they despised him as a traitor and only out to enrich himself. Putin was wanted gone but Berezovsky wasn’t someone anyone who loved Russia wanted to see replace him so the chaos of the Nineties could be repeated. Now also coming to London also seeking political asylum and running in fear of their lives were exiles from the true opposition who managed to escape. Nemtsov was in the British capital after making his way to the UK via the Ukraine and then France. He wanted nothing to do with Berezovsky. The Russian exiles, along with their passionate divide among them, were an issue for the Brown Government. They made a lot of noise and kicked up quite the stink. Opposing the seizure of power in the manner done in Moscow by Putin and his brutal behaviour was what Britain was doing by diplomatic means and working constructively with others. These exiles fought among themselves and disrupted everything. They were even calling for a regime change back in Russia, one enforced from aboard too. This came from Berezovsky’s circle – not Nemtsov’s; he and the exiles around him were aghast at such an idea for they knew how that would play out back home among the people – and Russia responded. The Kremlin’s new foreign minister issued his own threats against anyone who would act in an armed manner against the Russian state and made comments which could only be interpreted as threatening the lives of all British-based exiles, not just Berezovsky’s cohorts, ‘no matter where they might be hiding’. The war of words went on with counter-comments made and so on. This activity was all centred on London where Russia’s exiles had access to an eager media with international reach and they did so all while protected by the British state. Free speech and human rights meant that they could do this from here, such was the opinion of the Brown Government (though who fumed at all of this craziness); Russia saw things very differently.


Putin chose to act in reply to what Britain was allowing to be done from its soil. The military activity was a separate issue to Western diplomatic actions and those exiles. His reply was to use what was coming from London to aid an ongoing effort to bring the Russian people fully on-side with the new order. There were already those in custody charged with treason and corruption and now new charges were laid against those who had based themselves abroad and sniped from the safety given there. Once again, it was a trial by television for them with everything out in the open. Dark conspiracies were unearthed. Those acting against the Russian people were exposed for what they were. Rather than face the justice they deserved at home for these actions, those involved had run abroad and were hiding. They would only have run if they were guilty, wouldn’t they?

Adding to all of this was an arrest made of a foreign national purposely caught up in all of this but not linked to the treasonous activities of Russians against the Rodina. This wasn’t a CIA agent or any Western diplomat but instead a visiting British history professor at one of St. Petersburg’s many universities. He was one of the few UK nationals left in the country after so many others had left. The professor had made some contacts among the democracy movement before Putin’s putsch which the FSB had investigated but found nothing of merit there. However, as a scholar of history, the professor was invested in that subject and there were comments made of his which concerned the history of the Great Patriotic War. His remarks had caused comment because they were seen by many as defaming Soviet soldiers in their fight against Nazi Germany where their actions were deemed war crimes. Such remarks had been made by others before and far worse said. This professor had chosen to make them at such a time when Putin had decided that Russian nationalism was to be inflamed. The Nashi movement – Putinjugend to its many Western detractors – was in the streets daily denouncing the actions of many Western countries but something more was needed. Sergey Shoygu had floated and idea with Medvedev and Putin earlier in the year around making such ‘historical revisionism’ which offended the history of Russia and its predecessor state (the Soviet Union) an offense where it would do harm to Russia’s honour. It was a personal issue for that minister yet with so much else going on, it hadn’t been moved on then. It was now. There was a lot to this overall when it came to awakening nationalist feelings and there could have been a better start made yet an opportunity arose with this British professor who had said what he had on camera and remained in St. Petersburg. He was first personally targeted by Nashi street harassment and the obedient media following him; on the advice of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office he was quickly preparing to leave Russia. Before he could, Putin issued a decree making what he said an offense against the state (it targeted others too for more immediate domestic political aims) and in his case, this was applied retroactively. An arrest was made and the professor was taken into custody. He had insulted the glorious history of the Rodina’s fight against Nazism and the soldiers who had fought to free the Russian people of the last time they were invaded by the nefarious West.

Putin’s Russia had themselves a British hostage detained on outrageous politically-motivated charges.

Explosions roared across the countryside, shooting great fireballs into the sky as artillery rounds thundered down. Fencer & Frogfoot strike fighters unleashed their bombs and missile, annihilating enemy formations with high-explosives, napalm, fuel-air explosives and countless other types of weaponry. The Fulcrums & Flankers soared far overhead, guided to their opponents by massive, lumbering Antonov AWACS radar planes. On the cold winter ground, grassy fields that had already turned to sludge under a torrent of rain and snow were littered with formations of T-90s, T-80s & T-72s, joined by infantry fighting vehicles and armoured personnel carriers laden with motor riflemen. Havoc & Hind attack helicopters covered the advancing armoured formations, flying at treetop level to launch anti-tank missiles and unguided rockets. Paratroopers leapt from cargo planes, landing deep behind enemy lines and sewing chaos into the ranks of the opposing forces. In the Baltic and Barents Sea’s, warships traversed the icy waters, launching cruise missiles and firing their guns in support of the naval infantrymen who stormed ashore ahead of the main landing forces. Behind the scenes, commanders ordered troops into action and plotted fire missions, calling in bombardments of their opponents. Radio-electronic units bombarded the airwaves with false information and sought to jam enemy transmissions to disrupt them from calling in firepower of their own. For all intents and purposes, it was an all-out war.

Nobody died though, except by accident. The targets weren’t real. They were look-alikes and models of contemporary western military equipment. All this was part of the massive WINTER STORM military exercise that the new regime in Moscow had elected to hold shortly before the New Year. In a repeat of previous Zapad military exercises, Russia was again practicing a full-scale war against the NATO alliance. Involving over 250,000 troops, it was one of the largest military exercises in Russian history, dwarfing even the exercises held in the previous winter. Normally, Russia would hold massive exercises focusing on different regions – the West, the Far East, the South and the North – once per year, with the threat in each area being addressed with the exercises. This was the second year running which the yearly exercises had focused solely on the threat from Europe. This was because President Putin saw the NATO alliance as the greatest threat to Russian sovereignty since Hitler’s divisions had come swarming over the Dnepr in the Second World War. Nobody in Moscow even alleged that American tanks would come rolling towards Moscow, but in the Kremlin, Putin and his followers solemnly believed that there was a vast western conspiracy to undermine his government and have the Russian people rise up against him. NATO support for the rebellious movements in the Balkans in the 1990s was cited as a perfect example of the West’s strategy of knocking off governments which it opposed or felt threatened by. It was a simple model; allow for civil war to break out or for the populace to take to the streets in insurrection, and then support the rebels with logistics and airstrikes.

The Kremlin was preparing for the day it might have to defend itself against such a threat by taking pre-emptive military action against NATO. An elaborate scenario was practiced. There was no fictional country being invaded this time round. The Russian Armed Forces practiced a scenario in which a full-scale revolution was breaking out in Russia, to which Moscow responded by ordering an occupation of the Baltic States. The three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were undoubtedly NATO’s most vulnerable member states, surrounded by borders with Russia and Belarus, a long-term ally of Russia. It was felt that in the scenario being practiced, the Russian Military could rapidly overwhelm the Baltic States and use them as bargaining chips to force the West to back down from its plan to bring down the Russian government, in return for the Baltic States – Minus their Russian-majority areas, of course. Contrary to what tabloids in the West would claim, President Putin didn’t want to fight this war, but he felt that Russia was being pushed in a direction that made it ever more likely.

In its ‘dry-run’ of an invasion of the Baltic States, Russian forces practiced a variety of tactics and strategies developed from the previous war in Georgia, as well as the series of smaller exercises which had taken place across not only Russia but Belarus and Central Asia too. It was understood that the Kremlin was outgunned when faced with the entirety of what the NATO alliance could field, and so Moscow wanted to utilise ‘hybrid warfare’ as part of its strategy. This would involve sending in Spetsnaz commandos to hit NATO’s command & control infrastructure as well as stir up discontent amongst Russian-speakers in the Baltic States at the beginning of an invasion. For the purpose of WINTER STORM, this would be followed by a series of large-scale cyber-attacks as well as strikes by aircraft and cruise missiles of the Long Range Aviation Command. The Russian Air Force practiced this as well, flying several sorties in which the launching of conventionally-tipped – but nuclear capable – cruise missiles was practiced against targets that would be of vital importance to NATO. This extended as far west as Great Britain, with a practice bombing run made of several civilian airports and military airfields within the British Isles as well as in Denmark and Germany. On multiple occasions, NATO aircraft scrambled to intercept and escort the bombers. In a real conflict, the ability of the alliance to successfully do this would be limited by the extremely long range of Russian missile systems. Paratroopers came next, with men from various divisions and brigades of the VDV practicing airborne drops onto targets that simulated a large number of ports and airfields across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Finally, the Russians practiced something that they had perfected decades ago; massed armoured and mechanised assaults. Thousands of men rode inside BMPs and BTRs, while main battle tanks laid down massive amounts of fire.

It was a massively impressive spectacle to behold.

Much of the Russian Ground Forces’ tank force consisted of older T-72 systems, which had been upgraded in large numbers in recent months. Joining them were the newer T-80s & T-90s. Soldiers learned how to work together and cooperate with higher command in a real-time battle situation. The communications issues which had plagued the Russian Military during the Georgia War had largely been addressed, and new equipment had been ordered to ensure that commanders on the ground could communicate more effectively with their troops. Airstrikes and artillery was effectively called in, with the bombers and gunners using live munitions to simulate the stress of combat. Though Russian troops had fought in Chechnya and Georgia – a few of the older personnel had even had their faces in the dirt in Afghanistan – the majority of them had yet to see battle. Conscripts being introduced to their training cycles suddenly found themselves in something that very closely mirrored the heat of battle. Satellite guidance systems proved effective, as did the replacement of smaller and less visual parts such as outdated or broken computer chips and radio batteries. None of this was all that public; President Putin could show off new tanks and warplanes, but not new ground-targeting systems fitted into Su-25 strike planes. Nevertheless, he understood the necessity for it all.

WINTER CROWN was deeply troubling to watch from the West. It was the second exercise that violated the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, with that document requiring that NATO observers be allowed to witness large-scale wargames such as this one. The lack of an invitation from Moscow drew condemnation from Western capitals, but there was little NATO or anybody else could do other than offer criticism. Tabloid papers in the West screamed that it was the beginning of a new Cold War, invoking imagery reminiscent of the 1980s. From their embassy stations in Moscow, the CIA and the lesser known Defence Intelligence Agency tried to analyse the ongoing exercises and learn as much about Russia’s military capabilities as they could. The few remaining human intelligence (HUMINT) sources that NATO intelligence agencies ran in Russia offered what help they could, and the DIA listened in on some communications between Russian commanders, learning much even from short snippets of conversations. Joining in on this effort was an ‘alphabet soup’ of other agencies from across Europe. Britain’s MI6 and Frances DGSE also conducted operations of their own on a large scale, with more resources available to them than to smaller services. Poland, the Baltic States, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Romania and Belgium were all conducting intelligence-gathering operations of one sort or another throughout the duration of WINTER STORM. On several occasions, U.S. Air Force EC-135 Rivet Joint electronic surveillance aircraft flew close to the Russian border, gathering signals intelligence (SIGINT) from Russian radio traffic. In turn, they were intercepted by Russian fighters and would promptly leave the area.

The West concluded that Russia had made some massive advances in terms of both offensive and defensive capabilities since the lowest ebb of the Russian Armed Forces in the 1990s and early 2000s. Troops were being deployed rapidly and with few real logistical difficulties, and new technologies were being employed. Of particular concern was electronic warfare, which had been more effective than expected when utilised against Georgian forces. NATO held an overall superiority over Russia in terms of troops, aircraft, ships, and tanks, but still the Alliance found itself playing catch-up when faced with Moscow’s newfound military prowess.

Without giving too much away, we do have plans as co-authors for a NATO presence pre-war in the Baltic States similar to what there is now. The details will come later and the force won't be in any position to be reasonably likely to 'march on Moscow' but it will be there and the Kremlin will not like it.
Your painted scenario there is actually very likeable from my point of view. I wouldn't be so sure if the thought of Germans could whip up Russian public anger as it might have done many years beforehand - I would think Americans or those puny, pesky Brits - but I am very attracted to this scenario.

My own observation with Russians is that it is to a level that doesn't compare with Britain or France. The US might come close, but with Russians it can be to another level.
They have a lot of pride in their history, culture and achievements basically. They are open to alliance, friendship etc with the West but said relationship needs to acknowledge Russia as an equal, not as a subordinate.

In my own observations. One area where Russians can be quite different from Westerners, is that they tend to be far more direct and assertive. If something doesn't work and it affects them, they will complain about it and their disatisfaction will be obvious for all to see.
I think that there are a number of reasons for this, one of them is culture, the other one is language.
Communism changed Russian culture in ways that can't be imagined in the West, socila interactions were levelled and terms of apparent deference like "Sir, Mrs, Miss" etc are rarely used. If you are using please to ask something, you are extra polite and you will definitely be marked out as a foreigner.
Russian language is fascinating as its quite different from English. For example, if you were in a restaurant in Russia and you would need to order something, what you would have to say is essentially "Come over girl! or come over boy!" to catch staff attention. 

If you want to get more insights into Russian culture, you need to start learning the language. Even knowing it at a basic level like the one I am at now is enough to get an initial feel for things.

Sixteen

A court in St. Petersburg sentenced Professor Smith (* note 1) to three years imprisonment for the crimes he had been found guilty of. The British national had been granted the speediest of trials and it was one where he had little rights within. Justice for historical revisionism which defamed the Russian people, like it was for those charged with corruption and treason, was only going to have one outcome. That outcome was to be found guilty and to be punished accordingly. The history lecturer who had openly stated that Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War had committed war crimes – the rape of tens of thousands of women & girls in Germany being foremost among them – was only one of many caught up in this latest crackdown which was a small part of a campaign of whipping up nationalistic feelings nationwide. His was the most high-profile case though with Professor Smith being an international figure. He had said these things before Putin, ruling by decree in all but name, had declared such comments to be a crime. This retroactive punishment was therefore the highlight of foreign attention upon the issue of the detention of Professor Smith. Russia was breaking with so many international norms with this behaviour. Other dictatorial regimes would have been a bit more creative and tried to hide behind lies with regard to procedural matters in doing something like this. Putin was doing no such thing. There were dozens of cases such as this where the actions taken by the Soviet Union and the modern Russian Federation which had been criticised in academia and the media afterwards were reacted to with arrests made and prison sentences given to those who had made such statements. The corruption charges against others, plus the treason accusations with regard to those supposedly behind the Medvedev assassination, were also working their way at rapid pace through the courts. There were other foreign nationals caught up in this though they in almost all other cases concerned those from former Soviet states. The Briton given three years in prison for something such as this, and the manner in which it was done, shone the international spotlight on Russia though. There had been a flight of foreign nationals out of Russia following Putin’s declaration of martial law and this only increased with events such as the conviction of Professor Smith. Many countries made public statements decrying such an act and once again urged their citizens to leave Russia. Few consulates in cities other than Moscow where Western diplomatic facilities where remained open now and at the embassies in the capital, there was only skeleton representation after non-essential staff and all family members had left. Employees of non-governmental organisations and businesses which were left operating within Russia generally followed this advice. Russia wasn’t a safe place to be for Westerners to be.

The Brown government in London protested as much as it possibly could to what happened with Professor Smith. The whole thing was recognised fully for what it was. This was highlighted in public statements, comments to the media, and remarks made in Parliament. Nothing could be done for him though. The pressure was kept up to keep international attention on Russia while at the same time make sure that no other Briton ended up facing a similar fate. In response, the prime minister had his government expel a multitude of Russian diplomats and instructed his foreign secretary to begin an extension to international efforts to punish the Kremlin for the actions taken here and with other issues. Miliband got to work on that though by this stage there were few things left that could be done where there would be multinational agreement to act any further than already done. Russia was still exporting oil and gas but that was limited and ‘complications among allies’ meant that it would continue to do so to several countries for the time being. At the same time, there were further matters when it come to Russian activities which concerned the Brown government. The exile community centred on London – those who had been in Britain for some time and the new arrivals – continued to make a lot of noise as well as engaging in disputes between themselves. They had the attention of the media plus many members of Parliament and quite honestly revelled in that too. The prime minister referred (in private) to the two groupings as ‘Berezovsky’s mob’ and ‘Nemtsov’s circle’. There were others but these were the two primary gatherings of Russians who used London as a base of operations to not just speak out against the Kremlin but actively plot and scheme against Putin to bring him down. Outside of these exiles themselves, they had their supporters and their critics. Among the latter, there was a lot of open displeasure from the critics at the actions taken by the exiles, especially Berezovsky’s mob. Saying and doing what they did naturally attracted the attention of Moscow. Kozak really was a far different character from his predecessor Lavrov: the new foreign minister issued threats against these people in response to their open talk of regime change. Moreover, he also repeated earlier warnings over the ‘dire consequences’ which Britain would suffer if any of these plotted actions spoken about took place with a base of operations for them being London. Some of those diplomats expelled from the Russian embassy were suspected of spying upon these exiles while another was strongly suspected to be preparing to kill Berezovsky within days of his forced expulsion from the country. Both groups of exiles were considered by the Brown government to be in very real danger. At Heathrow Airport, another suspected Russian hitman, this time without diplomatic cover and posing as a Belorussian tourist, was detained and put back on a flight to Moscow. MI-5 and the Met. Police found numbers of their officers pulled from anti-terror tasks to safeguard the lives of these opponents of the Kremlin. For one of those police officers, the end result for him personally would be fatal.

Detective Constable Jones (* note 2) was shot and killed on November 12th. The police officer was with the Met.’s Counter-Terrorism Command – also known as SO15, this element of Specialist Operations dealt with espionage matters too – and was an accidental crossfire victim of a shooting incident between a member of Berezovsky’s mob and a gunman sent by the Kremlin. DC Jones was unarmed when killed. The married officer with two young children received urgent medial attention but died in hospital from gunshot wounds; a bodyguard for the exile in question was also killed in this shootout in leafy Berkshire. As to the gunman, he was an SVR officer who’d entered the country on a false Ukrainian passport and got back out on a Slovakian one despite the best efforts of the British authorities to catch him. The entry and egress concerning him was the only part of this SVR mission which went to plan. Russia’s foreign intelligence agency was playing big with many tasks undertaken ranging from activities in Britain to elsewhere in the world too. That Chappaqua Connection was where it remained having most success yet there had been a recent expansion in scale of operations. The SVR had people in America and others elsewhere throughout Europe. Some were gathering intelligence while others were working to sew discord among the West in their standoff with Russia. Operations were going wrong in many areas despite many assurances given to the Kremlin that they were meeting success. The SVR was punching above its weight: this wasn’t the KGB of the Cold War era in terms of capability no matter how many boasts were made back in Moscow. The shooting in Britain was designed as ‘clean’ operation with a big payoff; that didn’t include the killing of DC Jones. The failure here would have many consequences in international relations though also later down the line for SVR operations through the coming months.


Imprisoning Professor Smith and shooting DC Jones did the Kremlin no favours in more than just Anglo-Russian relations. Britain was absolutely furious and the scale of public anger they whipped up was in many ways similar to what they were trying to achieve at home with their own people. That certainly wasn’t an intention of Putin. Nor was causing the diplomatic actions and military readiness preparations afterwards.

Senior British politicians have the attachment ‘the Right Honourable’ after their name when printed in official documents. To many people, whether they were honourable was a matter of contention! However, the point was that those considered to be such were because they were members of the Privy Council. Members of the government and the top ranks opposition were all technically advisers to the monarch who remained head of state. Membership of the Privy Council wasn’t a sinecure post: it was rather significant. Ministers shared information with their shadows with the other parties on Privy Council terms. This was done because the opposition was meant to be a government-in-waiting and there were things that their leaders should know. What they were informed of wasn’t meant to be used for petty party politics. Through the year, as events in Russia defied all previous worst fears, Brown authorised the extension of information sharing with the opposition through the Privy Council on matters relating to events there which affected Britain; Blair had done the same in the lead-up to the Iraq War. David Cameron and Nick Clegg each agreed to Brown’s request that these matters remain confidential especially since they concerned the highest matters of state. Shadow spokespeople with foreign, defence, home affairs and also national security briefs met with their counterparts from the Brown government or were briefed by civil servants. Despite the promises given by the leaders of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to the Labour leader, there were leaks made from their teams. These were unattributable to those involved and thus came with plausible deniability. Moreover, in several exchanges of unpleasantness behind the scenes, there came counter-allegations that the members of the Brown government were using events concerning Russia for their own end too and making leaks of their own. The acrimony over these leaks brought about an end to much of the information sharing beyond the basics by early November though the shooting of DC Jones the saw a course change and further meeting of Brown, Cameron and Clegg where they all once agreed to cut out the partisanship at a time like this. The country would be going to the polls next year and it didn’t look like before then the Russia issue was just going to vanish into the night. Admiral Lord West, Labour’s minister of state for security & counter-terrorism, established a good working relationship with his Conservative shadow in the form of Baroness Neville-Jones in the aftermath of the killing of DC Jones. At the other end of the scale of what was meant to be non-partisan cooperation on matters of national importance, the relationship between Bob Ainsworth and Liam Fox was fraught with continued acrimony.

Fox was the shadow defence secretary and was informed by Ainsworth ahead of the announcement that the Royal Navy was going to postpone next year’s planned refit of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. This exchange of information was done to build cross-party support. From the Fox camp, there came comment made the very next day in anonymous terms in a newspaper article with regard to Conservative urging to do just this in light of international tensions where Russian military exercises had been conducted in the forceful manner that they had been against Britain. The political interpretation was that the Conservatives were arguing that this should be done and it looked to Labour that once the announcement was made that this was being done, Fox could claim that the Conservatives had forced this to occur. Brown made an angry call to Cameron with the latter denying that this had been the way of things; he said that the Conservatives weren’t playing politics with Britain’s national security. In response, Ainsworth would no longer meet Fox personally and instead do everything through civil servants. He made his announcement to the House of Commons concerning the matter of the Illustrious’ delayed refit and commented that this was a ‘reasonable precaution’. Fox stood up in reply to the statement and questioned whether the government was going to bring the Fleet Air Arm’s Sea Harriers back out of storage and fly them from that carrier and the others in service instead of just the RAF’s ground attack Harriers. That hadn’t been covered in the Privy Council meetings and was a valid question… but it was all politics really. The whole issue over a delayed refit of one small aircraft carrier and which aircraft would fly from it ignited a political storm which on the face of it, it really shouldn’t have. Journalists were then briefed on the background of the dispute between the minister and his shadow here, thus forcing out into the open the whole series of inter-party cooperation behind the scenes on the matter of Britain’s readiness to meet Russia’s aggressive behaviour. In turn, Russia declared the whole Illustrious matter to be ‘provocative’ and a ‘challenge which would be met’. Despite all of this domestic political rancour, the prime minister was meeting with Cameron and Clegg again, plus authorising more disclosures of information to them, before the end of the month once again concerning Russia. This was to do with the late 2009 simultaneous situations in both the Baltic States and the Ukraine.



(* note 1) - fictional person, placeholder name
(* note 2) - as above