The way of the Russian gentlemen

You have probably met the fluent, often disarmingly friendly fellows I have in mind. They dress well, speak several languages and seem to have a remarkable grasp of what’s what in the corridors of power.

These Russian gentlemen have firm opinions, but always, politely, ask to hear yours first. They flourish wherever free speech is valued and everyone’s point of view is granted a respectful hearing.

But free speech is not, for all these gentlemen’s courteous manners, part of the plan, which is the old-fashioned one of divide et impera.

The instructions from Moscow are clear and follow the traditional rule of the old, but not especially dead, Cheka: "If you can’t convince them, confuse them." The intention, indeed these gentlemen’s job, is to suck every last molecule of oxygen out of free and democratic societies.

At first they can easily be mistaken for intellectual lounge-lizards. But the Russian gentlemen are professional about their work. Their target groups are above all the right-wing politicians and business people of ‘Old Europe’, who are inclined to accept that post-Communist Russia is on its way towards democracy. "It only needs time," as our Russian friends soothingly put it.

But they become more severe when they explain that the West does need to understand just how insulting it is to Russia for the EU and NATO to keep on enlarging. "Can’t you see that the idea of Turkey joining the EU comes straight from the US State Department?" they say.

And our Russian friends can come close to losing their serenity when it comes to Kosovo. Luckily José Maria Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, is on hand to calm things down to explain that "we did not join the war in Bosnia in order to detach Kosovo from Serbia".

Perhaps he is thinking of his own Castillian nightmare, of Catalonia or the Basque country breaking free, and sympathises with Russia’s fear that Kosovo being allowed to go its own way could only lead to further erosion of the Soviet empire which Vladimir Putin is so keen to recuperate.

What would be the point of all that ethnic cleansing, and uproar-inducing switching off of gas in mid-winter, if places such as Chechnya can get away scot-free anyway?

Such questions hang unspoken in the air when you chat with their cultivated Russian gentlemen at embassy recep-tions and Whither Europe? seminars. Sometimes I try a different tack. What’s life like in the FSB? I ask sometimes. Very different from the old KGB days?

They smile but never answer, maybe wondering how I know. If they ask me one day I am happy to explain: my bullshit detector was calibrated on numerous visits to Moscow over 30 years. It is still in excellent shape.

You have probably met the fluent, often disarmingly friendly fellows I have in mind. They dress well, speak several languages and seem to have a remarkable grasp of what’s what in the corridors of power.