1.    Russia is a business, not a functioning constitutional, let alone democratic nation-state.  There is no distinction between political and business life, between state employees and those who run enterprises of any shape. From the collapse of communism onwards, politics has been paid for by the parastatal and private sector enterprises principally based on energy, raw materials and construction. The deals are written by lawyers, many of them working for big City firms with some experts reckoning that as much as a quarter of the City’s income comes from Russian related dealing.

2.    The old communist nomenklatura have converted themselves into Russian Plc, a kind of giant John Lewis where everyone expects a share. Appeals to Russia to conform to European norms or deal with the west as a responsible geopolitical partner are talking to an empty room. If there are material advantages for Russia from Putin down to junior elected officials, then a deal is possible. Asking Russia, for example, to hand over Syria, one of its favoured arms clients, to Saudi-controlled Wahhabi Sunnis spells an instant loss for one of Russian most important export markets.

3.    The west thinks in category terms that mean nothing in Russia. The Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was put to death not because the Putinocracy likes killing opponents with the sadistic pleasure of a Trotsky or Stalin but because he simply threatened too many mini profit centres in the Russian state apparatus. In the Commons I have led a campaign for those responsible for Magnitksy’s death to be publicly banned from entry into the UK. The campaign now has the support of former foreign secretaries David Miliband and Sir Malcolm Rifkind and is cross-party. But the government in the form of immigration and Foreign Office ministers are resisting. Behind them lie powerful City interests who see Russia as a profit centre. In the past, western psychiatrists hounded their Russian colleagues from international recognition because they signed off on political imprisonment under Brezhnev using diagnoses of mental disorder as an excuse for incarceration. No British commercial lawyer, solicitor or silk, will show solidarity with Magnitsky if it threatens the steady flow of profits from Russia.

4.    So it falls to British democracy, not the professions nor Cameron’s ministers, to find way of expressing solidarity with the now-millions of Russians who want two main things – more rule of law and more democracy. The Snow Revolution petered out on Sunday but Russians have lost fear and passivity as they looked upon Putin and realised that, like Mubarak, or, in western terms, Margaret Thatcher in 1990, the magic was no longer working. For Putin to win back support from the newly educated Russian middle classes he has to turn off the wealth machine that has made him and many Russian officials extremely rich. Britain now should also lose its fear of speaking up for democracy in Russia. The Tories should quit their alliance with Putin’s stooges at the Council of Europe where David Cameron’s MPs provide cover for the Duma MPs who never challenge Putin and who seem fabulously wealthy on a public official’s low nominal salary. Friends of Russia should publish the names of those under threat for speaking out on repression of rule of law and the names of those associated with corruption. After 70 years of Sovietism, Russians want more than anything else to visit, shop, educate their children in the west just as the pre-revolutionary princes did under the Tsars. Denying them that modest privilege will not cause Putinism to disappear overnight but may encourage the next generation of officials to see their role as serving the state and the national interest rather than seeing the state and national resources as being a source of enrichment.

5.    William Hague should seek cooperation instead of endless Euroscpetic confrontation with fellow foreign ministers in the EU to see if a common Russiapolitik can be fashioned. It will not be easy. Putin has a coterie of politicians and PR lobbyists in every capital who make money out of finding excuses for his governance. Russian ownership of Chelsea and the Independent or big estates in France, Germany and Italy do not buy automatic support but the Putinocracy has gone global as it buys influence in exchange for keeping jobs alive or football fans’ dreams nourished. Putin is smart as he regularly brings editors and journalists to visit him and they oblige with friendly pieces about his midnight ice hockey games. If David Cameron rides a horse, the Times mocks him. If Putin glides onto the ice, the paper’s editor just swoons. Putin depends on a divided Europe with no one certain how to handle Russia and, while he plays an intensely zero-sum game of international politics, the response is confused and contradictory. A British foreign secretary able to forge unity in Europe and with the US would make a big difference.

6.    Simultaneously, Britain should not deep-freeze Russia. Russian white collar criminals all flee to London because after the Litvinenko murder the London police have broken all cooperation with Russia and London is seen as the new Costa del Crime where Russian crooks can live in impunity. Somehow while maintaining the right pressure on Litvinenko and Magnitsky, London has to reopen lines of dialogue with Russian state authorities. Flexibility and firmness are needed.

7.    Finally, everyone should read and reread Anna Politkovskaya. At the end of her book, A Russian Diary, published after her murder in 2006 by those opposed to her exposure of the crime of the Putinocracy, Politkovskaya wrote: ‘So far there is no sign of change. The state authorities remain deaf to all warning from the people. They live their own life, their faces permanently twisted by greed and by irritation that anybody should try to prevent them from getting even richer. Our state authorities are only interested in making money. If anyone thinks they can take comfort from the optimistic; forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is also a death sentence for our grandchildren.’

8.    Six years after her killing and three years since Magnitsky was arrested, Politkovskaya’s words are as valid today as they were midway through Putin’s first decade. Russia remains Europe’s, perhaps the world’s, unanswered question. But exposing the greed of its officials and supporting all Russians demanding an end to corruption and greater rule of law and democratic accountability is a global duty.

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Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and a former FCO minister

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Photo: World Economic Forum