The news that a Russian warlord was gearing up to sue the BBC, revealed this week by openDemocracy, tells you everything you need to know about Britain’s broken sanctions regime.
It’s shocking, but for me at least, it’s not surprising. I came face to face with such failures when I tried to get information from the government about how it grants sanction waivers – only to be stonewalled by ministers.
In December 2021, Vladimir Putin’s favourite merchant of death, Yvegeny Prigozhin, the boss of the private Russian army the Wagner Group, was planning to launch a legal attack on the BBC – with the same UK government help that enabled him to sue British journalist Eliot Higgins.
