Unpleasant Neighbours

Last week, my client, who I will call John asked for my advice on a dispute he was having with his neighbour. Last year, John and his wife Mary (not their real names), bought an apartment in central London, and set about renovating it to their own taste. They applied for all the necessary consents and regulations and engaged a builder who was a member of the Considerate Constructors group.

However, the noise of drilling into concrete, the dirt, and the dust – was just too much for John’s neighbours – who as soon as the works were finished set about making their lives a misery. They watched eagle eyed for when John and Mary were in occupation, which was not often since their main home and John’s business was not in London and set about bombarding them with complaints as soon as they arrived. 

John’s situation is uncomfortable, but relatively straightforward, he has done nothing wrong and can appeal to the local council, refer to rules and regulations and if necessary, go to court, but what if you are Ukraine and your neighbour is Russia?...

I am not a property lawyer or a specialist in boundary disputes, but I am the chair of the tenants’ association of my block of apartments and have worked with private clients for long enough to be familiar with these types of disputes and the types of extreme, unacceptable behaviour these emotional eruptions can sometimes give rise to.

The most extreme form of behaviour (not I hasten to add one that John is facing) is where one neighbour took to posting dog excrement though her neighbour’s letter box and tipping her rubbish into her neighbour’s garden.

Of course, Putin is angry. In February 1990, during negotiations about German reunification, the US secretary of state James Baker reassured the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if the reunification went ahead, NATO would not expand ‘an inch’ to the East. Putin believes passionately that he has been betrayed. The military alliance, NATO has expanded to include nine central and eastern European states since 1990.

Putin has responded to this increase in NATO by supporting the pro- Russian regions in Ukraine of Donetsk and Luhansk collectively now known as the Donbas. It is these regions Putin now recognises as a new country and has sent his troops into Ukraine as ‘peacekeepers’ to protect this new country from Ukraine aggression.

Unlike my client who can appeal to authorities and regulators, Ukraine is on its own, it can appeal to no-one and is not a member of NATO (although has wanted to be since 2008)

Johnson responded to the invasion by introducing sanctions on five Russian banks and three oligarchs who will have their UK-held assets frozen and be denied entry to the UK. All five banks and the three oligarchs named have been under US sanctions for years. So much for promising to ‘come down like a steel trap’.

But the truth is that the west has become dependent on Russia – not just for energy, but, according to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph Putin controls much of the supply chain of Western technology. The world’s biggest titanium producer vital for semi-conductor chips is a Russian state-owned company VSMPO-AVISMA. We simply are not able to cut off Russia – and Putin knows it

So, what hope has Ukraine got? What can be learned from neighbourly disputes?

In the case of the neighbour who was posting dog waste through her neighbour’s letter box, she was finally made to stop behaving badly – by her family who told her it was unacceptable -  and the same may be true in Russia with Putin.

Max Seddon in the Financial Times says that Putin is becoming increasingly isolated. He is fearful of catching covid which is why he has held talks with France’s President Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at other sides of a ‘comically huge table’ during meetings. He has also spent much of the past pandemic years in his country residence in self-isolation earning himself the nickname in Russia as the ‘old man in the bunker’.

Putin may not have noticed, while in solitude, but the Russian people don’t want to attack Ukraine. A recent poll found that fewer than 10% want Russia to attack and only 6% see the west as an enemy. Maybe the Russian people will eventually persuade him to believe that they simply do not support this bad behaviour and make him stop his passion for empire building from going any further. But unlike Johnson who is ultimately answerable to the electorate – Putin has been the self-appointed Tzar of Russia for two decades – answerable to no-one!

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