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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Marina Hyde

Never a police officer around when you want one – unless you’re an oligarch

Met police officers and demonstrators at the Belgravia house of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, 14 March 2022.
‘There were at least eight vans and two squad cars, as well as a JCB, for some reason not being driven by Boris Johnson.’ Photograph: Thabo Jaiyesimi/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Didn’t you love the pictures of a column of Metropolitan police officers running towards Oleg Deripaska’s house like it was a five-storey Greggs? Here they come, trotting with intent, a phalanx of shirt-sleeved, riot-shielded protect-and-servers who may or may not be available inside of six weeks next time your house is burgled.

To recap, four protesters yesterday occupied a house in London’s Belgravia that is supposedly owned by the Russian aluminium magnate Deripaska (now on the UK sanctions list). They unfurled some banners inviting Vladimir Putin to fuck himself and so on, before being removed by the largest Met police presence you’ll see outside of a women’s vigil for someone murdered by a Met police officer. Territorial support group, police negotiators, police climbers, riot police … and, my darlinks, one’s rarely seen so much hardware. The only big guns they left back at the station were the surface-to-air questionnaires.

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