Oh, Russia! Even before we point fingers over poison and speculate about secret agents and spy swaps and pub food in Salisbury, one thing has become clear: Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war.

Its agents pop over for murder and shopping, even while its crooks use Britain as a 24/7 laundromat for their ill-gotten billions, stolen from compatriots. Its digital natives use their skills not for solving Russia’s own considerable internal problems but to subvert the prosperous adversaries that it secretly envies.

It bought a World Cup, invaded two neighbours, bombed children to save a butcher in the Middle East. Its athletes can’t even represent their country, so tarnished is its Olympic status as a serial cheat. And now it wants to start a new nuclear arms race.

And before the whataboutists say, “America does some of that stuff too”, that may be true, but just because the US is occasionally awful it doesn’t mean that Russia isn’t. As for poor little Britain, it seems to take this brazen bullying like a whipping boy in the playground who has wet himself. Boycott the World Cup? That’ll teach them!

Russians have complained that the portrayal of their nation in dramas such as McMafia is cartoonish and unhelpful, a lazy smear casting an entire nation as a ludicrous two-dimensional pantomime villain with a pocketful of poisonous potions.

Of course, the vast majority of Russians are indeed misrepresented by such portrayals, because they are largely innocent in these antics. Most ordinary Russians are in fact also victims of the power system in their country, which requires ideas such as individual comfort, aspiration, dignity, prosperity and hope to be subjugated to the wanton reflexes of the state.

Why is Russian power like this: cynical, destructive, zero-sum, determined to bring everything down to a base level where everyone thinks the worst of each other and behaves accordingly?

‘Russians have complained that the portrayal of their nation in dramas such as McMafia is cartoonish and unhelpful’ Photograph: BBC WorldWide

I think there are two reasons. The most powerful political idea in Russia is restoration. A decade of humiliation – economic, social and geopolitical – that followed its rebirth in 1991 became the defining narrative of the new nation. At times, even the continued existence of the Russian Federation appeared under threat. The Putin years have been all about the revival of “great power status”, at any cost. It’s a vote winner and one of the things that makes weary, misled Russians feel good about themselves. This in itself is a supreme paradox. Great power status never did much for the ordinary person. Countries with the happiest citizens tend to be those with the most negligible geopolitical ambitions.

The second reason is that the parlous internal state of Russia – absurdist justice, a threadbare social safety net, a pyramid society in which a very few get very rich and the rest languish – creates moral ambivalence. If the only two options are to enrich yourself or end up marginalised, impoverished and crushed, then even honest people can be tempted to dishonesty, like Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs or traffic police.

What is to be done? I wouldn’t respond with empty threats, Boris Johnson. No one cares. There are only two weaknesses in this bully’s defences. The first is his money. Britain needs to do something about the dodgy Russian billions swilling through its financial system. Make it really hard for Kremlin-connected money to buy football clubs or businesses or establish dodgy limited partnerships; stop oligarchs from raising capital on the London stock exchange. Don’t bother with sanctions. Just say: “No thanks, we don’t want your business.”

The second is public opinion. The imminent presidential election is a foregone conclusion, but the mood in Russia can turn suddenly, as we saw in 1991, 1993 and 2011-2012.

In the early 1990s, I tried (and failed) to get a job as a translator on a radio programme that the BBC produced for the new Russia. Dom 7, Podyezd 4 (House 7, Entrance 4) was sort of like The Archers for the post-Soviet space, full of advice on capitalism’s great inventions such as bankrupting a business and long-term unemployment. They called it the Marshall Plan of the Mind, and it was a missed opportunity.

Maybe it’s time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown how public opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive to win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.

  • Mark Rice-Oxley is a Guardian news editor, and a former Moscow correspondent for Agence France-Presse