Russia works on response to US visa blacklist

The FT. By Charles Clover in Moscow

Russia is working on an “adequate” response to a US visa blacklist of Russian officials suspected of human rights violations, most likely creating a similar blacklist of US officials suspected of violating the rights of Russian citizens.

Last month, the US blacklist was made public in an effort by the administration to head off a piece of legislation which would impose even worse sanctions on suspected human rights violators in Russia.

On Wednesday, Moscow’s respected Kommersant newspaper said Russia’s foreign ministry had already drawn up a list of US officials who would be barred from entering Russia in a tit-for-tat response to the US ban.

However, a foreign ministry official, speaking anonymously to Russian news agency Interfax, said the final decision on how to respond to the US move had not yet been taken.

“It might be a list of Americans who would be prohibited from entering Russia, but so far the issue is still in the stage of development,” said the official.
The Kommersant article said Russia might retaliate against US officials involved in cases such as that of Viktor Bout, the alleged gun runner who was extradited from Thailand to the US last November. Another such case is that of convicted Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was arrested by US special forces in Liberia last year.

“In the last few years we have regularly been witness to blatant violations of the rights of Russians, and the application of US laws to Russian citizens and Russian companies in an extraterritorial manner. This is unacceptable and must not go without a response,” Interfax quoted the official as saying.

The US visa blacklist, made public last month, was an attempt to dissuade US legislators from passing a bill known as the Magnitsky Act, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer working for a US firm who died in prison in 2009. The Act would ban 60 Russian officials allegedly involved in his death, but also other Russian officials involved in torture, murder and wrongful detention in 22 other cases named in the bill’s text. The bill has been expanded to include not just travel bans, but asset freezes as well.

In publicising the visa ban, the state department was understood to be making the point that the US already prohibits visas to be given to those suspected of violating human rights, as such, there is no need for the additional legislation.

Russia’s government has threatened to retaliate “asymmetrically” if the Magnitsky Act were to be made into law, perhaps by slashing transport of supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan through Russian territory, which is one of the fruits of the current thaw in Russian-US relations since 2009, known as the “reset”.
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