‘Obama has sided with Putin Against Congress’
How can Medvedev transmit that Obama will be “more flexible” after the election when the president is already doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding with Congress? Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl on the “Magnitsky bill” — a piece of legislation, authored by Democrats, that aims to restore human rights to the center of U.S.-Russian relations.
This sanction strikes at the heart of the web of corruption around Putin. Moscow’s bureaucratic mafiosi rely heavily on foreign bank accounts; they vacation in France, send their children to U.S. colleges and take refuge in London when they fall from Putin’s favor. The fear and loathing provoked in Moscow by the bill is encapsulated by item No. 3 on Putin’s new priority list: “Work actively on preventing unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the U.S. against Russian legal entities and individuals.”
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U.S. Senator Slams Putin for Protest Crackdown
Outspoken U.S. Senator John McCain has criticized President Vladimir Putin for a recent crackdown on protesters, as well as for oligarchy, corruption and activities in the Baltics and Ukraine.
In an interview with the Voice of America’s Russian service, McCain said Putin had to “understand that there is great resistance to the way he governs,” “the way the elections were held” and how “demonstrators were being cracked down” on last week.
“People in Russia are very unhappy with this oligarchy and corruption that goes from top to bottom,” McCain said in the interview Friday, adding that liberal opposition politician Boris Nemtsov had told him that the protest movement was “not gonna be stopped.”
McCain also said U.S. concern should be expanded to Putin’s activities in Ukraine, the three Baltic states and the “military buildup” in Kaliningrad.
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Obama’s misguided wooing of an uninterested Putin
Putin’s response was to claim that he needed to skip Camp David in order to put together a new government cabinet — even though he is now the president, not the prime minister. Some Russian analysts dismissed that explanation; they posited that Putin was offended by the State Department’s mild criticism of the beatings of demonstrators during his inauguration last week. Others speculated that he was managing serious behind-the-scenes power struggles.
Either way, Putin appears lukewarm at best about the main cause of Obama’s focus on him: his ambition to conclude a groundbreaking nuclear weapons accord in 2013. The deal would go well beyond the New START treaty of 2010 and aim at a radical, long-term reduction of the U.S. and Russian arsenals. It would be Obama’s legacy achievement on the foreign-policy issue that most engages him, and the retroactive justification for his Nobel Peace Prize.
Putin, however, doesn’t seem terribly interested. A seven-point directive on relations with the United States he issued last week listed “further reduction of strategic offensive arms” sixth, and said they “are possible only within the context of taking into account any and all factors influencing global strategic stability.” That means missile defense: Point seven reiterates Moscow’s demand for “firm guarantees” about U.S. anti-ballistic missile systems.
Obama’s fixation on a nuclear deal has prompted a major turnaround in his treatment of Putin, whom he shunned for three years in the hope of promoting the supposedly more “reformist” Dmitry Medvedev. Though he might have waited several days to call, Obama nevertheless congratulated Putin on an election that international observers said was neither free nor fair. He has made repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which limits U.S. trade with Russia, a priority in Congress this spring.
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Russian paper details business interests of defence minister’s associates
Vedomosti
Article by Roman Shleynov, Dmitriy Kazmin, Filipp Sterkin, and Aleksey Nikolskiy: “He Is a Machine, Not a Person”
There have been surprising twists and turns in Minister of Defense Anatoliy Serdyukov’s life. He came from retailing to impose order in the tax service and from a civilian finance job to reform the army. Generals complain that he taunts them as little green men.
Zubkov’s son-in-law
When Serdyukov came to the Petersburg Tax Inspectorate in 2000 he was already an established furniture retailer. After graduating from the Accountancy and Economics Faculty at the Leningrad Institute of Soviet Trade in 1984 Serdyukov went into the army. He served as a conscript in the 85th Motorized Infantry Division Communications Battalion in Novosibirsk. At that time, conscripts with higher education were offered the chance to enroll on a reserve lieutenant training course after nine months. After serving for 18 months they would be discharged with an officer’s rank. This was also the path that Serdyukov chose, a former officer in the Defense Ministry central apparatus says, clarifying that in the event of a war Serdyukov would have been eligible to be drafted to serve as a regimental military commissary chief.
But Serdyukov became a strictly peacetime retailer — after leaving the army he went to work for the No. 3 Lenmebeltorg furniture store in Petersburg. It was within the Lenmebeltorg system that he rose from assistant accountant to become director and joint owner of the Petersburg industrial trading company Mebel-market formed on the basis of Lenmebeltorg.
A possible contributory factor to Serdyukov’s transition to state service was his marriage. In 2000 he married Yuliya Pokhlebenina — the daughter of Viktor Zubkov. Zubkov was a party official during Soviet times, he became Vladimir Putin’s deputy in the Petersburg Mayor’s Office in 1990, and he then moved to the tax service – by 1999 he had risen to become deputy minister for taxes and levies while retaining the post of head of the Tax Service’s Petersburg Office.
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Court Dismisses Case of Doctor Accused in Trifonova’s Death
A Moscow court has stopped a criminal case against Dr. Alexandra Artamonova, who treated businesswoman Vera Trifonova who died in a pretrial detention facility, because the statute of limitation had expired, RAPSI news agency reported on Friday.
This decision is not an admission of guilt and is not considered a criminal record.
The deaths in pretrial detention of two defendants in white-collar crime cases, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and businesswoman Vera Trifonova, sparked a public outcry. Vera Trifonova, 54, a wheelchair-bound businesswoman, was accused of fraud. She died at Matrosskaya Tishina in April 2010 after being refused medical treatment for acute diabetes and told to sleep “standing up.”
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As Putin Postpones Meeting Obama, Analysts Seek Political Import
The first meeting between President Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin as the leaders of their respective countries was supposed to be an icebreaker, a moment for two outsize figures to put behind them some of the friction that surrounded the Russian elections two months ago.
But the announcement on Wednesday that Mr. Putin would skip the Group of 8 summit meeting of world leaders next week at Camp David – which Mr. Obama had promoted as an opportunity to “spend time” with Mr. Putin – bewildered foreign policy experts in both countries who have been waiting to see how the two leaders would get on.
During a telephone call on Thursday, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, assured Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the cancellation was “not political,” a State Department official said. Other administration officials said they accepted Mr. Putin’s stated reason for canceling his trip – he told Mr. Obama that he had to finish setting up his new cabinet.
In fact, during a meeting last Friday in Moscow with Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, which was supposed to set up the Camp David meeting, Mr. Putin had warned that he might have to send his prime minister (and the former president), Dmitri A. Medvedev, in his place, according to a senior administration official with knowledge of the meeting.
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We Need an Offset, Not a Reset with Russia
Christian Carlysle has a good analysis of the grimness of Putin’s victory again in Russia.
Unfortunately, the snarks at Foreign Policy (of which there are no shortage), set up this article with a tag line to click on — “Putin Won, Get Over It” — which isn’t exactly in the spirit of what Christian Carlysle usually says about Russia. It implies that we are naive bunnies who opposed Putin and backed his opponents out of bourgeois neoliberalism…or something. Instead of principles.
So no, it’s not about “getting over it” as if somehow the mendacious malice of and sheer bantom-weight thuggishness of Vladimir Putin have to be conceded and never opposed. If anything, now that the “spring,” is over, which never really was a spring, cold is in order.
Here’s my answer:
Christian, the question isn’t whether your analysis of the situation is right. It is. We all get that. I’ve been the first to say that I didn’t believe the demonstrations were very deep or wide and I didn’t think they’d have an impact against the Kremlin’s very malicious security state. People will keep trying; they will keep getting beat up.
But it’s one thing to explain the realities of the situation, and it’s another then to justify RealPolitik as the way to address the situation (which you aren’t doing, but many reading your column *are* doing).
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An agenda for Putin’s first 100 Days
A comprehensive human rights agenda for Russia should be adopted this summer and then carried through to prove Putin is serious, says human rights group
Four years ago – when Dmitry Medvedev was taking over as the president of Russia – an international correspondent asked me for one word to describe Vladimir Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency. I came up with three, “so-called stability”. Despite all the patriotic rhetoric lately, not many in Russia expect that Putin’s new term will bring another six years of “stability”. No one wants turbulence, of course, but unresolved political, social and human rights issues are growing increasingly visible and pressing. Adopting a 100-day agenda focused on these unresolved issues would be a good start.
The Russian election cycle never fails to surprise. News about the president and prime minister’s plans to swap seats in 2012 led to a major political awakening in the country. The biggest crowds since the 1990s showed up on the streets of Moscow and other large Russian cities. Now the “swapping scenario” is close to its end. Yet, in a sign that Russia’s restive mood continues, another opposition protest in Moscow – with estimates of up to 60,000 participants – took place on May 6. The protest was marred by violence from some of the protesters and an excessive and indiscriminate use of police force in response. According to the Interfax new service, 436 people were detained; while other independent sources provided names of almost 650 detainees. Detentions of peaceful protesters on the Moscow boulevards continued on May 7 and May 8.
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Putin Signs Decree Seeking Closer U.S. Ties, ‘Firm Guarantees’ On Missile Shield
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
May 07, 2012
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree stating that Moscow will seek closer ties with Washington, but will not tolerate interference in its affairs.
The document, signed on May 7, hours after Putin was sworn in for a third term as president, also says that Moscow wants “firm guarantees” that a planned U.S.-led NATO missile shield is not aimed against Russia.
It says Moscow aims to bring cooperation with Washington “to a truly strategic level” but relations must be based on equality and mutual respect.
The decree serves to send a message to U.S. President Barack Obama ahead of a meeting between the leaders later this month at G8 and NATO summits in the United States.
Washington maintains that the missile shield, which is due to be completed by about 2020, is meant to counter a potential threat from rogue states, including Iran. Russia says the system could gain the capability to intercept Russian missiles by about 2018.
Russia’s Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov on May 3 repeated warnings that Russia might opt to station short-range missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave to counter the shield.
He was also quoted as saying that Russia may consider a preemptive strike on the system in Europe if the project continues as planned.
U.S. State Department responded by insisting that the shield would not alter the strategic balance between the countries.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
