MEPs: protests show Putin has lost respect
EU Observer
Prominent MEPs from Russia’s big neighbours have said the mass anti-Putin protests in Moscow are a wake-up call for EU foreign policy.
Looking ahead to the EU-Russia summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 December), Elmar Brok, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU party, said EU officials should urge the Kremlin to hold proper presidential elections in March.
“It should be made clear they have to look for real elections – to give a fair chance to opposition politicians, to let them run and to make sure they have the means to run, and to let the international community monitor the campaign.”
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As Russia arrests its richest, money takes flight
Nikolai Maksimov, one of the richest men in Russia, was sitting in a grimy jail cell in the Ural Mountains.
Through the murk, Mr. Maksimov saw his cellmate — a man, he says, who appeared ill with tuberculosis, a scourge in Russian prisons.
‘‘I had the feeling that I was put in this cell on purpose,’’ Mr. Maksimov, now free on bail, recalled recently.
Mr. Maksimov, who was arrested in February on suspicion of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars, is hardly the only Russian tycoon who has run into trouble. Among the six men who have topped the Forbes rich list here in the last decade, one, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, is in prison, and another, Boris A. Berezovsky, is in exile. They, like Mr. Maksimov, maintain their innocence.
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Rights campaigners question Interior Ministry’s version of Magnitsky’s death
Human rights campaigners distrust the Interior Ministry’s version of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death as well as the ministry’s claims that he was arrested because he could flee abroad.
“The facts we possess support our version that he died as a result of being beaten. He was actually killed. Let them prove the opposite,” head of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission and Moscow Helsinki Group member Valery Borshchyov told Interfax on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, chief of the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department Pavel Lapshov denied any “cause-and-effect link between alleged beatings or any hardships or deprivations he [Magnitsky] had allegedly been put through”.
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The Decembrists
No one’s quite sure what’s going on in the streets of Moscow — or what to call it — but it’s growing and powerful … and could all end badly.
Tonight is the first night without protests here since some 6,000 young people gathered Monday night to express their frustration with the electoral fraud in Sunday’s parliamentary elections and, more broadly, the institution of Putinism. They came out again Tuesday night, where they were met by thousands of drum-beating pro-Kremlin youth activists. And again on Wednesday. Nearly 1,000 people were arrested, and many of them — including anti-corruption blogger Alexey Navalny, a political rising star since he coined the phrase “Party of Crooks and Thieves” to describe Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia — are still in jail. Moscow is filled with tens of thousands of extra Interior Ministry troops and armored personnel carriers, and the city’s skies crackle with the sound of helicopter blades.
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Re-run election, says Gorbachev; support Russia’s democrats, says bipartisan group
The United States must speak and act in support of Russia’s pro-democracy forces, a bipartisan group insisted today.
Passing the Sergei Magnitsky Act “would send a clear message to Russian Prime Minister Putin and his United Russia party that those guilty of human rights abuses will not be able to travel to the United States or protect their corrupt gains in our financial institutions,” said a statement from the Russia Working Group.
“The Magnitsky case is one of the most emblematic examples of the breakdown of law in Russia,” says William F. Browder. “Unlike many other murder cases, where there is some plausible deniability about who pulled the trigger, here we have in such granular detail who was responsible and a chain of command that goes right up to the cabinet. Because of that, this is like a cancer that they don’t seem to be able to get rid of. And the more they try to cover up, the more this becomes the Watergate of Russia.”
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A Blogger Could Start Russia’s Arab Spring
The new face of the Russian opposition is a young whistle-blowing, shareholder activist, muckraking blogger by the name of Alexei Navalny. At 2:15 p.m. on Monday, he called his huge internet following to a 7 p.m. demonstration at the Chistye Prudy park to protest “the rotten total fabrication of Moscow election results.” He wondered why some Moscow districts reported 20 percent while identical districts next door reported 70 percent votes for United Russia.
Thousands showed up (the police claim 400). The protest was broken up violently and Navalny arrested.
The internet reacted immediately: Navalny’s wife posted the police station address and telephone number where he was being held. Navalny was quickly transferred to another location, which she duly reported to Navalny’s followers.
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Floor Statement by Senator John McCain on Russia
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today delivered the following statement on Russia on the floor of the U.S. Senate:
“I want to take a moment to speak about Russia — and to review the state of what this Administration has trumpeted as the so-called reset of U.S.-Russia relations, especially in light of the flawed Duma election that just occurred this weekend, and in light of my strong belief that the growing demand for dignity and uncorrupt governance that has defined the Arab world this year may impact Russia as well.
“Now, let me once again make clear that I am not opposed to U.S. engagement with Russia. I am not opposed to working consistently and in good faith with Russia to find ever more ways to improve our relationship. To the contrary, we must continue to actively seek ways to cooperate with Russia in mutually beneficial ways. It is in our national interest to do so. And whatever can be said about the Administration’s policy toward Russia, no one can accuse them of a lack of sincerity and diligence in trying to increase cooperation with Russia.
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Russia’s Collision Course With Change
The protests in Russia this week put the government on notice that the rebellious mood on display in Sunday’s parliament elections could well go viral, a message that clearly has the Kremlin nervous. It responded with riot police, mass arrests, and dial-a-mob pro-Putin supporters.
Russians have had much to grumble about for as long as anyone can remember. Yet they have always tended to shake their heads, but not their fists, at injustices. If things seem more serious now it may be because the scale and brazenness of the lawlessness have stretched tolerance to the limits. Sunday’s parliamentary vote in Russia may not have changed the political landscape outright, but it revealed a lot about the growing desire in grass-roots Russia for political change.
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The Magnitsky affair: let theatre judge
A British theatre company has brought a play about final hours of Sergei Magnitsky’s life to the London stage. Irina Shumovich reviews “One hour eighteen minutes”.
Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who uncovered the biggest tax fraud in Russian history – the theft of $230 million – died on 16 November 2009 in the Moscow prison ‘Matrosskaya Tishina’ (Sailor’s Silence). He was kept in pre-trial detention for 11 months in squalid conditions, developed pancreatitis, was denied medical treatment and left to die in dreadful suffering. Thanks to the relentless efforts of his employers and associates, Magnitsky’s death has brought corporate and government misconduct and corruption in Russia to the attention of the international media, foreign governments and the general public.
In June 2010, One hour eighteen, a play by Elena Gremina describing the last 78 minutes of Magnitsky’s life, was premiered in Moscow. Noah Birksted-Breen, founder of the Sputnik theatre company dedicated to promoting Russian drama in Britain, translated the play into English.
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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
