Mr Cameron goes to Moscow – finally and forlornly
The UK prime minister’s visit to Moscow also reveals much about the EU’s relationship with Russia.
David Cameron makes his first visit to Russia to meet his opposite number, Vladimir Putin, on 12 September.
While Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to Moscow when they arrived in power, the British prime minister has waited 16 months, preferring to travel to China, India, Turkey, the US and any number of EU capitals before going to Moscow. In fact, the closest Cameron has got to Russia was in 2008, when, as leader of the opposition, he went to Tbilisi just after the Russian invasion of Georgia to show solidarity with the Georgian people.
He arrives in Moscow with a long list of difficulties in UK-Russia relations. This may seem odd as Russia and the UK have no obvious geopolitical rivalries. London is home to Russian oligarchs who own Chelsea football club as well as two of the UK’s most important newspapers, the Independent and the Evening Standard. British private schools are full of the children of rich Russians who help keep the high-end London housing market flourishing.
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Nurgaliyev Vows to ‘Burn’ Any Guilty Cops Linked to Magnitsky
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev promised to burn “with a red-hot iron” any police officers who gained illicit wealth and were involved in the prosecution of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“If something is proved beyond a doubt, I will burn them with a red hot iron myself,” Nurgaliyev said in an interview Saturday in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. At the moment, “we can’t charge them with anything.”
Prosecutors opened an investigation into two prison officials, including a doctor, over Magnitsky’s death in July, two months after President Dmitry Medvedev said all guilty parties in the lawyer’s “tragic” passing should be punished.
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After Magnitsky, Prison Doctors Ordered to Check Inmates
Chastened by the Kremlin and the international community after the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the Justice Ministry has ordered prison doctors to check the health of prisoners being punished with solitary confinement.
The decree outlines the procedures for the medical check, which is already required under the law. Human rights activists warned that little would change in prisons as a result, saying prison doctors are dependent on prison wardens, who, in turn, are biased in their treatment of prisoners.
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Russia Squanders Its Chance at Democracy
In late August, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev appointed Georgy Poltavchenko governor of St. Petersburg. Poltavchenko has served as presidential envoy to Russia’s central-administrative district since 2000. More importantly, he is a loyalist to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and a KGB veteran. He replaces Valentina Matviyenko, another Putin confidante, who has moved on to chair the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament. Sergey Mironov, the former speaker of the Federation Council, is out. All this game of musical chairs has little to do with either President Medvedev or significant democratic developments. Rather, it demonstrates how Putin is rearranging his insiders.
Planned in secret as early as July, Poltavchenko’s appointment highlights the deep gap between democratic rhetoric and practice in today’s Russia. Analyzing the move, Nikolay Petrov, the Moscow Carnegie Endowment regional-politics expert, sounded baffled:
If United Russia were suffering from low ratings in St. Petersburg and the unpopular Matviyenko was dragging the party even further down, why replace her with a gray, low-profile presidential envoy who has about as much charisma as State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov? For all of her shortcomings—and there were many of them—Matviyenko at least was a colorful and charismatic politician.
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Magnitsky case reopening ‘immoral’ – mother
The mother of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergey Magnitsky, who died at a Moscow pre-trial detention center in 2009, has called the decision to reopen the case against her son “immoral” and said she is “afraid of” investigators.
Natalia Magnitskaya has submitted a statement to Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and the chief of the Interior Ministry’s Investigations Department, Valery Kozhokar.
“The Constitutional Court ruling, passed on July 14, gives relatives the right to initiate a resumption of the investigation, closed after the suspect’s death for the purpose of his rehabilitation,” it reads, as cited by Interfax agency.
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Magnitsky mother to be questioned by her son’s alleged killers
Sergei Magnitsky’s mother has been summoned for an interrogation as part of the tax evasion case reopened against the Hermitage Capital lawyer in July, 20 months after his death in a Moscow jail.
Natalia Magnitskaya will be questioned as a witness by police officers whom Hermitage accuses of torturing the anti-corruption lawyer to death, the British fund said in a statement.
Magnitskaya’s planned interrogation on September 8 is “a cynical and cruel action designed to suppress his family’s efforts in seeking justice”, Hermitage said.
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Sergei Magnitsky, the death that shakes the Kremlin
(Translation from Original French text)
While Russian police recently raided the headquarters of BP in Moscow that Putin seems to have decided to become president of the country, here is the article I published last week in the “Nouvel Observateur” on d ‘a case that caused a stir in Russia.
It was a Muscovite like millions of others. Yet his death – heroic – will perhaps change the course of relations between Russia and the world. Sergei Magnitsky was a modest jurist who, unfortunately for him, discovered the huge embezzlement organized by a group of leading Russian officials. To silence him, he was thrown into prison, where for a year, he was tortured and denied care. He did not give. Despite excruciating pain, he refused to withdraw his testimony against the top brass. And November 16, 2009, it was left to die alone in a filthy cell.
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Only the Brave
This Wednesday, demonstrations in support of the Strategy 31 campaign took place not only in Russia, but also abroad, as a group of people gathered outside the Russian Consulate in west London to show solidarity with the protesters back home. It has been a year since this movement started in Britain, with people hoping to draw the attention of the West to the plight of those Russians who demand that their Constitution be respected. Their aim is to make the Russian government comply with Article 31, which reads “Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.”
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Moscow Martyr
When David Cameron arrives in Moscow this month for the first visit by a British prime minister since the Litvinenko murder five years ago, both sides will be keen to downplay the issue of human rights. In his talks with President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, there will doubtless be echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s remark when she first met Mikhail Gorbachev in 1984: “We can do business together.”
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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
