U.S. shouldn’t overrate Russian gamesmanship
Beware of Russians bearing gifts.
But not too much.
Disguised as a goodwill gesture, Russia’s plan to restart nuclear talks with Iran is in fact a tit-for-tat ploy. It is designed to annoy the United States for imposing visa restrictions last month on Russian officials implicated in the death of a lawyer who had unearthed evidence of massive corruption perpetrated by the regime of Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin, who previously served as president.
The plan is Russia’s barely veiled threat to drop its reluctant support of international sanctions imposed on Iran for its apparent efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
It is not the first time Russia has tried to spite Washington in the wake of the visa restrictions imposed after a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest foreign investor in Russia, died in police custody on trumped-up charges of tax avoidance. In fact, he was arrested for alleging a $230 million state-orchestrated fraud.
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Interview With Boris Nemtsov On August 1991 Putsch: ‘We Were Romantic…We Were Very Naive’
Boris Nemtsov has played many roles in post-Soviet Russia. He was a reformist member of the Russian Republic’s Soviet-era parliament in 1991, served as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, and as first deputy prime minister in the late 1990s. More recently, he has been one of the most visible faces of the opposition. RFE/RL correspondents Robert Coalson and Pavel Butorin spoke to Nemtsov on the 20th anniversary of the failed putsch in August 1991 that precipitated the fall of the USSR.
RFE/RL: It’s been 20 years since the anti-Gorbachev coup attempt and I’d like to start by asking you to take us back to that moment in your life. Where were you, and what were you doing, and what were your hopes and expectations at the that time?
Nemtsov: During those historic days I was in the White House [the Russian parliament building at the time]. I was a deputy of the Russian parliament and I was with [Russian President Boris] Yeltsin as a protector of the White House and freedom in Russia. Really, those were very interesting days and very dramatic days, I want to tell you.
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Bill Browder: the man making Moscow squirm over the death of Sergei Magnitsky
Bill Browder is a man on a mission. “I want to change Russia and change human rights advocacy in Russia in a profound way,” the hedge fund millionaire says with almost messianic zeal, in his sparsely furnished offices in London’s Golden Square.
It is, safe to say, an unusual ambition for a successful financier with $1bn of assets under management. But Browder has had an unusual time of late.
Two years ago, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management discovered a new calling. The catalyst was the tragic death of a colleague, Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old tax lawyer and married father of two, at the hands of the Russian state. Until then, Browder’s activism had been limited to boardroom battles against corruption in Russia, where he had been the largest foreign portfolio investor with a track record for boosting shareholder returns by cleaning up companies.
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Diplomat Downplays U.S. Ban
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior diplomat said.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday.
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Russia says U.S. visa move won’t affect cooperation
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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Sergei Magnitsky: sanctions in the name of justice, Zoya Svetova
It is nearly two years since Sergei Magnitsky died a shocking death in Moscow’s Matrosskaya tishina prison. Since then, an imaginative campaign by friends and colleagues has kept his case in international spotlight. For Zoya Svetova, the recent decision by US authorities to impose visa sanctions against sixty Russian officials may prove the campaign’s most crucial success yet.
On 6 August, President Barack Obama signed an order imposing travel restrictions on some sixty Russian officials associated with the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky, who had been working for the Hermitage Capital investment fund, died in controversial circumstances in the Matrosskaya tishina detention centre on 16 November 2009. Compiled by US Democratic senator Benjamin Cardin approximately one year ago, the “Magnitsky list” includes prosecutors, judges, a Moscow police chief, tax inspectors, employees and doctors who were working in the Moscow detention centres where Magnitsky spent his final hours, and where he was condemned to an agonizing death without a corresponding sentence.
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The Reset: Down–but not Out
During Wall Street’s latest gyrations, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the United States a parasite on the global economy. In response to the U.S. Senate’s recent unanimous resolution condemning Russia’s continued post-war military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, President Dmitry Medvedev possibly called U.S. senators senile—or maybe it was just senior citizens. Either way, you get the point. And in the most recent spat over U.S. plans for ballistic missile defense in Europe, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO, labeled U.S. Republican Senators Jon Kyl and Mark Kirk “monsters of the Cold War.”
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Russia says U.S. visa move won’t affect cooperation
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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Doctors charged over Magnitsky`s death
Russia’s Investigative Committee has charged two doctors in connection with the pre-trial detention death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, official spokesman for the Committee, Vladimir Markin, said. He added that a direct link was found between Magnitsky`s death and the actions of the doctors. New hearings are scheduled for August 24th.
Chief physician for the Butyrskaya prison Larisa Litvinova is charged with causing death by negligence. Dmitry Kratov, the deputy director of the prison, is charged with carelessness. If found guilty, both may face from three to five years prison.
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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
