Russia Trade Bill Provides Opportunity for Bipartisanship
Elected officials will face many contentious issues affecting economic and foreign policy during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress and heading into 2013. However, one issue on which they should be able to work together is extending permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Russia.
Russia officially joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in August. However, U.S. businesses will not be able to fully benefit from the concessions Russia made to join the WTO unless Congress first repeals the Jackson–Vanik Amendment, a powerful tool that the U.S. successfully used to promote human rights in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc.
Failure to repeal Jackson–Vanik could place U.S. companies at a disadvantage vis-à-vis companies in other WTO members, which would benefit from significantly increased access to the Russian economy.
Congress and President Obama can demonstrate bipartisan leadership by extending PNTR to Russia while also passing the Magnitsky Act, which would deny U.S. visas to individuals who are guilty of massive human rights violations and freeze all of their assets within the purview of the U.S. government.
Both actions have broad bipartisan backing, and they provide a good opportunity for President Obama and Congress to immediately demonstrate their ability to work together.
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BERMAN: U.S.-Russia ‘reset’ hasn’t changed stance
You might not be familiar with Sergei Magnitsky, the 37-year-old Russian lawyer who died of medical complications while languishing in a Moscow prison back in 2009. You should be — Magnitsky’s case is worth knowing, both because of what it says about the nature of the Russian state and because it could soon prompt a substantial shake-up in U.S.-Russian relations.
A lawyer for the Moscow-based Hermitage Capital investment fund, Magnitsky ran afoul of Russian authorities when he stumbled across, and dutifully reported, evidence of massive official corruption. For his trouble, he was imprisoned and held without trial for nearly a year in squalid conditions on trumped-up charges of tax evasion and tax fraud. Toward the end of his incarceration, Magnitsky developed gall stones and pancreatitis, but he was denied proper medical attention by prison authorities. He died in November 2009 as a result.
To add insult to injury, Russia’s Interior Ministry has since posthumously moved ahead with prosecuting Magnitsky. Like the rest of the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky’s demise, the current case is fraught with absurdity. Hermitage lawyers believe that documents relating to the affair have been falsified, but so far — in time-honored Soviet tradition — they have been denied permission to see the case file for their client.
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Resetting the Reset
The United States needs to decide whether to treat Russia as a marginal global actor or an asset in America’s global strategy.
Whoever wins the U.S. presidency, Washington’s Russia policy needs a reassessment and a rethink. The “reset” has run its course. The Obama administration’s vaunted policy of engaging with Moscow did away with the irritants of the previous administration and allowed a modicum of cooperation on issues such as Afghanistan supply routes. It has failed to give America’s Russia policy a strategic depth, but this was never the intention. But Mitt Romney’s portrayal of Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe” and promising to be tough on Putin is not a policy either. Rhetoric has its uses on the campaign trail, but its value greatly diminishes when the challenger becomes the incumbent. The real choice for the new administration lies between keeping Russia on the periphery of the U.S. foreign policy, which means essentially taking a tactical approach, and treating Russia as an asset in America’s global strategy.
Frankly, the former approach appears much more likely. As the United States struggles with the plethora of issues in the Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan, and focuses more on China and Asia, Russia will be seen as a marginal or irrelevant factor. In some cases, as in Afghanistan, Moscow will continue to provide valuable logistical support; in others, such as Iran’s nuclear program, it might be considered useful, but only up to a point; in still other cases, like Syria, it will be regarded as a spoiler due to its consistent opposition to the U.S. effort to topple the Assad regime. As regards China and East Asia, the United States will continue to ignore Russia, whose resources and role are believed to be negligible in that part of the world. Tellingly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s seminal “pivot” article in Foreign Policy did not care to mention Russia at all.
When Russia’s cooperation on foreign policy is deemed to matter little, and its opposition regarded as little more than nuisance, Moscow’s interests and concerns are unlikely to be taken seriously in Washington. Reaching a deal on missile defense with the Russians and selling that deal in Washington may prove too much for the new Obama administration; a Romney White House would probably not bother to reach out to the Kremlin at all, even as it goes ahead with NATO deployments in Europe. That NATO’s further enlargement to the east would likely continue to stall would have more to do with the political realities in Ukraine and Georgia, however, than with any restraint in Washington.
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Kremlin Diplomacy, Soviet-Style: Putin’s Russia Revives “Look Who’s Talking” Routine
The foreign policy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia is increasingly reminiscent of Soviet days, not only in substance, but in style. As IMR senior policy advisor Vladimir Kara-Murza points out, the Kremlin is adopting the “look who’s talking” tactic frequently used by the USSR.
“In the U.S., not only presidents, but even Members of Congress are not elected from among the true representatives of the workers. . . . The people elected as Members of Congress and of state legislatures, as governors and judges, are those who have the support of the moneybags. . . . The vast majority of seats in the American Congress are always occupied by representatives of the propertied classes.”
—Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister, 1957–1985
“It would be a stretch to say that American citizens have the right to elect their president, and it cannot be said that an average American has the right to become president. . . . The entire 223 years of the history of organizing and holding democratic elections in the U.S . . . are full of examples of violations of voting rights of American citizens. . . . The electoral system and electoral laws of the United States of America . . . do not conform to the democratic principles that the U.S. has declared fundamental to its foreign and domestic policy.”
—Vladimir Churov, chairman of the Russian Central Electoral Commission since 2007
“During the presidential or congressional campaigns, candidates are judged according to criteria that would be deemed unseemly in other countries. . . . The ability to look good, smile, make the right gestures and wear a tie of an appropriate color are placed above all else. . . . It is in the interest of the ruling class to have candidates for high office with pretty faces, scenic oratorical gestures, artificial smiles and ties of all the colors of the rainbow.”
—Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister, 1957–1985
“The practice of television debates in America began with the famous television debate between Kennedy and Richard Nixon on September 26th, 1960. Henceforth the leader of the nation had to worry not only about the cogency and logical harmony of his speeches, but also about the color of his tie and the presence of a dazzling smile on his face.”
—Vladimir Churov, chairman of the Russian Central Electoral Commission since 2007
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Magnitsky’s martyrdom makes Russia ask: What is to be done?
In the darkest pages of Russia’s historical catalogue of state murder – the period of the Stalin show trials – there is a recurring moment of intense poignancy.
Typically, some comrade with years of loyal service to the Bolshevik cause, suddenly finding himself under arrest and charged ludicrously with working to sabotage the USSR, would beg his accusers to make one quick phone call to Stalin; that’s all it would take, he thought, for the hideous misunderstanding to be cleared up. Little did he know.
I thought of this when Bill Browder told me his story of the events that ultimately led to the cruel death of Sergei Magnitsky.
The criminal acts that Magnitsky had been investigating as Browder’s lawyer were so brazen that, as Browder put it to me: ‘I thought there was no way Putin would let such things happen if he got to know about them.’ Little did Bill Browder know, but he knows now.
What is to be done? In retrospect, Lenin’s question seems to have been hanging over that great intractable country for two centuries, since the ‘officers’ revolt’ against Tsarist absolutism in the wake of the Napoleonic wars.
It hung over the generations of radicalised intelligentsia who came after, and, during the short 20th Century of Soviet communism; the same question, with a reverse twist, was being asked by the victimised children of the Russian Revolution, the generation of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. In the end, it seemed that the question would be answered by the movement of history.
For a short, heady, chaotic time after 1989, it looked possible that something like a just society could put down roots in Russia for the first time. The Magnitsky case is one of many that tell a different story.
It is fitting enough that the story of this brave and honest man is being brought again to public attention by a writer and playwright.
There is no country where literary culture is more saturated by political nightmares and dreams of a just society. The abuses of power have done that for Russia. What Is To Be Done? was the title of a novel by a revolutionary in the 1860s. Lenin picked up on it.
A century after Lenin, alas, the question is still there, hanging over the martyrdom (there is no other word) of Sergei Magnitsky. онлайн займы срочный займ www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php онлайн займ
Tortured to death by Putin’s jackboot state
I was eating brunch in the fifth-floor restaurant at Harvey Nichols in late October 2009 when we got the first warning, by text. It had been sent from Russia, but the sentiment was American Mafia: ‘If history has taught us anything, it is that anyone can be killed,’ a quote from Don Michael Corleone in The Godfather. We were in no doubt about its meaning.
I was safely in London with the rest of my team. But my Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was not. He had been arrested in Moscow a year earlier on trumped-up charges by the Russian Interior Ministry after exposing a major government corruption scandal. I was worried, and with good reason.
The following month, late at night on Friday, November 13, my phone rang. It was a voicemail and another threat. There were no words. Just the screams of someone being beaten. Badly.
I called Sergei’s lawyer the following Monday morning to see if he was all right, but the lawyer said he couldn’t see Sergei that day. The Russian investigator in charge of his case claimed Sergei was not feeling well enough to leave his cell.
At 6.45 the next morning I took a call from a colleague who could barely get his words out. He was calling to tell me that Sergei was dead. He was 37, a married man with two children.
That was three years ago and his death has changed everything. Up to that point I led the volatile and thrill-filled life of an investment manager.
My main concerns were whether markets went up or down and what exciting holiday was next. Now, I have a new priority: I have to find out exactly what happened to Sergei, to get justice for him – and to avoid being killed myself.
How did I end up in this perilous situation? In 1996, I moved from London to Russia to set up a fund to invest in the newly privatised companies of Eastern Europe. Hermitage Capital Management quickly grew to become the largest of its kind in the country, with more than $4 billion of investments.
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Police raid on Moscow love nest splits Putin’s inner circle
A dawn police raid at the luxury Moscow flat of the blonde director of a defence procurement agency at first seemed merely the latest in a long line of corruption scandals to hit the Russian government.
But when news broke that a bleary-eyed Anatoly Serdyukov, the defence minister, had opened the young woman’s front door when police came knocking, it became clear that this was altogether bigger news.
The titillating detail seemed to break the Russian media’s traditional refusal to delve into the private lives of politicians.
It appears that the scandal became public because Serdyukov, 50, is married to Yulia, the daughter of Viktor Zubkov, 71, a deputy prime minister, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and one of the most powerful men in Russia.
Serdyukov, who is reported to owe his meteoric rise from furniture salesman to minister to the influence of his father-in-law, incurred Zubkov’s wrath by allegedly having an affair with Yevgenia Vasilyeva — the official whose flat was raided — and in the process humiliating his daughter.
The case is mushrooming into an embarrassing scandal that may lift the veil on corruption, nepotism, selective justice and bitter Kremlin infighting under Putin’s rule.
Prosecutors searched Vasilyeva’s flat for several hours as part of a £60m fraud investigation into Oboronservis, a state-owned company that manages supplies to the armed forces. Vasilyeva, 33, who was until recently the head of the defence ministry’s vast property portfolio, is one of the company’s directors.
Officers from the prosecutor’s investigative committee said they had seized documents at her flat and confiscated more than £60,000 in cash plus antiques, paintings and hundreds of items of jewellery, including many diamonds. They also searched Oboronservis’s offices and have charged five people who, they allege, skimmed off large personal profits by using the company to sell state assets at far below their market value.
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The Posthumous Prosectuion of Sergei Magnitsky
On the eve of the third anniversary of the death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russian police custody, the Russian Interior Ministry has announced that it has completed its investigation and prepared the case file for an imminent trial. The proceedings in relation to Magnitsky, who has been dead for three years, will be the first case of a posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history.
Lawyers for Hermitage have uncovered evidence of massive falsifications of documents in the case file. They have filed 40 complaints in the last six months detailing the falsification and other legal violations, including concealment of evidence and conflict of interest, but all complaints have been rejected by the Ostankinsky District Court and the Federal Interior Ministry on unreasoned grounds. Following these complaints, the Interior Ministry investigator Shupolovsky, who has been put in charge of the case, has now denied Hermitage’s lawyer any access to further materials in the case file.
Yesterday, Hermitage lawyers filed five complaints detailing the obstruction of justice and denial of lawyers’ access to the case file with General Prosecutor Chaika, Head of Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department Alekseev and Head of Interior Ministry’s Department for the Central Federal District Agafieva. Their response is not known yet.
“The case is an unlawful criminal proceeding which is carried out in spite of the evidence of innocence and despite the absence of a crime allegedly committed more than ten years ago…Under the guise of a criminal proceeding, the authorities are carrying out a politically motivated punishment of Hermitage, that lead to the death of Sergei Magnitsky,” said Hermitage lawyers in their complaint.
“Counsel was given materials of the case file from which they have established evidence of the falsification and abuse of office,… the significant amount of materials have been concealed from the counsel… Following this, Interior Ministry Investigator Shupolovsky acting in abuse of office and contrary to the interests of the public service, wilfully pursuing unlawful purposes, has denied the counsel the access to the case file,” said the complaint.
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Why the Foreign Ministry Should Keep Quiet
Those nostalgic about the Soviet Union got a nice treat on Oct. 22 when the Foreign Ministry released its report on U.S. human rights violations. Reading just a few pages of the report was enough to bring back memories of the “Ikh Nravy” (Their Morals) series that appeared for nearly a decade in Soviet newspapers and on television, harping on U.S. poverty, crime, homelessness, unemployment, the exploitation of the working class, racism and other “human rights violations.”
The 60-page Foreign Ministry report is a response to the U.S. State Department’s human rights report. Russia’s message: The U.S. has no moral grounds for criticizing Russia on its rights record.
Using a crude strategy that dates back to the Soviet period, Russia’s report tries to shift focus away from its own rights abuses by saying the U.S. government is guilty of the same, or even worse, violations.
This is a favorite tactic of the Kremlin. For example, when the West criticized the state’s takeover of Yukos, President Vladimir Putin said the case differed little from the Enron corruption scandal. When the West criticized Russia for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention, Putin said during an RT interview in September that the U.S. is just as guilty because its government executes convicted criminals. When the West criticizes Russia for kidnapping opposition leader Leonid Razvozzhayev in Ukraine, supporters of the Russian government say the U.S. kidnapped Viktor Bout in Thailand.
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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
