Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

The Kremlin’s blacklist

Washington Post

On July 12, as I stopped at the gate of the Russian Embassy compound in northwest Washington, the on-duty officer had some unexpected news. “I cannot let you in,” he said through an intercom. “You are forbidden to enter the embassy.” Being a Russian citizen and a credentialed Russian journalist, and having been to my country’s embassy on numerous occasions, I was naturally curious. Yevgeny Khorishko, the embassy’s press secretary, whom I called for an explanation, was brief: The directive to “strike” my name from the list of credentialed Russian journalists came from Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. No reason was given. In an interview later with Slon.ru, a Moscow news Web site, the press secretary explained that the decision reflected the fact that I am “no longer a journalist.”

The explanation would seem passable, except for one detail: The ambassador’s directive came before it was publicly announced that I had been dismissed as Washington bureau chief of RTVi, as Russian Television International is known, effective Sept. 1. How Kislyak could have known this in advance remains a mystery.

Around the same time, two trustworthy sources in Moscow informed me that my name has been placed on a “blacklist,” making me unemployable not only by RTVi but also by other, even privately owned, Russian media outlets. This was quickly verified, as one editor after another indicated that cooperation at this stage is impossible. From his own sources, opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov found out the name of the Kremlin official who has supposedly blacklisted me: Alexei Gromov, President Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff. As for the reason for the Berufsverbot, my interlocutors were unequivocal: It was my advocacy for the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, currently being considered by the U.S. Congress.