Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Interview: McCain On Russia, Putin, And His Pravda.ru Op-Ed

Johnson’s Russia List

(RFE/RL – rferl.org – NEW YORK, September 20, 2013) U.S. Senator John McCain (Republican-Arizona) has defended an opinion piece he wrote this week that was critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Yuri Zhigalkin of RFE/RL’s Russian Service that his remarks were based on the facts about rights abuses in Russia.

RFE/RL: Senator, I had the feeling that critics and supporters of your op-ed in Pravda.ru — and this is kind of surprising — are about evenly split. Some say that McCain is basically saying what a good Russian human rights activist should say. Others say he is just an old man outside Russia who doesn’t understand a thing about Russia. Your reaction to that?

John McCain: The comments I make are based on facts — about repression, about [Sergei] Magnitsky [the whistle-blowing Russian lawyer who died in custody in 2009], about total control of the media, and the human rights abuses that continue.

RFE/RL: Why did you decide to write this article? What was your goal, what were you trying to achieve?

McCain: The truth is always an important thing, and the comments that Mr. Putin made [in his “New York Times” op-ed] about the United States of America and events here were directly contradicted by the situation in Russia, and if I ever have a chance to speak to the people of Russia, no matter how insignificant it will be, I will seize that opportunity because I am pro-Russian, and the abuses that are being heaped upon them by the Putin autocracy is, in my view, something that deserves our sympathy and our opposition.