Posts Tagged ‘levada’
EU Lawmakers Expand Effort to Sanction Russian Rights Abusers
As the US administration readies its first annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Magnitsky Act, the law imposing visa and financial sanctions on Russian human rights abusers, European legislators are preparing a strategy to move forward with their own sanctions package. Last week, the European Parliament hosted the first meeting of the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Inter-Parliamentary Group, which brings together lawmakers from 13 countries (11 of them from the European Union) and an advisory board that includes representatives from Russia (among them, the author of this blog). The aim of the new coalition is to coordinate between the national parliaments and the European Parliament on the best way to move forward with barring Russian officials implicated in corruption and human rights violations from visiting and stowing their assets in EU member states and Canada.
The Magnitsky Act, passed by the US Congress last year with vast bipartisan majorities (365 to 43 in the House; 92 to 4 in the Senate), was, despite Kremlin assertions to the country, the most pro-Russian law ever adopted in a foreign country. With corruption and political repression being the founding pillars of Russia’s current regime, and with no independent judiciary to protect Russian citizens from abuse, external individual sanctions on those who commit these offenses are the only way to end the impunity. According to a Levada Center poll, 44 percent of Russians support US and EU visa bans on officials who engage in human rights violations, with only 21 percent opposing, and this despite constant attempts by the Putin regime to present individual sanctions against crooks and abusers as “sanctions against Russia”—an insulting equivalence for the country. Leading Russian opposition figures and human rights activists are publicly supporting the Magnitsky sanctions; many of their testimonies have been included in a new book edited by Elena Servettaz, Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law, which was presented in European capitals and Washington DC.
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Former Bush Advisor: Keep Calm and Submit to Putin
It’s hard to imagine how someone could be more discredited regarding Russia than by being intimately associated with both the George W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon administrations. That’s the case with Russia pundit Paul J. Saunders: he worked for Bush as a key Russia advisor and now works for the Center for the National Interest, known as the Nixon Center until 2011.
Recall Bush infamously looked in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, glimpsed his soul, and declared him trustworthy. And hosted a Russian war criminal in the Oval Office, before Putin invaded Georgia and annexed two huge chunks of territory. The Center for the National Interest is actually run by a Russian, Dimitri Simes, another discredited figure who has urged the same disgraceful policy of appeasement towards Russia that has been embraced by the disastrously failed “reset” policy of Barack Obama.
In the May 23 Washington Post, Saunders published an editorial fully supportive of the Obama reset. The column is one of the more dishonest and outrageous pieces of writing about Russia I’ve come across in my career of monitoring Russian affairs.
Saunders argues that the United States should not oppose dictatorship in Russia until Russian troops begin “massing on the country’s Western border” and “opposition activists are being executed by the hundreds.” Yes, really.
He denies that dissidents are being sent to psychiatric wards, Siberia, or being subjected to show trials like those that occurred in Soviet times, and therefore urges Americans to do as Obama says and to thank their lucky stars, because things are just fine in Russia as far as Americans are allowed to be concerned.
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Why the Magnitsky Act Is Pro-Russian
Moscow Times
Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov perhaps put it best regarding the Magnitsky Act passed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday: “This is the most pro-Russian law passed in the United States in the history of our countries.”
Indeed, what better way to support Russians’ interests than to punish a group of people who stole $230 million from the state budget, then framed a whistleblower and put him in jail, where he was tortured, denied medical help and eventually died?
A poll conducted by the Levada Center showed that 39 percent of those polled supported the Magnitsky Act and only 14 percent were against it, while nearly half the respondents were unsure of how to answer. Vladislav Naganov, a member of the opposition’s Coordination Council, wrote on his LiveJournal blog: “This is a victory for Russia. Anyone who claims that Russia is against this law does not have the right to speak for the entire country.”
But the Kremlin is of a decidedly different opinion. In recent months, the country’s leadership has organized a massive international media campaign to stop the passage of the act, and it reacted harshly after it was passed. An official statement from the Foreign Ministry disparaged the Senate vote as “a spectacle in the theater of the absurd.” United Russia members were even more outspoken in their condemnation. Sergei Markov, a member of the Public Chamber and former State Duma deputy, wrote on his blog on the chamber site that the Magnitsky Act “is interference in our legal system and a violation of our sovereignty. The drivers of this bill were energetic, dedicated Russophobes.”
Leonid Slutsky, a Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party and deputy chief of the Russian delegation to the European Parliament, called it “interference in Russia’s internal affairs.”
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The People Versus Vladimir Putin
In one recent controversy, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee and a Putin crony, was alleged to have physically threatened Sergei Sokolov, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta (the newspaper where murdered reporter Anna Politkovskaya worked), in response to Sokolov’s harsh criticism of law enforcement in an organized crime case. At first, Bastrykin angrily denied the accusation; a short time later, he publicly apologized to the newspaper for his “emotional outburst” and behaving inappropriately. By Western standards, it’s shocking that the head of the Russian equivalent of the FBI can keep his job after a de facto admission that he threatened a journalist. By the standards of Putin-era Russia, the apology attests to public opinion’s newfound muscle.
The opposition and the independent Russian press take Putin’s loss of credibility and public support—especially among the educated urban middle class—as a given. Is this shift in opinion real, or inflated by wishful thinking? On the surface, Putin’s approval ratings remain impressive; even harsh critics of the vote-rigging in the March election concede that without fraud, Putin’s share of the vote would still have been over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Yet a closer look at poll data suggests that Putin’s popularity is indeed waning.
A nationwide survey in April by the Levada Center, Russia’s premier independent polling firm, found that only 38 percent of Russians believed Putin would have won the election if the media had been free to report on abuses of power; about as many said he would have lost, with the rest undecided. When people were asked to name Putin’s positive qualities, the poll revealed that his “positives” had declined drastically in four years. In 2008, 62 percent praised Putin as “hardworking” and “energetic”; the figure was down to 38 percent this year. “Mature and experienced” dropped from 47 to 28 percent; “responsible,” from 41 to 17 percent; “likable” and “charismatic,” from an already-low 30 percent to an abysmal 7 percent.
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Russia’s Civil Society ‘Beats Authorities’ in Tackling Corruption
Russia’s civil society has made a dramatic leap forward over the past three years and is doing much more to curb corruption than the authorities, Yelena Panfilova, a prominent, outgoing member of the presidential anti-corruption and human rights council, said on Wednesday.
“Russia today is not the same country it was when I joined the council three years ago; first of all, it’s about the society, not the authorities,” Panfilova, who heads Transparency International’s Russian branch, said at a news conference in Moscow marking the end of the council’s term under President Dmitry Medvedev.
Panfilova announced last week that she was not planning to continue her work with the council, which is expected to be reshuffled following the inauguration of Vladimir Putin on May 7. Several other council members also said they were going to resign.
Some observers have suggested it was their unwillingness to compromise with former KGB agent Putin that forced them to leave the council. But Panfilova downplayed the allegation on Wednesday, saying her departure was due to her desire to focus on civil activism rather than a falling out with the authorities.
“I believe that the society is doing much more, much better to counter corruption … than three years ago, and more than the authorities do,” she said.
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“No Place to Retreat to”
Vedomosti
The criminal case relating to the death of Hermitage Foundation lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy, who died in a prison hospital on 16 November 2009, is beginning to acquire specific outlines. The Investigations Committee has charged Dmitriy Kratov, deputy chief of the Butyrka holding center, with negligence and prison doctor Larisa Litvinova with causing death by negligence.
There were definitely more people who made decisions and issued orders, so the list of players in the case, which consists of two individuals, looks too much like “scapegoating.” Nevertheless yesterday’s [18 July] statement by the Investigations Committee should be regarded as a big step forward given all the strength of the resistance from the guardians of the honor of uniforms and judges’ robes, who persistently attempted to prove the legality of Magnitskiy’s imprisonment and incarceration. It is a big step forward, but only the first step. Investigators are promising to call to account “other officials irrespective of the posts that they have held previously and currently.” The progress of the trial will demonstrate how possible this is given the current system of relations between the branches of power.
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Khodorkovsky verdict sheds light on justice system
Russians begin to take notice as oil tycoon is again found guilty. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed oil tycoon turned liberal martyr, was found guilty today of a second set of charges in a trial held up as a symbol of Russia’s compromised justice system.
The guilty verdict was widely expected but nonetheless provoked harsh condemnation from Russia’s marginalized opposition, international observers and Khodorkovsky’s family.
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