Posts Tagged ‘litvinenko’
Russia warns Cameron to ‘get over’ the Litvinenko poisoning
The Kremlin has told David Cameron to abandon Britain’s “ideological obsessions” over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the dissident spy, if he wants relations with Russia to improve.
Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, issued the thinly veiled warning as Mr Cameron prepared to fly to Moscow today for the first visit by a British Prime Minister since Mr Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in London almost five years ago.
Mr Lavrov made clear that the Kremlin expected him to abandon the stance of the previous Labour Government, which imposed sanctions after Russia refused to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB officer accused of killing Mr Litvinenko in November 2006. Mr Lugovoy, now a member of Russia’s parliament, has denied any involvement in the crime.
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David Cameron urged to challenge Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev
David Cameron has been urged by four former foreign secretaries to challenge the Russian government on a number of issues during his visit to Moscow.
They want President Dmitry Medvedev to be confronted over a perceived failure to protect business against corruption.
In a Sunday Times letter, they also call for the PM to raise the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. The call is from Labour’s Margaret Beckett, David Miliband, Jack Straw and Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
The letter says hundreds of thousands of Russian businessmen are detained in jails after falling victim to corruption sanctioned by the authorities. They refer to these people as “victims of an increasingly potent mix of corruption and lawlessness”.
In their letter, the former foreign secretaries state: “The dangers of this corruption do not stop at Russia’s borders and Alexander Litvinenko’s murder shows the consequences of such lawlessness hitting British shores.
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David Cameron’s trip to the Kremlin must address the Sergei Magnitsky case
The Russian lawyer, employed by a British citizen, died in jail. The prime minister must join Washington in annnouncing a travel ban on those involved.
In diplomacy there is an unofficial statute of limitations on rows that poison state-to-state relations. November will see the fifth anniversary of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by Russian agents in London. David Cameron will certainly raise the case when he goes to Moscow for his first trip to the Kremlin but equally certainly will have to swallow the Russian dismissal of the crime. But he will find it less easy to swerve around the case of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer employed by a British citizen and his London-based investment company. Magnitsky exposed the biggest tax swindle in Russian history, and was put to death by Russian officials for his pains.
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London Rally: The True Faces of Russia
Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center
Where: London, UK; the South Bank near London Eye.
When: Monday, September 12th, 2011; 10 am
On September 12th, the day the Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, vists Russia, a political movement “Speak Up!” will hold a peaceful campaign, dedicated to his visit. Below is a press release from the organization announcing the protest:
If we could choose between free and fair rights of Russia’s citizens and improved international relations and Russia’s economy, we would undoubtedly go for freedom. And we are kindly asking the UK Prime Minister to consider this when making decisions about short term vs. strategic, long term mutual economic benefits between Russia and the UK.
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‘The British government must confront Russia over human rights abuses’
An influential British businessmen has accused David Cameron of going soft on Russia and of naively treating the Kremlin with kid gloves out of a misplaced fear of Moscow.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph on the eve of the Prime Minister’s historic visit to Russia tomorrow, William Browder, the founder of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management, said the British government had shied away from tackling Russia on human rights issues and claimed that the Kremlin was laughing at Mr Cameron behind his back.
“The government needs to be realistic about dealing with Russia. But it doesn’t seem to understand its major strength in dealing with Russian officials,” Mr Browder charged.
“If they think that making nice with the Russians will solve any problems, it won’t. The Russians just laugh at anyone who is approaching them from a position of weakness.”
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Mr Cameron goes to Moscow – finally and forlornly
The UK prime minister’s visit to Moscow also reveals much about the EU’s relationship with Russia.
David Cameron makes his first visit to Russia to meet his opposite number, Vladimir Putin, on 12 September.
While Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to Moscow when they arrived in power, the British prime minister has waited 16 months, preferring to travel to China, India, Turkey, the US and any number of EU capitals before going to Moscow. In fact, the closest Cameron has got to Russia was in 2008, when, as leader of the opposition, he went to Tbilisi just after the Russian invasion of Georgia to show solidarity with the Georgian people.
He arrives in Moscow with a long list of difficulties in UK-Russia relations. This may seem odd as Russia and the UK have no obvious geopolitical rivalries. London is home to Russian oligarchs who own Chelsea football club as well as two of the UK’s most important newspapers, the Independent and the Evening Standard. British private schools are full of the children of rich Russians who help keep the high-end London housing market flourishing.
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Bereaved sons and mothers urge Barroso to be brave with Putin
With Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the EU’s Jose Manuel Barroso to spend one hour in a man-to-man talk in Brussels on Thursday (24 February), close relatives of Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Magnitsky, Alexander Litvinenko and Mikhail Khodorkovsky told EUobserver what Mr Barroso should be asking.
Ilia Politkovsky, the son of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist shot in the head outside her home on Mr Putin’s birthday in 2006, wants to know why the crime has not been solved.
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Bugs, bribes and burglary: Tony Brenton discovered how far Russia’s rulers would go to keep power…
Should you get home to find the door to your flat unlocked from the inside, that’s just the FSB (the KGB’s successor) letting you know they called. If you pick up the phone to hear your voice played back, as I have, someone is recording your conversations.
Such was my life in Russia during my time as a senior official and then as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008.
Occasionally the surveillance and harassment were merely funny, such as when a female colleague spotted a handsome man three times in the course of the same day before realising this was the FSB trailing her.
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Lavrov in London
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting London this week, amid some talk of a “reset” in British relations with Russia. They have been in the deep freeze (or at least the cool box) since the murder in London in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian emigre who had become a British citizen. The investigation is still open and many in British officialdom are convinced that the murder came about with the active help of Russia’s FSB. Others think it is time to move on: if BP, Britain’s largest company, can snuggle up to Rosneft, Russia’s best-connected one, why can’t politicians be cordial and constructive too.
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