Posts Tagged ‘moscow times’
In Tit-for-Tat, Russia Wants to Blacklist Foreigners
With the United States considering sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the Foreign Ministry has turned to the State Duma with a blacklist of its own.
But instead of punishing other countries for human rights abuses against their own citizens, the ministry would blacklist foreigners deemed to have violated the rights of Russian citizens.
Under a bill submitted to the Duma on Tuesday, blacklisted foreigners would be barred from entering Russia, while their assets in Russian banks would be frozen and they would be banned from conducting business deals in Russia.
“This is our acceptable answer to the actions of the West, including the U.S. State Department, which drafts certain blacklists of Russia citizens,” said Igor Lebedev, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party’s faction in the Duma, Interfax reported.
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So, Do Theater and Politics Mix in Russia?
Jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsy and writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya came together rather like Plato and Socrates last week to discuss the state of the State of Russia.
No, this was not an unexpected event involving the actual individuals, it was an unexpected event involving actors — Alexei Yudnikov and Yevdokiya Germanova – who played them on a stage.
And, yes, it was unexpected.
There are few things Russian theater avoids with more dexterity and conviction than politics. It has almost always been this way. In the 19th century plays that pushed too far into political or social commentary were routinely banned. Even after the revolution there was just a short window of time, during which directors and writers used theater as a mouthpiece for sociopolitical topics. Those efforts quickly fell by the wayside or turned into propaganda.
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Investors to Gauge Climate at Forum
When corporate leaders from around the globe gather in St. Petersburg on Thursday for the International Economic Forum, they will be treated to a picture of the country as modern and investor-friendly.
Special features this year include morning yoga, a business regatta and an open-air performance from British pop legend Sting on the city’s Dvortsovaya Ploshchad on Thursday evening, according to the forum’s cultural program.
Yoga might be welcome by participants eager to understand what is being said between the lines.
The Indian meditation practice aimed at achieving spiritual tranquility is reportedly a favorite pastime of President Dmitry Medvedev, who will attend the forum Friday and Saturday.
It is Medvedev’s political future that vexes investors as political uncertainty mounts in the run-up to December’s State Duma elections and the question over whether his “tandem” with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will continue after the March 2011 presidential vote.
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NTV Gives Airtime to Magnitsky’s Fraud Claims
State-controlled NTV television has aired a lengthy report on the luxury lifestyles of officials implicated in the case of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky — two months after the story was first broken by Magnitsky’s supporters.
The 14-minute documentary, whose title roughly translates as “Fat Cats,” voices charges by Magnitsky’s supporters that Moscow police and tax service officials were involved in a 2007 scheme to embezzle $230 million in tax refunds originally intended for Hermitage.
“Fat Cats,” which aired late Monday, is based on series of exposés by Hermitage that claimed officials implicated in the case own assets worth millions of dollars that they could not afford on their salaries.
Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 after accusing officials in the $230 million fraud and died in pretrial detention of health problems 11 months later. His supporters say the case was fabricated as punishment for whistleblowing and that he was denied medical help.
While the allegations are not new, their appearance on national television is.
NTV in recent months has aired critical reports on now-ousted Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko that reflected what later became the government’s stance. In May, it aired a strikingly unbiased report on jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
But Magnitsky’s former boss, Jamison Firestone, suggested that NTV’s report on Magnitsky was part of a turf war at the tax service, not a signal of a looming crackdown on government officials linked to the case. Hermitage’s exposés were simply used by enemies of the officials involved in the case, he said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement. онлайн займы займы на карту срочно https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php buy over the counter medicines
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Medvedev Makes Court Comeback
Judging by the pre-election activities of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev recently, Putin is enjoying a firm lead. But Medvedev has staged a nice comeback in the past two months — mostly in Moscow courtrooms.
The first hint came in April, when two neo-Nazis, Nikita Tikhonov and Yevgenia Khasis, were given severe prison terms for killing human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.
On Sunday, state-controlled NTV television aired an amazingly balanced report on Khodorkovsky, giving him a nationwide platform to maintain his innocence and to announce his plans to file for parole.
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Swapping Jackson-Vanik for Magnitsky
Relations between Cold War-era foes Moscow and Washington have long been distrustful, hypocritical, peppered with mutual insinuations and patched together with the most tenuous of threads. But now, on the eve of State Duma and presidential elections, an inevitable crisis in relations is nearing that threatens to tear them apart at the seams.
Last week, a group of 15 U.S. senators formally introduced a bill targeting Russians for human rights violations and corruption, including 60 officials connected to the jail death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The bill would ban them from entering the United States and freeze any U.S.-based assets.
Chances are high that the bill will be passed. The sanctions against corrupt officials and criminals-cum-politicians could serve as a replacement for the Jackson-Vanik amendment that has long been in need of repeal. When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Russian opposition leaders during his visit to Moscow in March, he told us that support was growing on Capitol Hill for new sanctions against Russian crooks and thieves that could replace the old Cold War-era law.
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U.S. Senators Seek Magnitsky Sanctions
Fourteen U.S. senators have submitted a bipartisan bill that would sanction Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail and others guilty of human rights violations.
“While this bill bears Sergei Magnitsky’s name in honor of his sacrifice, the language addresses the overall issue of the erosion of the rule of law and human rights in Russia,” Senator Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat, said Thursday when he introduced the legislation in Washington, according to a transcript of his remarks.
The U.S. legislation, whose sponsors include Republican John McCain and independent Joseph Lieberman, would impose a visa ban and asset freeze on the 60 officials implicated in the Magnitsky case. They are from the Federal Security Service, the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Prison Service.
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Medvedev’s Big Presser Disappoints
President Dmitry Medvedev’s much-awaited first “big” news conference on Wednesday left hundreds of journalists and many pundits disappointed and confused.
With less than 10 months remaining before the 2012 presidential election, Medvedev shed no light on his plans. He didn’t even get asked about the election until a mind-boggling 15 minutes into the news conference — after taking questions that included one from an Avtoradio reporter about Moscow’s parking problems.
“Finally you asked the question,” Medvedev quipped when a Nezavisimaya Gazeta reporter asked whether he would run for a second term.
But to the noticeable disappointment of nearly everybody in the packed Skolkovo Business School hall, he dodged a direct answer, explaining instead that politics were governed by “certain technologies” that should be respected.
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Hermitage Addresses Top Prosecutors With Corruption Allegations
Hermitage Capital accused investigators of a political crackdown on its management, saying the officials ordered the fund’s head to arrive in Moscow from London for questioning in a mere 11 hours.
The interrogation is a clumsy attempt at creating a pretext for issuing an arrest warrant for Hermitage head William Browder, the fund said in a letter released online Monday.
Browder was banned from entering Russia in 2005 on unexplained “security grounds,” which means he could not travel to Moscow for questioning, said the letter, which is dated Sunday and addressed to top officials, including Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
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