Posts Tagged ‘Nemtsov’
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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US leans towards Medvedev
No US official has explicitly backed President Dmitry Medvedev for re-election in 2012, but US Vice President Joe Biden came within a hair’s breadth of giving Medvedev his endorsement in preference to Vladimir Putin in a series of blunt messages during his visit to Moscow last week.
Biden, who met with both the president and prime minister, reportedly suggested to a group of opposition leaders that Putin – who many believe still wields the reins of power after stepping down in 2008 – should not run for a third term.
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No more Western hugs for Russia’s rulers
This year started quite symbolically in Russia. In the last days of 2010, government authorities decided to demonstrate their power and their intolerance for being challenged: The verdict issued at the farcical trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev had no relation to jurisprudence; leading opposition figures were detained for as many as 15 days on purely political grounds.
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In Russia, seeing only repression
In Moscow Russia has set off on an ever more authoritarian path as it heads toward a presidential election next year, sending ominous signals to the already weakened opposition and confronting the United States and Europe with vexing new political challenges.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who positions himself as Prime Minister Vladmir Putin’s liberal alter ego, repeatedly assures the West that just the opposite is true. At the Davos World Economic Forum this week, he said Russia was fighting corruption, developing rule of law – if slowly – and becoming increasingly democratic. “Russian citizens believe they live in a democratic state,” he said.
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Russian Opposition Leader Urges Western Sanctions
A prominent Russian opposition leader urged the West on Monday to refuse entry to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his top lieutenants in reaction to what he described as repression of dissent.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov spoke after spending 15 days in jail over what he called fabricated charges following an anti-government rally. His Dec. 31 arrest drew outrage in the West and prompted Amnesty International to call him a prisoner of conscience.
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Nemtsov called on the EU to impose sanctions against Vladimir Putin
Leaders of Russian “non-systemic” opposition vowed to pursue the introduction of sanctions by Western countries against the concrete of the ruling circles, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Head of Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov.
The European Parliament is discussing possible sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and “the Khodorkovsky case, but while it was Putin and Surkov lists, according to unofficial data, there is, and the prospects of introducing sanctions themselves fairly vague.
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Russia’s Vacation from Justice
Russian officials have a selective approach to holidays. When it came to arresting opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on New Year’s Eve and sentencing him on January 2 (a Sunday), no effort was spared. Yet when it came to hearing his appeal, Tverskoy Court remembered that January 1 to 10 is a period of vacation. By law, an appeal against administrative arrest must be heard within 24 hours. The former deputy prime minister has been in detention since December 31, but his appeal has still not been reviewed due to “holidays.” The latest attempt to submit it to court, on January 8, ended with Mr. Nemtsov’s lawyer, Timur Onikov, being escorted out by bailiffs. On January 11, the appeal was admitted as a priority case — by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
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Russia’s repression – Putin’s Kremlin is reversing democratic progress
The new Congress was sworn in just last week, but events far away – in Russia – already are causing members to vent their ire. For one, Russian police detained Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Russian opposition, during a rally in defense of the freedom of assembly, on Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow on the last day of 2010.
Demonstrators called on Russian authorities to respect the constitution and demanded the resignation of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. More than 150 people were arrested in Moscow and at a similar rally in St. Petersburg. So much for freedom of assembly.
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White House Cowardice: Not a Word Spoken in Defense of Boris Nemtsov
The Russian opposition journalist — whom Obama has personally met — did not receive a word of support after his recent jailing for speaking against Putin. A remarkable statement appeared in the New York Times recently. It read: “The White House issued a statement condemning Mr. Nemtsov’s arrest.”
The statement was remarkable because it compressed so much dishonesty and inaccuracy into less than a dozen words. The link the paper posted was not to any page of the White House website but — of all things — a page from state-controlled Russian wire service ITAR-TASS.
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