Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia’s casualties of the new Cold War

The Independent

“If we are slapped in the face, we must retaliate, otherwise they will keep on slapping us.” Thus spoke the Russian President Vladimir Putin, just before he signed into law the Dima Yakovlev bill, which bans the adoption of Russian orphans by US foster parents.

The American slap to which Mr Putin was responding was a new law that bans Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses from entering the US or having property there. Dubbed the Magnitsky act, the law primarily focuses on officials allegedly involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in a Moscow prison in 2009.

Furious at this perceived meddling in Russian internal affairs, Russia decided to go beyond a mere tit-for-tat response. As well as drawing its own reciprocal list of US officials to ban from Russia, the Kremlin went one step further and banned adoptions, a move which has become one of the most controversial pieces of legislation of Mr Putin’s 12-year tenure as Russia’s leader. Rather than a retaliatory slap, say a growing number of critics, the bill appears more like shooting oneself in the foot to prove a point.