Posts Tagged ‘obama’
Don’t Let Russia Use Iran as a Bargaining Chip
Several events in recent days indicate deepening ties between Iran and Russia. Last Monday, Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev paid an official two-day visit to Iran. Patrushev predictably held talks with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council head Saeed Jalili. In an effort to highlight warming relations between the two countries, he also met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi. The next day Salehi traveled to Moscow at the invitation of his Russian counterpart.
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Bill Browder: the man making Moscow squirm over the death of Sergei Magnitsky
Bill Browder is a man on a mission. “I want to change Russia and change human rights advocacy in Russia in a profound way,” the hedge fund millionaire says with almost messianic zeal, in his sparsely furnished offices in London’s Golden Square.
It is, safe to say, an unusual ambition for a successful financier with $1bn of assets under management. But Browder has had an unusual time of late.
Two years ago, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management discovered a new calling. The catalyst was the tragic death of a colleague, Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old tax lawyer and married father of two, at the hands of the Russian state. Until then, Browder’s activism had been limited to boardroom battles against corruption in Russia, where he had been the largest foreign portfolio investor with a track record for boosting shareholder returns by cleaning up companies.
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Diplomat Downplays U.S. Ban
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior diplomat said.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday.
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Russia says U.S. visa move won’t affect cooperation
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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Sergei Magnitsky: sanctions in the name of justice, Zoya Svetova
It is nearly two years since Sergei Magnitsky died a shocking death in Moscow’s Matrosskaya tishina prison. Since then, an imaginative campaign by friends and colleagues has kept his case in international spotlight. For Zoya Svetova, the recent decision by US authorities to impose visa sanctions against sixty Russian officials may prove the campaign’s most crucial success yet.
On 6 August, President Barack Obama signed an order imposing travel restrictions on some sixty Russian officials associated with the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky, who had been working for the Hermitage Capital investment fund, died in controversial circumstances in the Matrosskaya tishina detention centre on 16 November 2009. Compiled by US Democratic senator Benjamin Cardin approximately one year ago, the “Magnitsky list” includes prosecutors, judges, a Moscow police chief, tax inspectors, employees and doctors who were working in the Moscow detention centres where Magnitsky spent his final hours, and where he was condemned to an agonizing death without a corresponding sentence.
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Russia says U.S. visa move won’t affect cooperation
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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U.S. and Russia: Where’s the Reset?
When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, U.S.-Russian relations were strained and delicate. Arms control agreements had all but disintegrated and acrimonious conflict had largely displaced cooperation. Indeed several observers, including Mikhail Gorbachev, even went so far as to proclaim the emergence of a new Cold War.
Although this assessment may have been an overstatement, tensions between the two former superpowers were certainly running high, particularly during George W. Bush’s presidency. During Bush’s first term, for instance, the United States consistently worked to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, completely disregarding George H.W. Bush’s promise to Gorbachev that NATO would refrain from expanding eastward beyond a reunited Germany. With the U.S. decision to withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in June 2002, cooperation further deteriorated. The ABM treaty was commonly regarded as the foundation of Russia’s nuclear security. As both Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev have stated, the Kremlin felt “deceived and betrayed.”
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FEULNER: A malfunctioning ‘reset’
It has been two years now since President Obama heralded a new era in U.S.-Russian relations – a “reset,” as he put it. His plan was to “cooperate more effectively in areas of common interest.” He and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev were “committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past.”
Fast-forward to the present. Have things improved? Considering that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently called the United States a “parasite” on the global economy, and the State Department has put 64 Russian officials on a visa blacklist, it’s fair to say: not much.
The latest round of trouble springs from the case of the late Sergei Magnitsky, whose name is probably unfamiliar to many Americans. A lawyer for one of the largest Western hedge funds in Russia, Magnitsky in 2008 accused Russian officials of swindling $230 million in tax rebates. Even in post-Cold War Russia, it was a bold move.
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Statement on the US President’s Meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov
Statement by the Press Secretary on the President’s Meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov
President Obama met with Foreign Minister Lavrov today and discussed a range of bilateral and international issues. The President thanked the Foreign Minister for his efforts to complete a new bilateral agreement on visa liberalization as well as a new agreement on adoptions, both of which will touch many lives in Russia and the United States.
President Obama expressed his support for Russia’s efforts to mediate a political solution in Libya, emphasizing that the United States is prepared to support negotiations that lead to a democratic transition in Libya as long as Qadhafi steps aside. Both parties discussed the need to continue cooperation towards a peaceful transition in Sudan and South Sudan.
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