Posts Tagged ‘putin’
Barroso-Putin tete-a-tete: three victims named
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso named three prominent victims of the Russian regime in a private conversation with the Russian leader in Brussels on Thursday (24 February).
Barroso spokesman Michael Karnitschnig said his boss called for “progress” on the cases of Sergei Magnitsky, Anna Politkovskaya and Mikhail Khodorkovsky during a tete-a-tete with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin which lasted at least 30 minutes and during which only the two men and their interpreters were in the room.
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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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Russian media tycoon Lebedev under pressure after Putin’s villa report
Ekho Moskvy Radio
Russian businessman Aleksandr Lebedev, who together with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev controls the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, has become under “unprecedented” pressure after the paper published reports according to which a villa is being built for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in southern Russia, editor in chief of The New Times magazine Yegveniya Albats said in the “Special opinion” programme of the Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Ekho Moskvy radio on 15 February.
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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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MEPs slam Kremlin for human rights abuses ahead of Putin visit
A few days ahead of the Russian government’s scheduled visit to Brussels to meet with the EU executive, members of the European Parliament have expressed its strong concern about what they consider the malfunctioning of the Kremlin’s systems of governance and justice. The Liberals even spoke in favour of imposing restrictive measures.
In its draft motion for a resolution on the rule of law in Russia, the ALDE group called on the member states to consider imposing “an EU entry ban” on some sixty Russian officials involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky. This Russian lawyer died in prison after he was held in prison for a year without charge. The Liberals also “encouraged” the EU’s law enforcement agencies to “cooperate” in freezing these officials’ bank accounts and other assets.
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Obama, Russia, and Trust
For years now, those who would defend the neo-Soviet regime of Vladimir Putin have been telling us that, come hell or high water, it was impossible for Russia to go back to the bad old days of the USSR. We just needed to give Russia time, we were told, and we would see progress.
That lie was laid in its coffin last weekend when Luke Harding of UK’s The Guardian newspaper, one of the world’s leading Russia correspondents, was barred entry to the country because of his reporting. In a scathing editorial, the paper condemned Russia, run by a proud KGB spy and having re-adopted the national anthem of the USSR, as well on the way back to the USSR.
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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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