Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Why Has Moscow Passed a Bill to Ban U.S. Adoption of Russian Orphans?

Time Magazine

Passing a new bill in Russia has never presented much of a problem for President Vladimir Putin. With perpetual control of both houses of parliament and a couple of loyalist “opposition” parties to boot, legislation backed by Putin generally amounts to a Kremlin fiat. The hard part this week was in explaining his newest initiative to the public. Intended as a political strike against Washington, the bill does some shocking collateral damage. In effect, it will doom the chances of thousands of Russian orphans, many of them handicapped and emotionally scarred, from being adopted by families in the U.S. How do you justify that?

On Thursday, Putin tried to explain himself in front of a hall full of Russian and foreign journalists, many of whom were clearly outraged by the adoption bill passed the previous day. The first question asked Putin why he had made “the most destitute and helpless children into instruments of political battle.” The second was even more blunt, calling the bill “cannibalistic.” Live on Russian television, Putin mounted a strange defense: How could the journalists stand idly by while the U.S. “humiliates” Russia? “You think that’s normal?” Putin demanded. “What’s normal about being humiliated? You like that? What are you, a sadomasochist? The country will not be humiliated.”

The humiliation Putin had in mind was the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which was passed this month by a huge bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate. The act seeks to punish a group of Russian officials who have been implicated in the torture and death of a Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky. In 2008, Magnitsky discovered that a group of Russian officials had stolen $230 million from the Russian treasury. When he blew the whistle on their scheme, some of those same officials allegedly conspired to get him arrested, and he died in a prison cell a year later, having been reportedly beaten and denied medical treatment.

Three years since his death, all of his alleged tormentors are still free. Nearly all of them have either kept their government jobs or been promoted. As a last resort, Magnitsky’s friends and colleagues took their pleas for justice to Western capitals, and Washington has now banned the implicated officials from traveling to the U.S., owning property in the U.S., or holding U.S. bank accounts. Putin called the act “unfriendly” and pledged that it would get an “adequate” response from Russian lawmakers.