Posts Tagged ‘sochi’
Bill Browder on Putin’s Russia
While the Winter Olympics in Sochi project a bright, white image, Bill Browder tells a darker story of theft, vengeance and death in a corrupt Russia
There is a darker side to the bright, white images of Russia that millions of Americans see coming from the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Bill Browder says he lived it and then had his life threatened as the victim of outrageous corruption perpetrated by the Russian government. Browder tells Scott Pelley this story of theft, vengeance and death for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
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Sochi Olympics: Remembering Sergei Magnitsky
Today, on the eve of the Sochi Olympics, over 200 writers from around the world — including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya — published an open letter condemning the Russian government’s attacks on free expression, and calling on Russia to create “an environment in which all citizens can experience the benefit of the free exchange of opinion.”
Regrettably, as the globe’s attention turns to Russia for a celebration of sport, the Russian reality is that Vladimir Putin’s administration persecutes sexual minorities, brutally suppresses political dissent, and supports Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, among other intolerable transgressions. All of these abuses rely on a culture of impunity and corruption, and the absence of the rule of law. As such, addressing these fundamental problems is essential to improving the human rights situation in Russia overall.
To that end, I recently chaired the inaugural meeting in Brussels of the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Inter-Parliamentary Group. While working in Moscow as a tax attorney for a London-based investment fund, Magnitsky uncovered widespread corruption, which involved senior officials from six Russian ministries and deprived Russian taxpayers of over $230 million. In 2008, he testified against those responsible, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned at their behest without bail or trial in Botkyrka, where Holocaust hero and honorary Canadian citizen Raoul Wallenberg was once held. Tortured in detention, Magnitsky refused to recant even as his health deteriorated, he was denied medical treatment, and, after excruciating suffering, he died in jail in November 2009 at the age of 37. Earlier this year, in a move that would make Kafka blush, Magnitsky was posthumously tried and convicted of the very crimes he had uncovered.
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U.S. relations with Russia face critical tests in 2014 as Putin, Obama fail to fulfill expectations
With mutual trust all but gone, the United States and Russia enter a new year full of challenges that will test whether the world’s nuclear giants can salvage their relationship.
The Winter Olympics, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the case of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, turmoil in Ukraine and Syria, and the uncharted consequences of the shale gas boom all threaten to bring new difficulties and irritants.
Things were supposed to be easier by now.
Five years ago this month, the Obama administration took office vowing to repair Washington’s tattered relations with Moscow. In a burst of optimism, it set about cultivating a productive relationship with Russia’s relatively new and seemingly forward-looking president, Dmitry Medvedev.
That plan hasn’t worked out. The White House hadn’t counted on the determination of Medvedev’s patron and successor, Vladimir Putin, to turn Russia sharply away from integration with the West.
Today, President Obama’s approach — the much-vaunted “reset’’ — has fizzled, unable to deliver on its promise to build new trust between the two countries.
What went wrong? After a 2013 in which the extent of the breach became clear, each country freely blames the other.
Moscow says Washington doesn’t heed its opinions — most recently about Ukraine — and violated the spirit of the new relationship by interfering in Russian politics. Washington denies that and points to a steady stream of anti-American pronouncements and actions by Putin’s government.
The White House insists that it hasn’t given up on Russia, but there is only so much time and attention it can devote to low-reward relationships. Putin, on the other hand, appears to discern a threat in nearly everything the United States does, and it is clear that the collapse of the reset has left little momentum for further cooperation.
The two countries do, in fact, continue to work together on Afghanistan, on space travel, on nuclear security and terrorism, to some extent on Iran and recently even on Syria. Yet there is no agenda on nuclear arms, or Europe’s future or Asia’s, or global energy policy or the Arctic.
U.S. officials were interviewed for this article on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly about the meager gains of the administration’s approach to Russia. They acknowledged the difficulty of the relationship but argued that engaging with Moscow is better than the alternative.
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Attacks reignite debate on Russia investments
Russia has long faced challenges assuring would-be investors about its stability relative to Western and Asian nations, or even among other emerging markets. Now a series of terrorist attacks could make that challenge worse.
Two bombing attacks over a 24-hour period this week killed at least 33 people and have heightened worries that Russia may face further strikes leading up to the Sochi Winter Olympics, scheduled to begin in early February.
Alexander Kliment, emerging markets analyst and director of Russia at Eurasia Group, said that the attacks, if they continue, are likely to negatively affect investor perceptions on Russia.
“A certain amount of volatility and violence has been the norm in the North Caucasus,” he said. “However, if we see sustained violence outside of North Caucasus—in ‘European Russia’—that could scare investors and have an adverse effect on funds’ decisions.”
The attacks raise bigger questions about stability in Russia and how much ability President Vladimir Putin really has to control such situations, Kliment said.
Russia already faces low stock valuations compared with other industrialized nations. Russian stocks typically trade at below six times earnings, making the country one of the cheapest emerging markets. The S&P trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.6 as of Tuesday.
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A Good Week for Some Political Prisoners in Russia… a Bad One for Russian Democracy
Last week was a good week for some political prisoners in Russia: Mikhail Kodhorkovsky and Pussy Rioters Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are free. It was a terrible week for Russian democracy, a proof that prison terms are handed out and cancelled not as a result of fair and open trials, as a result of the ruling by independent courts, but as a decision by its president, who rules as he feels fit. The timing of the amnesty smacks of old school: a major international event coming up [the Sochi Olympics], open the jails, suggest that there is humanism, disarm critics. Just like during Soviet times, before major talks. But have no doubt, Putin’s message is that its all happening because “I took the decision”, because ” I want it to happen”, and I could decide otherwise as I please.
Putin seemingly feels invulnerable. He did pull off some big stunts this year : Snowden (not his natural ally), Syria (by default). He is for sure proud of how he used the liberal New York Times to chastise the West. He looks down on Western leaders as weaklings. Mr.Putin mistakenly thinks that a temporary lack of strong leadership in the West is a sign of decline. He has no idea about the resilience of our societies, that our weak moment will pass, like the flu. He sells anti-western sentiments in Russia and the world, not admitting to himself that this rhetoric is way past its “sell by date”, and like relabeled, but bad perishable food perhaps quells hunger, but soon causes severe stomach ache. He surely knows, (it used to be his job to figure it out) that the west is no military threat to Russia. Of course he also knows, that the real threat to his everlasting position as president are the decaying economy, the spread of values of democracy and freedom, transparency and the rule of law, the apparent suffocating of creativity, freedom of speech and organization.
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International pressure works on Putin
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Putin’s own Cold War
Whose side is Vladimir Putin on? It’s a question worth asking, because of late the Kremlin has come closer and closer to the tipping point between obstreperousness and outright hostility towards the West. Last week Barack Obama cancelled a September summit with Putin after Russia offered asylum to the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. But in truth the Snowden affair is only the latest and most trivial of a long and growing list of issues where Russia and the US are on radically opposite sides.
Syria probably tops the list — at least in terms of urgency and human cost. Russia has offered diplomatic support to the Assad regime by using its veto on the UN Security Council to block sanctions and intervention. More seriously, Russia has become the arsenal of dictatorship, selling over $1.5 billion of arms to Assad since the start of the civil war. Last month Russia escalated its military aid still further after foreign minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that Kremlin would deliver S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Damascus — the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, visited Putin in May to beg him not to do that. Lavrov insists that only ‘defensive’ materiel is being supplied to the Syrians. But the S-300 missiles will change the balance of the war — for instance by substantially complicating any western effort to impose a no-fly zone.
For the first time in a generation Russia and Nato find themselves backing opposite sides in a proxy war. Last June a Turkish jet was shot down off the coast of Syria by a Russian-supplied Panshir M-1 missile — possibly, according to Russian press reports, targeted by one of the Russian advisers sent to install the missiles and train Syrian operators. More Russian personnel are due to come and install the S-300 systems. At the same time the Pentagon confirmed in June that US F-16 warplanes and Patriot anti-aircraft missiles would remain in Jordan after the end of a joint drill this month, fuelling speculation that Washington was preparing for a no-fly zone. There’s debate over just what the S-300s can do, and whether they can be installed soon enough to make a difference. But the moment when a Russian officer aims and fires a missile at a Nato pilot — which almost never happened during the real Cold War — is likely to become a reality.
The idea that Russia and the West are engaged in a ‘new Cold War’ was first floated six years ago in a brilliant book of that name by Economist correspondent Edward Lucas. Lucas argued that the Kremlin’s bullying of its neighbours by cutting off gas supplies, sending assassins to murder dissidents in London and invading Georgia constituted acts of war. By that logic, Russia’s subsequent behaviour — Syria, Snowden, banning Americans from adopting Russian children, shutting down USAID offices for alleged ‘subversive activity’, wild accusations that the US is fomenting a rebellion against the Kremlin — are more bellicose still.
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It’s Time to Call Out Russia
President Obama decided to cancel a one-on-one meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin next month.He canceled for a host of reasons, not the least of which is Russia’s decision to grant Edward Snowden asylum. Nevertheless, there is a rising chorus of foreign policy realists in Washington who are alarmed by the decision. They’re wrong — Russia has taken a turn for the worse, and it’s time for the President to issue more gestures of contempt.
When Barack Obama came into office in 2009, American relations with Russia were at a low point. George W. Bush began his first term saying he saw into Putin’s soul, but ended his second with a bitter disagreement over Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia after Georgian troops killed Russian soldiers in South Ossetia. The “reset” policy, which Obama hoped would restore or, at the very least, de-escalate tensions, has not worked out as well as its authors hoped (though it is often unfairly maligned — relations with Russia are still not as bad as they were at the end of 2008).
Even so, Obama and President Medvedev seemed to have a polite, if not warm rapport at first. But when Putin came back into the presidency in May of 2012, that began to change.
Actually, the change happened earlier, in December of 2011. That was when Putin’s party, United Russia, lost its supermajority in Russia’s parliament. The protests that resulted sparked an outpouring of state violence against otherwise peaceful marchers, all for the crime of opposing a return of Putin to lead Russia.
In the U.S., the crackdown led to an odd congruence of commentary: Both human rights groups and conservatives condemned Russia in equally strong terms (culminating in Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney calling Russia “our biggest geopolitical foe” in March of 2012).
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