Posts Tagged ‘wall street journal’
The Right Way to Sanction Russia
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate will hold a hearing to discuss the accession of Russia to the World Trade Organization and the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that impedes American trade relations with Russia. The Obama administration has portrayed it as little more than overdue Cold War housekeeping while touting the imagined economic benefits for American farmers that could result from freer trade with Russia.
But the reality on the ground in today’s authoritarian Russia is far more complex. We support the repeal, both as leaders of the pro-democracy opposition in Russia and as Russian citizens who want our nation to join the modern global economy. It is essential, however, to see the bigger picture of which Jackson-Vanik is a part.
The “election” of Vladimir Putin to the presidency is over, but the fight for democracy in Russia is just beginning. At both major opposition meetings following the fraudulent March 4 election, we publicly resolved that Mr. Putin is not the legitimate leader of Russia. The protests will not cease and we will continue to organize and prepare for a near future without Mr. Putin in the presidency. Getting rid of him and his cronies is a job for Russians, and we do not ask for foreign intervention. We do, however, ask that the U.S. and other leading nations of the Free World cease to provide democratic credentials to Mr. Putin. This is why symbols matter, and why Jackson-Vanik still matters.
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Our Friends the Russians: The State Department and John Kerry still believe in the ‘reset’
In its latest display of political retribution, the Kremlin is putting a human-rights lawyer and corruption whistleblower on trial for tax evasion. The notable news here is that Sergei Magnitsky died in police custody two years ago. His prosecution is a poke in the eye of the man’s family, the U.S. and the rule of law in Russia.
Magnitsky worked for an American law firm in Moscow whose clients included a Jewish rights group and the investment house Hermitage Capital. In 2008 he uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. The police promptly put him in prison, claiming he had helped Hermitage evade taxes. Eleven months later, he died.
A Russian government committee found that Magnitsky was beaten and denied treatment for pancreatitis and recommended that his prison doctors and interrogators be investigated. This didn’t happen. Instead, with the Kremlin’s blessing, the police last summer reopened the case against a dead man and have now announced plans for a trial.
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Browder (Once Again) Demands Answers Over Magnitsky Death
Another year at Davos, and another year for Bill Browder to pay the exorbitant delegate fee for the sole purpose of asking the Russian government when it will prosecute the people who killed his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
Once again, it was Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov in the awkward position of taking the question. And although the session was off-the-record (after a widely-viewed embarrassment on-the-record last year), we can say with confidence that there were no surprises in his answer. Mr. Browder certainly wasn’t impressed.
“The only answer can be that…the people who killed Sergei Magnitsky are prosecuted. If they’re not, any waffling and wobbling and excuses mean nothing to the world,” he said outside the room.
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The Russian Spring Has Begun
There is a remarkable consistency over the course of Russian history: Every authoritarian regime perished not because of destiny’s blows or enemy onslaught but because of internal disease. In the 20th century, it happened twice: the February Revolution of 1917 and Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika.
The slow-motion collapse of Vladimir Putin’s regime is no different. After more than a decade of authoritarian rule, Mr. Putin’s self-described “glorious deeds” have become the object of contempt not just on opposition websites but increasingly on the streets of Moscow and in the mainstream media.
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Russia’s Collision Course With Change
The protests in Russia this week put the government on notice that the rebellious mood on display in Sunday’s parliament elections could well go viral, a message that clearly has the Kremlin nervous. It responded with riot police, mass arrests, and dial-a-mob pro-Putin supporters.
Russians have had much to grumble about for as long as anyone can remember. Yet they have always tended to shake their heads, but not their fists, at injustices. If things seem more serious now it may be because the scale and brazenness of the lawlessness have stretched tolerance to the limits. Sunday’s parliamentary vote in Russia may not have changed the political landscape outright, but it revealed a lot about the growing desire in grass-roots Russia for political change.
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Russia Declares Litvinenko Murder Suspect a Victim
In a new twist of Cold War-style tit-for-tat accusations, Russia asserted Wednesday that Britain’s chief suspect in the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 was himself the target of a murder attempt with the same radioactive substance.
The declaration by Russia’s top investigative body, the Investigative Committee, is likely to deepen the diplomatic chill between Moscow and London, and widen the gulf between Russian and western law enforcement agencies.
Russian investigators have appeared recalcitrant in the Livtinenko case, and the government has refused to extradite the polonium suspect, Andrei Lugovoi, calling it a matter of national sovereignty.
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Senators Push to Keep 2 Russian Generals Out of U.S.
U.S. lawmakers are moving to block the planned visit to the U.S. of two Russian generals who they say helped cover up the murder of a Russian whistleblower in prison three years ago.
Their appeal in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ratchets up pressure on the Obama administration, which is defending a “reset” in relations with Moscow as a major foreign-policy accomplishment. Some in Congress have been calling for a tougher line toward Moscow.
The case of the dead whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, has been a source of friction in Russia-U.S. relations, and the Kremlin has bristled at a visa ban that the U.S. implemented on Russian officials linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s imprisonment and death.
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Russia Claims Longer List Of U.S. Personae Non Gratae
Russia vowed that its tally of undesirable Americans will be longer than the corresponding list of Russians whose travel was restricted by Washington after a investment fund’s lawyer died of untreated illnesses in a Moscow jail.
“Our list will be longer,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told local newswires Tuesday, later admitting that “the names won’t be disclosed.”
Moscow last week confirmed it had put U.S. officials on a visa blacklist, a move that coincided with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to former Soviet republics in central Asia. The U.S. State Department in July had announced its own restrictions, imposed as the Senate was considering not only a travel ban, but also the freezing of U.S. assets linked to 60 officials involved in a case that led to the death of 37-year-old Sergei Magnitsky.
The Russian officials on Senator Benjamin Cardin’s list, which doesn’t necessarily correspond to the State Department’s list, include judges, prosecutors, prison workers and other officials from the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry has indicated it may ban travel to Russia for Americans suspected of “wrongful acts against Russian nationals in the U.S.” or linked to what it called the murder of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and the detention of prisoners in Guantanamo.
Mr. Magnitsky died in 2009 after testifying in court that senior police officials took documents from an international investment fund, then used them to defraud the Russian government of tens of millions of dollars in tax refunds. Russian investigators said Mr. Magnitsky died of heart disease and hepatitis, and they recently opened probes into a doctor and prison official. Russia’s Foreign Ministry says the U.S. is “well aware of efforts by the Russian authorities to investigate” the lawyer’s death.
Although the Moscow-Washington spat could hurt President Barack Obama’s goal of “resetting” relations with Russia, the reciprocal travel bans, no matter how extensive they turn out to be, are unlikely to dent the tourism industry deeply in the two countries.
The U.S. Department of Commerce expects only 208,000 Russian travelers to visit the U.S. this year, about the same number expected from Ecuador. Meanwhile, Russia reported only 262,000 trips from U.S. citizens last year, about a third as many as from China or Lithuania. займ онлайн займы онлайн на карту срочно female wrestling https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php www.zp-pdl.com займ на карту срочно без отказа
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UK Bans 60 Officials Over Magnitsky Death
Are secret blacklists becoming a way to keep people out of a country?
The U.K. secretly banned 60 people implicated in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who died while in Russian custody in 2009 after alleging that senior police officials had defrauded the investment firm. Those same police officials arrested him for the crimes he accused them of committing.
Magnitsky has been hailed by activists as a martyr, and justice for his death has been a cause of William Browder, head of Hermitage, which was once the biggest portfolio investor in Russia. The U.K. move follows a similar visa ban imposed by the U.S. in July.
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