Posts Tagged ‘will englund’
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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U.S. House to take up Russian rights bill as another graft case comes to light in Moscow
As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to take up legislation known as the Magnitsky bill this week, a newspaper reported Wednesday that a key figure in the Russian corruption case that inspired the measure is involved in a two-year-old criminal investigation.
Olga Stepanova was the head of a tax office that approved a fraudulent $230 million refund in 2007, a scheme revealed by whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky before he was arrested. He died in jail three years ago Friday. Now, the newspaper Vedomosti reports that criminal investigators have been following a separate tax-refund case — from 2009, worth $130 million — in which Stepanova was a principal actor.
The Vedomosti article was sparked by the burgeoning corruption cases that have made news here over the past few weeks. They began with an investigation in late October into Russia’s Defense Ministry that has claimed the job of one of President Vladimir Putin’s most loyal colleagues, Anatoly Serdyukov.
Stepanova worked for former defense minister Serdyukov when he was head of the tax agency, and she later transferred to work under him at the Defense Ministry. She no longer works there and has not been directly linked to the Defense Ministry scandal, which involves the sale of millions of dollars worth of property at rock-bottom prices.
Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst, suggested Wednesday that without Serdyukov’s protection, Stepanova may have been sacrificed in a last-ditch bid to mollify the West and perhaps even derail the House bill, which would put strict banking and visa sanctions on Russian officials associated with the Magnitsky case.
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Putin seeks to show he won’t buckle to U.S.
The Russian parliament intends to take up a bill Tuesday designed to hamper and frustrate civil society groups that accept money from abroad — which means, effectively, from the United States — in a move that is being portrayed as retaliation for the Magnitsky bill making its way through Congress.
The Russian legislation, which has the Kremlin’s backing, comes at a difficult moment in relations between Washington and Moscow, characterized by sharp disagreements over Syria and missile defense, and deep ambiguities concerning Iran. From the start, the Obama administration has tried to avoid linking one issue to another in its Russia policy — making trade agreements dependent on progress on human rights, for instance.
Indeed, the administration opposes the Magnitsky bill, which would bar from the United States those officials who were involved in the imprisonment and subsequent death of the whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. But the deepening bilateral strains place the White House’s compartmentalization at risk.
The key moment was Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in March elections.
“Deep down, Putin believes the West is an opponent,” said Georgy Mirsky, an expert on Russia’s Middle East policy. “Not an enemy; he doesn’t believe there will be American aggression against Russia, no. But he believes the West is always trying to find a weak spot in our armor, to enrich itself at our expense — and we must respond in kind.”
That explains Putin’s position on Syria, Mirsky said — and it would explain the new attack on nonprofit organizations. Putin has accused civil society groups of working at the behest of foreign powers and of trying to foment political upheaval. He accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of giving the go-ahead to anti-government demonstrations in Russia last winter.
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Magnitsky documentary suggests fraud, collusion between Russian officials, police detectives
By Kathy Lally and Will Englund
MOSCOW — Shortly before the Russian government was defrauded of $230 million in 2007, the officials who approved the whopping tax refund at the heart of the scheme traveled to a sunny Mediterranean resort with the police who would later investigate the theft.
This wasn’t their first trip abroad together, nor was it the first or last scheme that would be traced back to the same set of tax officials and police, along with a banker who handled the proceeds of the thefts. Their relationship, newly revealed in travel records provided to The Washington Post, illustrates a level of collusion at the heart of the Russian government that allows corruption to flourish despite repeated official promises to vanquish it.
The 2007 case, unveiled by a Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky, has become widely known. Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009 has prompted the U.S. Congress to take up a bill named in his honor that would impose sanctions on Russian officials connected to his death, freezing their assets and prohibiting visas.
Russian authorities have said the tax officials were tricked into approving a fraudulent return. The prospect of U.S. sanctions has infuriated the Russian government, which has vowed to retaliate if the law is passed.
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Russia warns of retaliation for U.S. Magnitsky bill
Russia is prepared to retaliate if the U.S. Congress passes the Magnitsky bill, which would freeze assets of and deny U.S. visas to Russian officials linked to human rights abuses, President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign adviser said Tuesday.
“We would very much like to avoid it,” Yuri Ushakov said. “But if this new anti-Russian law is adopted, then of course that demands measures in response.”
Ushakov’s comments came in an otherwise upbeat briefing on a meeting between Putin and President Obama set for June in Mexico. The Obama administration has been resisting the legislation, introduced by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), viewing it as too provocative, even as the State Department has acted on its own to refuse entry to Russian officials associated with the Magnitsky case.
But in a recent interview, Cardin said he was sure the bill would pass, adding that he thinks the administration is preparing to accept the legislation if it is paired with another bill granting Russia normal trade-relation status. That is required under the terms of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, one of the central achievements of Obama’s “reset” of relations with Moscow.
The administration has apparently realized that it cannot stop the Magnitsky bill and will have to deal with the anger of the Russian leadership. If Ushakov’s remarks were designed to encourage a presidential veto of the bill, they are unlikely to succeed, given the difficulty the White House would face in killing a human rights measure. It could come out of committee as early as next month, according to a congressional official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
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In Moscow, Biden gets specific on corruption
Vice President Biden heaped praise on Russia on Thursday, calling it a nation of great creativity, great culture and great engineering, but he said it would have to get its legal house in order if it expected to attract more foreign business and investment.
In a formal speech at Moscow State University, Biden mentioned two of Russia’s most notorious recent cases involving business and the courts – those of imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail cell in 2009 – and then said that “no amount of cheerleading” would lure back “wronged and nervous investors.”
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