Posts Tagged ‘daily telegraph’
MP Denis MacShane warns against investing in Russia
A former minister for Europe has urged the Government to attach “health and safety” warnings to promotional material that encourages businesses to invest in Russia.
Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham, has written to Lord Green, the trade minister, in protest at a conference scheduled for today and sponsored by UK Trade & Investment that will promote Skolkovo, billed as Russia’s Silicon Valley.
Citing the damage caused to companies by “corrupt officials in Russia”, he wrote: “It seems irresponsible for British companies to be putting themselves in harm’s way without full disclosure about the tragedies that could befall them in Russia.
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Russia launches attack on Labour MP Denis MacShane
Russia has launched a highly unusual personal attack on Labour MP Denis MacShane, accusing him of deliberately trying to sabotage UK-Russia relations.
The Kremlin lashed out after the former Foreign Office minister organised a debate in the House of Commons on human rights in Russia during which he suggested that Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, should not be made welcome at the London Olympics this summer.
His stance angered the Russian embassy which issued a furious statement.
“The irresponsible attempts of certain parliamentarians to damage our bilateral relationship by taking advantage of real problems cannot but give grounds for serious concern,” the embassy said.
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Russians quiz Sergei Magnitsky’s mother
Russian authorities risk further controversy after calling the mother of dead whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky for questioning into his alleged criminality.
The highly unusual move comes after prosecutors refused to drop a posthumous tax investigation into the lawyer who died in custody two years ago. He was jailed after blowing the whistle on what he claimed was the biggest tax fraud in Russian history.
Mr Magnitsky was working for London-based investment fund Hermitage Capital Management when he made the allegations. Shortly after revealing the alleged tax scam, Mr Magnitsky was jailed and allegedly beaten. He died after being denied medical care. His case raised global concern about law and order in Russia.
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Dmitry Medvedev Facebook message against Russian protesters backfires
Dmitry Medvedev has been humiliated online after his Facebook page, in which he posted a message denouncing Saturday’s 50,000-strong rally in Moscow, was flooded by protesters criticising the Russian president.
The post, which came on the same day that the controversial head of the elections commission avoided an attempt to remove him, sparked disbelief and disgust and within two hours more than 3,500 people had posted comments, the vast majority overwhelmingly negative.
Mr Medvedev used the Facebook message to announce he had ordered an investigation into violations at the Russian parliamentary elections.
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Putin’s Assassination State
All states have their enemies. Just a few days ago, the United States succeeded in taking out Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior recruiter, propagandist and organizer for al-Qaeda, with a drone attack in Yemen. Earlier this year, U.S. forces flew into Pakistan to seek and destroy Osama bin Laden.
And this week, a leaked document shows that Vladimir Putin has been arranging for his own enemies to be assassinated. As Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports:
The Russian secret service authorised the “elimination” of individuals living overseas who were judged to be enemies of the state and ordered the creation of special units to conduct such operations, according to a document passed to The Daily Telegraph.
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Sergei Magnitsky’s mother demands Russian murder investigation
Russia has come under fresh pressure to investigate the high-profile prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who uncovered the biggest tax fraud in Russian history.
In a complaint lodged with prosecutors, the late man’s mother has alleged he was illegally arrested, tortured and murdered in a Moscow prison in November 2009.
Demanding that a fully fledged murder investigation be opened into a case that continues to damage Russia’s relations with the West, Natalia Magnitskaya said: “During the more than one and a half years that have passed since my son’s death I have learnt and reviewed information proving that a crime was committed against my son, and that his death came about as a result of premeditated violent actions.”
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Barack Obama’s UN speech goes from cutting to confused
Here’s a quick take on President Obama’s just-concluded address before the UN General Assembly:
1. There’s a reasonable chance he’ll have to give another speech reaffirming – sorry, “clarifying” – his commitment to a free and independent Palestine. In short, Barack barracked Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO’s heedless effort to unilaterally attain statehood via plebiscite. Obama, incensed that the Palestinians would go around him in this way after all the work he put into the “peace process,” stuck mainly to a US election-year script on the issue. GOP front-runner Rick Perry has accused this administration of selling-out Israel. So Obama tilted back: America has got an “unshakable” attachment to Israeli security (an old line); men, women and children in southern Israeli are being bombarded with thousands of rockets and mortars from terrorists in Gaza (true); Israeli adolescents grow up knowing that their counterparts in Arab countries are being taught to hate them (long true); and – in a nice little double-barreled blast aimed right between the narrowly spaced eyes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad- the Jewish state faces an existential threat to be “wiped off the map” and the Holocaust is a fact that cannot be denied.
One PLO representative in the audience was shown shaking his head “no” during some of this (contrast to Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s blinkless, Aztec-faced stare throughout.). The full statehood bid at the UN Security Council may be averted anyway in a last-minute compromise, as Adrian Blomfeld just reported.
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David Cameron’s trip to Russia: the message Moscow needs to hear
In his mission to rescue Anglo-Russian relations, David Cameron must insist on a radical clean-up in its economy, says Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador.
David Cameron today visits Moscow. This is not a routine item in his diary. No British prime minister has made a bilateral visit to Russia since 2005, and no Russian president has travelled to London since 2006. This has been an extraordinarily long gap in formal encounters between the leaders of two such significant countries.
The hiatus goes back to late 2006 and the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko. Russia refused to answer questions about apparent links of the FSB (Russia’s security agency) to the affair, or to extradite the suspected murderer. Relations accordingly went into the deep freeze. We shut off contacts with the FSB and expelled a number of Russian diplomats. The Russians retaliated with their own expulsions and put brutal pressure on our cultural arm, the British Council (in an act described by one observer as “like hitting a librarian”).
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‘The British government must confront Russia over human rights abuses’
An influential British businessmen has accused David Cameron of going soft on Russia and of naively treating the Kremlin with kid gloves out of a misplaced fear of Moscow.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph on the eve of the Prime Minister’s historic visit to Russia tomorrow, William Browder, the founder of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management, said the British government had shied away from tackling Russia on human rights issues and claimed that the Kremlin was laughing at Mr Cameron behind his back.
“The government needs to be realistic about dealing with Russia. But it doesn’t seem to understand its major strength in dealing with Russian officials,” Mr Browder charged.
“If they think that making nice with the Russians will solve any problems, it won’t. The Russians just laugh at anyone who is approaching them from a position of weakness.”
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