Posts Tagged ‘eli lake’
Good News! They Hate Me in Russia
Sergey Selyunin apparently thinks Madonna and John Kerry should be barred from Mother Russia, along with dozens more. I can’t believe I made the list! By Eli Lake.
In my career as a journalist, I have been fortunate enough to report from Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, India, China, and North Korea. I have never been to Russia, though. If a Russian blogger gets his way, I may never get the chance.
As of Thursday, I am an official enemy of Sergey Selyunin, the proprietor of a website devoted to listing what he considers official enemies of Russia. You know, like Madonna, Vanessa Redgrave, Hillary Clinton, and Eli Lake. Our photos, along with other politicians, activists, artists, and journalists from around the world, are on the site’s infinite scroll, each of us stamped with “pathological russophobe” in giant red lettering, in both English and Russian. Selyunin recommends that we all be barred from entering Mother Russia.
I found out about the list after Noah Shachtman, editor of Wired’s Danger Room, tweeted Tuesday how he was on the list along with my editor, Tina Brown, and New Yorker editor, David Remnick.
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Bill Browder: The Man Behind Russia’s Adoption Ban
Last month, when Vladimir Putin signed a law banning American citizens from adopting Russian children, it was widely seen as the latest indication that U.S.-Russian relations were spiraling downward. So who caused this turn of events? The obvious political figures certainly played their roles. But perhaps no one was more central to the unfolding drama than a businessman turned unlikely human-rights crusader named Bill Browder.
Browder’s grandfather, Earl Browder, had been general secretary of the American Communist Party, but his grandson spent most of his career in a very different pursuit: making money. Bill graduated from Stanford Business School the same year the Berlin Wall fell. “My grandfather was the biggest communist in America,” Browder recalls thinking at the time. “Now that the Berlin Wall has come down, I am going to be the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe.”
In 1996 Browder moved to Moscow and founded the Hermitage Fund, investing fortunes from America in newly privatized Russian companies like Gazprom. (Two years later he renounced his American citizenship and became a citizen of Britain.) At its peak, Hermitage was worth $4.5 billion. But Browder earned a reputation in this period as a “shareholder activist,” launching his own investigations into the shady dealings of Gazprom and other Russian companies—and angering the Kremlin in the process. He was expelled from Russia in 2005 and declared a threat to national security.
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Garry Kasparov: Right On, Angela Merkel
The German chancellor tussled with Putin over his human-rights record. Good for her, opposition leader Garry Kasparov tells Eli Lake—but the West must offer more than just talk.
Chess master and Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her denunciation of the Russian government’s human-rights record, but he said she must go further than public statements.
Kasparov provided a statement to The Daily Beast following an awkward public confrontation in Moscow between Merkel and Russian president Vladimir Putin in which Merkel singled out the Kremlin’s harsh sentence of two years in a labor camp for a member of the protest punk rock group Pussy Riot.
“Our friendship won’t be better, our economic cooperation won’t be better, if we sweep everything under the carpet and only say when we’re of a single opinion,” Merkel said to Putin on Friday.
Kasparov, who himself was arrested and beaten for protesting the trial of Pussy Riot, told The Daily Beast, “I am always happy to see a western leader bringing up human rights to Putin, especially to his face in Moscow. I was beginning to think the breed had gone extinct. Chancellor Merkel’s words are welcome, but unless they are followed by action they will be taken by Putin and his gang as just another sign that even when the West actually talks about repression it means nothing, and that it’s all still business as usual.”
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Obama’s Russia Reset a ‘Disaster’
Chess champ-turned-opposition leader Garry Kasparov tells Eli Lake the upcoming Russian elections will be a “charade” and Obama’s Russia policy is a “disaster.” And he spares no word for George W. Bush or Condi Rice, either.
Many democratic opposition figures in countries sliding toward authoritarianism see Western election monitors as a lifeline, a chance for a fair election that might be fixed if not for the watchful eye of outside observers. That’s not the case for Garry Kasparov, the iconic chess champion who has emerged as a public face of Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.
“We are asking Americans and Europeans not to send observers,” Kasparov said in an exclusive interview. “You understand Putin will get whatever he wants. What is the point of pretending this is an election? It’s a charade. Don’t interfere with it, just don’t pay respect to the charade.”
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Reset on the Ropes?
Earlier today, Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, deputy whip in the House, put out a statement signaling his support for the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act.
“As the Obama administration continues its efforts to ‘reset’ relations with Russia, the United States Congress can and must press for progress on democracy and rule of law in Russia,” said Congressman Peter Roskam. “Congress is considering legislation with bipartisan support that would impose targeted sanctions on Russian officials complicit in human rights and rule of law violations like the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working to uncover official corruption, and businessmen like Khodorkovsky. I plan to support such legislation and hope to see it become law.”
The Magnitsky Act, which has been introduced in the Senate by Democratic senator Ben Cardin with broad bipartisan support, including cosponsorship by leadership in both parties (Kyl and Durbin), has support from some of the usual suspects (Lieberman and McCain), and even some of the newest members (Blumenthal and Rubio). The bill would require the Obama administration to compile a list of officials and individuals in Russia who have been complicit in human rights and rule of law violations. Those who make the list would be blacklisted from entering the United States, and their assets and bank accounts in the United States would be frozen.
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No Entry: Will Congress take a tough line on human rights abusers in Russia?
In 2007, a Russian businessman named Oleg Derapaska applied for a multiple-entry visa to enter the United States. Derapaska certainly had some impressive credentials—he is one of the richest men in Russia, with a fortune of $10.7 billion as of 2010, which he made initially by cornering Russia’s aluminum market. He is well traveled, and is the owner of a £25 million home in the Belgravia neighborhood of London. The State Department nevertheless turned him down (though it did grant him a one-time entry visa in 2009). Derapaska’s visa troubles stemmed from allegations that he also has close ties to Russia’s mafia, according to the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets. Although he has been seeking the multiple-entry visa ever since—last year, the Russian foreign ministry even hired the Endeavor Group, the same lobbying firm that represents Angelina Jolie, to help secure him one—so far his efforts have been futile.
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