Posts Tagged ‘lukashevich’
US Magnitsky Bill Collides With New Russian Nationalism
Next week, the United States Senate is to take up the Magnitsky Act, a bill that would ban visas for, and freeze the bank accounts of, about 60 Russian officials believed to have been involved in the arrest and death of Sergei Magnitsky.
Reviled by Russian authorities, the legislation has become the touchstone in relations between the West and a newly nationalist Russia under Vladimir Putin.
Three years ago last week, Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian lawyer for an American investment fund, died in a Moscow jail cell. His defenders say he was jailed and killed for exposing the biggest tax fraud in modern Russian history. To this day, no one in Russia has been put on trial.
So last week, the US House of Representatives approved their version of the Magnitsky Act. The measure passed by 365 votes to 43, more than an 8-to-1 margin.
By the end of December, a version of the Magnitsky Act is expected to be signed by President Barack Obama.
Moscow responds
Not so fast, say Russian officials.
“If this is supported by the executive branch, Russia will not leave it unanswered,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters in Moscow. “We will have to respond – and our response will be tough.”
The spokesman said that approval of this “anti-Russian law” would “inevitably have a negative impact on the entire range of Russian-US relations.”
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House passes Russian trade deal, but Moscow isn’t happy
Ignoring threats of retaliation from Moscow, the House of Representatives passed a long-delayed trade deal with Russia on Friday, adding language aimed at cracking down on human rights abuses.
The agreement, a priority for President Barack Obama and business groups, would permanently normalize trade relations with Russia, allowing the United States to increase ties with a nation that boasts 140 million consumers.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, the House voted 365-43 to approve the bill. It now goes to the Senate, where final passage is expected.
As part of the deal, the House agreed to repeal a 1974 law authored by former Democratic Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington state that had restricted trade with the former Soviet Union because it wasn’t allowing Jews to emigrate.
Supporters said that was no longer an issue and it was time to normalize permanent trade relations with Russia. Currently, trade is allowed on a year-by-year basis if the president certifies that Russia is complying with the 1974 law.
“Today’s Russia is not yesterday’s Soviet Union,” said Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, who’s a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Russia Vows Retaliation If Magnitsky Bill Passes
The Foreign Ministry on Thursday responded to the advancement of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S. House of Representatives by issuing a warning of retaliation.
The bill, which seeks to punish Russian officials involved in the jail death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, is expected to come up for vote in the House on Friday.
Russia will get back at the United States if the bill becomes law, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
“We will have to react, and it will be a tough reaction,” he said, Interfax reported.
He did not specify what the government had in mind, saying only that Russia’s response would depend on the final content of the “unfriendly and provocative” legislation and cover the complete range of bilateral ties.
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Russia says USAID ousted for meddling in elections
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said that the U.S. Agency for International Development was being barred from operating in the country beginning Oct. 1 because it had meddled in elections.
The statement followed a State Department announcement the day before that USAID had been ordered out after operating in Russia for two decades.
The U.S. agency had strayed from “the declared goals of assisting the development of bilateral humanitarian cooperation,” Alexander Lukashevich, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website. “We are talking about attempts via distributing grants to influence political processes, including elections of various levels and civil society institutions.”
The government of President Vladimir Putin had previously accused Western governments of trying to influence the parliamentary elections in December and subsequent protests calling into question the results of that balloting and Putin’s own election in March.
One of the first victims of this week’s order will be Golos, an independent Russian organization whose monitors reported massive violations during the elections. The group was one of the key recipients of USAID grants.
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Russia says it will respond tit-for-tat to any British sanctions over lawyer’s prison death
Russia sternly warned Britain on Monday that it will respond tit-for-tat if London imposes any travel restrictions that would target Russian officials allegedly involved in the prison death of a Russian lawyer.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said that Moscow asked London about a Sunday Times report claiming that British authorities had compiled a list of 60 Russian officials who could be denied entry over their alleged involvement in Sergei Magnitsky’s death in November 2009.
“Obviously if London introduces any sanctions against Russian citizens Russia will respond appropriately in line with diplomatic practice,” Lukashevich said.
Magnitsky died in custody of untreated pancreatitis after being arrested by the same Russian government officials he had accused of corruption.
His case further tarnished Russia’s rights record and prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill in June targeting Russian officials involved in the case. The Kremlin has responded angrily to the American action and threatened to take countermeasures.
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Russia Vows to Avenge U.S. Visa Bans for Russian Officials
Russian will not leave U.S. “attempts to interfere in our domestic affairs” without response, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday, referring to visa sanctions imposed on Russian officials allegedly linked to the controversial death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow pretrial detention center.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry’s attention was drawn to statements by U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul that U.S. entry bans for some of our country’s officials in the contest of the Magnitsky case were in line with the [U.S.] administration’s policy in the human rights sphere,” Lukashevich said.
“We consider such presentation of a problem unacceptable as it runs against not only the character of Russian-U.S. relations, but also the universally accepted principle of presumption of innocence,” he added.
Moscow has “repeatedly warned that such attempts to interfere in our domestic affairs will not be left without response,” he said.
Magnitsky, an anti-corruption lawyer who worked with the Hermitage Capital investment fund, died in Moscow’s infamous Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center in November 2009, a year after he was arrested on tax evasion charges. Shortly before his arrest, he claimed to have uncovered a massive fraud in which Moscow tax and police officials had allegedly embezzled $230 million of budget funds.
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Canadian Parliament considers bill to create ‘Magnitsky blacklist’
RIA Novosti
The Canadian Parliament is considering a bill to make the so-called Magnitsky List, which blacklists persons allegedly linked to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky from entering Canada, the Parliament said on its website.
Magnitsky was arrested and jailed without trial in November 2008, and died in police custody a year later after being denied medical care. The 37-year-old lawyer was working for Hermitage Capital Management, a British-based investment fund, when he accused tax and police officials of carrying out a $230-million tax scam.
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Russia Will Bar Some U.S. Citizens in Retaliation
Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced Saturday that it confirmed a list of American citizens it will bar from entering Russia, in a retaliatory move against the United States’ adoption of the so-called Magnitsky list, which imposes sanctions on Russian officials who have been linked to the 2009 death of the whistleblower Sergei L. Magnitsky.
Russia’s new list includes United States officials who have been implicated in crimes against Russian citizens as well as other violations of human rights, said a spokesman, Aleksandr K. Lukashevich, in comments released Saturday. Mr. Lukashevich mentioned the torture of detainees, extralegal detention at Guantánamo Bay, and the killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan as possible focuses.
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In Eye for Eye, U.S. Citizens Banned
An unpleasant surprise might await the next White House or Pentagon official who decides to go sightseeing in Moscow or take a dip at Sochi’s beaches: no visa.
The Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that it has banned entry for unspecified senior U.S. officials, “mirroring” a ban imposed by the U.S. State Department on Russian officials linked to the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The ministry hinted that the blacklist tit-for-tat could endanger a U.S.-Russian reset in relations. But an independent analyst said Russia’s ban was largely ceremonial because Moscow, if it were serious, would have targeted U.S. businesspeople in Russia.
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