Media reports indicate that the White House is rethinking President Obama’s travel to Moscow in early September for a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin immediately before Russia hosts the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. Obama indeed should not go to meet with Putin, but the reasons for such a cancelation go well beyond those suggested by White House officials, namely the situation involving NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is seeking temporary asylum in Russia.
Even if Putin were to extradite Snowden to the United States tomorrow, President Obama should still not go to Moscow. He can send Vice President Biden to represent the United States at the G20. Don’t forget that a little more than a year ago, Putin canceled his visit to the United States at the last minute to attend the G8 meeting hosted by Obama and a bilateral meeting with the American President, supposedly because he had to finalize the composition of the Russian government. Obama even moved the G8 meeting to Camp David, away from the NATO summit in Chicago occurring a day later, so as to avoid any awkwardness for Putin, who was not invited to attend the NATO meeting. Putin’s pullout last year was seen by many as a snub of Obama and a sign of disrespect. This is not a reason Obama should return the favor, but it also should not be forgotten when deciding how to handle presidential travel plans for early September.
The real reasons President Obama should cancel his plans for Moscow revolve around the domestic situation in Russia, Putin’s positions on a number of key issues such as Syria and missile defense, and his endless demonization of the United States. Since returning to the Russian presidency in May 2012, Putin has launched the worst crackdown against human rights since the collapse of the USSR. The latest examples are the outrageous conviction of opposition leader Alexei Navalny on trumped-up embezzlement charges and the unprecedented posthumous conviction of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on tax evasion.
The Convictions of Navalny and Magnitsky
Navalny, 37, is a leading opposition figure whose exposés on government corruption have annoyed Putin and others, most recently the head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin. Navalny coined the phrase the “party of crooks and thieves” to aptly describe the ruling clique. Recently, Russian officials have opened several spurious investigations into Navalny, designed to publicly discredit him, and his conviction and five-year prison sentence on charges of stealing $500,000 from a timber firm in 2009, a case that was previously closed for lack of evidence, were clearly staged to derail his political career. Navalny is a formal candidate for the Moscow mayoral race in September and has indicated interest in running for president against Putin, whose term expires in 2018, right around the time Navalny’s jail term would end. During the proceedings, Judge Sergey Blinov rejected Navalny’s request to have any defense witnesses testify; in contrast, more than thirty witnesses for the prosecution were allowed to speak in court.
Navalny’s fate was sealed long ago, as demonstrated by Vladimir Markin, a spokesman of the Russian Investigative Committee, which launched the inquiries against Navalny. Markin told the newspaper Izvestia earlier this year: “The suspect is doing his best to draw attention to himself; one could even say he is teasing the authorities. So interest in his past grew, and the process of bringing him out in the open naturally sped up.” In other words, Markin acknowledged that the case is a show trial.
In a strange twist, after he was ordered straight to jail following the verdict, the prosecutors in the case, undoubtedly under orders from the Kremlin, requested that Navalny be released on bail pending his appeal to enable him to campaign in the Moscow mayoral election. His release the next day was due to a combination of factors: One may have been to placate the thousands of protestors who turned out in Moscow and other cities on the day of the verdict, spooking the authorities; another was to legitimize the Moscow mayoral elections by permitting his participation, after which, assuming his defeat, he would then be jailed. Despite the excitement stirred by his release, however, unless his guilty verdict is overturned on appeal—and Putin’s critics are rarely acquitted—Navalny would be disqualified from public office for good under Russian law.
Even uglier than the Navalny conviction was the conviction a week before of deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on absurd charges of tax evasion. The case against Magnitsky, who was the same age when he died as Navalny is now, is the first posthumous trial against a defendant in Russia; Magnitsky’s former client, William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital, was also found guilty. Interpol rejected in record time a Russian request for Browder’s arrest and extradition to Russia, dismissing his trial in absentia and conviction as “predominantly political in nature.”
In November 2009, Magntisky died in prison after being beaten and denied critical medical treatment while awaiting trial; a year before, he had exposed a $230 million fraud against Russian taxpayers but the very same officials whom he implicated charged Magnitsky instead. A working group in the Presidential Human Rights Council corroborated allegations that Magnitsky was denied medical treatment and tortured and yet the investigation into Magnitsky’s murder was closed without any person being held accountable for his death. Instead, remarkably, officials involved in Magnitsky’s murder were promoted and awarded. His posthumous trial, which requires consent of the remaining family, violated Russia’s own laws since the family opposed the proceeding.
Beyond the Navalny and Magnitsky convictions, in the past few months, hundreds of non-governmental organizations have been raided for not complying with the Soviet-like requirement to adopt the title of “foreign agent.” On occasions, camera crews from Kremlin-friendly NTV have joined the raids to capture material used to condemn these groups as foreign agents. More than a dozen Russians are in jail or under house arrest, awaiting trial for their alleged roles in the Bolotnaya Square protests last May. Two of them, Konstantin Lebedev and Maksim Luzyanin, have been sentenced to penal colonies for two and a half years and four and a half years, respectively, for their alleged roles. Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has languished in prison for nearly a decade, and a third case against him is reportedly being built by authorities. An opposition activist seeking asylum in Ukraine, Leonid Razvozzhayev, was kidnapped last October by Russian agents and tortured into a confession; he remains in jail on trumped-up charges. Russian security services are blatantly monitoring and following activists and opposition figures even outside of Russia, tactics reminiscent of the Soviet KGB. And Russian orphans were denied promising homes in the United States after the Russian parliament banned their adoption by U.S. citizens in response to passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act.
All of this adds up the following conclusion: Putin is a brutal, authoritarian leader overseeing an enormously corrupt regime that is seeking to re-instill the sense of fear among those who might challenge his grip on power. This should be the main reason for Obama to cancel his Moscow plans.
Then there are the huge differences over issues like missile defense and Syria. Putin has been supporting and arming Syria’s ruthless but like-minded dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the United States stands with the opposition. We are on diametrically opposite sides of this issue, with no prospect of narrowing our differences. Putin is determined to prevent Assad’s fall from power, fearing that news of a like-minded leader’s demise would reverberate throughout his own country. Putin prefers to align his country with the likes of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah. Russia’s missile transfer to Assad in the spring and deployment of ships off the Syrian coast underscore Putin’s desire to eliminate the possibility of a U.S.-led effort to intervene and to preserve the Russian base in Tartus. The actions also reflect Putin’s utter disdain for the United States, which he views as weak and needing him more than he needs it. Indeed, on an almost daily basis, Putin trashes the United States and describes it as a threat. Those, too, are reasons why President Obama should drop his bilat with Putin.
Avoiding a Repeat of the June 17 Joint Communique
Yet neither the stark differences over Syria nor concern about the human rights situation in Russia received even a passing mention the last time Obama and Putin met—June 17 on the margins of the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland. In their joint communique, Obama and Putin instead “reaffirm[ed] their readiness to intensify bilateral cooperation based on the principles of mutual respect, equality, and genuine respect for each other’s interests.” What exactly is it about Putin that we respect? The way he treats his own people? Nor are we equals in any area except perhaps the nuclear field. As for our “genuine respect for each other’s interests,” we should have zero respect for Putin’s support of Assad, his pressure on Russia’s neighbors, and his demonization of the United States. This June 17 communique was a downright embarrassment, and if Obama is unwilling to acknowledge stark differences with Putin when they meet in person, then it is better that he not go to Russia in September at all. As awkward and uncomfortable as the two leaders appeared in photos sitting together in Northern Ireland, what could we expect if Obama travels to Putin’s home turf? Why would the President want to put himself in that position?
The Snowden situation may be the final straw that would break Obama’s back but it shouldn’t be cited as the chief reason for canceling a summit with Putin. It is merely the latest evidence of Putin’s disdain for his American counterpart and for the U.S. in general and presents Putin with an opportunity—albeit one he didn’t seek out but that landed in his lap when Snowden showed up in Moscow weeks ago—to embarrass Obama.
More important and distressing has been Obama’s silence amid the worst human rights crackdown in Russia; this silence is deafening, demoralizing, and dangerous, for it feeds into Putin’s thinking that he can get away with human rights abuses and pay no price. The administration’s public and repeated rejection of the policy of linkage—saying that human rights problems will not affect the broader relationship—has sent Putin a green light to engage in egregious behavior. It’s past time to fix that mistake.
The Sochi Olympics
While he should cancel his meeting with Putin in September, President Obama should not go along with the suggestion of some in Congress calling for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics next February, similar to the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Instead of punishing our athletes by a boycott, the American president should stay far away during Putin’s moment of glory. Other Western leaders should do the same.
In 2012, European leaders refused to join their teams participating in the soccer championships hosted by Ukraine because of the ongoing imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. This sent a serious snub to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in what was otherwise a proud moment for the Ukrainian leader.
The situation in Russia is exponentially worse than that in Ukraine. Now Russia’s leading opposition figure is facing five years in prison, and a dead man has been convicted. Enough is enough of Putin’s bullying, thuggish and abusive behavior. Obama and other Western leaders have better interlocutors to meet with than Vladimir Putin. They should make other plans now, both for early September and again next February during the Winter Olympics.
