Alexei Navalny

Subterms

    Latest story

    188 Shares135 Views

    The Guardian view on attacks on lawyers: democracies must stand up for justice | Editorial

    by

    What the law says on paper is irrelevant if it cannot be upheld, or even stated clearly. That is why lawyers are targeted – with harassment, disbarment from the profession or even jail – by repressive regimes.Russia’s attempts to suppress the voice of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not end with his death in an Arctic prison colony. In a bleak coda, three of his lawyers have been jailed for several years. Vadim  Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organisation” for relaying his messages to the outside world.The Center for Human Rights in Iran warned earlier this year that Iranian lawyers were being kicked out of the profession, arrested and jailed for representing protesters and dissidents. As its executive director, Hadi Ghaemi, noted: “Every lawyer imprisoned or disbarred represents many defendants whose rights have been trampled and now lack legal defence.”In China, where more than 300 human rights lawyers who had dared to take on sensitive cases were detained in 2015’s “709” crackdown, the pressure continues. As a grim joke had it at the height of the campaign, “even lawyers’ lawyers need lawyers” – those who represented arrested friends were then seized themselves.The unrelenting nature of the clampdown is particularly striking when, as one Chinese lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, observed: “We know we can’t win.” When the verdict is clear before a case has started, lawyers can only offer solidarity, spread their clients’ stories, and highlight the gulf between legal theory and reality. But in doing so, they challenge the official narrative. Targeting these lawyers didn’t just signal that resistance only invites further trouble. It attacked the concept of the rule of law itself, which lawyers had attempted to assert, hammering home the message that the party’s power was unassailable.The Council of Europe warned earlier this month that there are increasing reports of harassment, threats and other attacks on the practice of law internationally. The human rights body has adopted the first international treaty aiming to protect the profession of lawyer. Member states should now ratify this. Lawyers must be defended, as they defend others and the concepts of rules and justice.That message is more important than ever as the Trump administration turns on lawyers and judges as part of its broader assault on the institutions of US democracy and the principles that underpin them. The sanctioning of staff at the international criminal court is only the most flagrant example. William R Bay, president of the American Bar Association, told members in a recent letter: “Government actions evidence a clear and disconcerting pattern. If a court issues a decision this administration does not agree with, the judge is targeted. If a lawyer represents parties in a dispute with the administration, or … represents parties the administration does not like, lawyers are targeted.” Government lawyers too have faced “personal attacks, intimidation, firings and demotions for simply fulfilling their professional responsibilities”.Democratic governments and civil society must speak up for the law wherever it is threatened. Mr Bay is right to urge those in the profession to stand up and be counted. “If we don’t speak now, when will we speak?” he asks. The law still counts – both materially and culturally – in the US. Those who practise it need some of the courage in resisting abuses that their counterparts have shown elsewhere.  More

    More stories

    • 238 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘I escaped one gulag only to end up in another’: Russian asylum seekers face Ice detention in the US

      by

      For most of the four years of Joe Biden was in office, citizens of Russia and other post-Soviet states seeking asylum in the US were generally released into the country while they awaited hearings on their claim in immigration court.But since last summer, many have been detained upon entering the US, and some of them have been held for more than a year, lawyers, activists and detainees say. Some children have been separated from their parents.“My Russian clients tell me, ‘Now our prison is 80% Russian, the remaining 20% are from rotating nationalities who stay for a while,’” said immigration attorney Julia Nikolaev, who has been advocating for detainees’ rights alongside representatives of the Russian opposition. “Only Russians and a few other post-Soviet nationals remain in detention until their final hearings.”Alexei Demin, a 62-year-old former naval officer from Moscow, was detained in July of last year.In the last 20 years, Demin rarely missed an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in the Russian capital. He had become concerned almost immediately after Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power, he said. For years, he criticized Putin’s regime on Facebook, and he was detained twice at protests. Still, he never imagined that he would end up fleeing his homeland for fear that Putin’s regime would imprison him. Or that he would end up imprisoned in the US.When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a colleague asked Demin why he wasn’t enlisting to fight. He replied: “If I go, it will be on Ukraine’s side.” Soon, as the crackdown on dissent in Russia intensified amid the war, Demin and his wife, like many others who had long openly opposed Putin, fled to the US to seek political asylum. For years, Russians have been among the top five nationalities granted asylum.The couple arrived in the US in the summer of 2024, after securing an appointment through CBP One, the app launched by the Biden administration (and since then shut down by Donald Trump) allowing asylum applicants to schedule to meet with immigration officials. At their appointment, Demin and his wife were detained, separated and sent to detention centers in different states. They haven’t seen each other since.His predicament, Demin said, was “a trap and a blatant injustice”.“This is how the US treats people who protest against Russia’s policies,” he said in a call from a detention center in Virginia in January.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) does not release public data on the number of people from post-Soviet countries it holds in detention. But Nikolaev said that law enforcement officials have privately acknowledged to her that asylum seekers from those countries are being held longer.Other activists say they have seen similar patterns. The non-profit Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR) has played an active role in assisting detainees in immigration detention centers, finding lawyers and working with the government officials.Dmitry Valuev, president of RADR, said it was an issue that affected not only Russians, but also citizens of several other post-Soviet countries.There have been reports that some immigrants arriving from post-Soviet states are facing increased scrutiny over fears they are connected to Islamist terrorist organizations. It’s unclear what prompted US authorities to keep the Russian asylum seekers in detention. One theory is that immigration officials are targeting Russians and other post-Soviet nationals as spies.Eric Rubin, former US ambassador to Bulgaria who also served as a deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow, said that the complicated history of US-Russia diplomacy can hurt Russian asylum applicants.“When you meet Russians in the United States, obviously you need to wonder whether some of them are actually working for Russian intelligence. Some of them are, most of them are not,” said Rubin.Nikolaev isn’t so sure. “Russian spies can enter the country with European passports, visas and all the right documents,” she said.Nikolaev in January took her concerns to US government officials, alongside Ilya Yashin, a leading Russian opposition figure. They met with officials at the national security council, who requested a list of separated families, Nikolaev said.The Department of Homeland Security, Ice and the national security council did not respond to repeated questions about detention policies or the specific cases outlined in this article.In a statement, the White House said that the duration of cases varies based on legal proceedings and any protections sought. The White House also said there had been “zero instances of children from any of the countries you mentioned being separated from their families by US immigration authorities in this entire fiscal year”.View image in fullscreenBut Galina Kaplunova, 26, an illustrator and anti-Putin activist, was detained and separated from her child and mother at the US border last August.In the summer of 2024, Kaplunova’s husband, a Kremlin supporter, had threatened to take her child away and report her to the police for her political activism, Kaplunova said. A native of St Petersburg, she had been detained multiple times at protests and had volunteered in opposition leaders’ campaign offices. Two days after her husband made the threat, Kaplunova, her four-year-old son and her mother fled to the US.At the US border with Mexico, Ice agents separated Kaplunova from her son, she said. He was placed in foster care, while she and her mother were sent to different detention centers in separate states.After being separated, her son was placed with a Mexican American family, she said. He didn’t speak English, so communicated with them through Google Translate.“I fled Russia so they wouldn’t take my child or jail me. But the US did,” she said.About two months after being detained and separated, Kaplunova was released and reunited with her son, she said. It was a miracle, she said.Now Kaplunova and her son now live in California. Her mother is still detained. Her son is afraid of being abandoned. Whenever she tries to discuss his time in foster care, he simply says he doesn’t remember it.“It’s as if he erased that part of his life so he wouldn’t have to remember it,” she said.He learned some English in foster care, but refuses to speak it with his mother.“Maybe he associates English with something bad, something negative,” she said.Valuev, the president of RADR, said that long periods of detention can hurt applicants’ asylum cases. Hiring a lawyer from within a detention center is nearly impossible due to the lack of internet access, he said. “Detainees are given a list of contacts, but most of these numbers don’t answer the phone,” he said.Additionally, many detainees have no access to materials for their asylum cases because their documents were stored on computers and phones that were confiscated.Vladislav Krasnov, a protest organizer and activist from Moscow, said he spent 444 days in a Louisiana detention center. Krasnov fled Russia in 2022 after Putin announced a draft. He crossed the border with the CBP One appointment and was swiftly detained. Now free, he is still waiting for a court hearing to review his asylum case.Reflecting on his experience, he said he was shocked by the welcome he got in the United States. “I escaped one gulag only to end up in another,” Krasnov said.He was also angry at Russian opposition leaders for not paying attention to his plight until recently.“Last summer, I watched Yulia Navalnaya hugging Biden in the Oval Office. Then she talked on the phone with [Kamala] Harris, and Harris declared that America supports people fighting for Russia’s freedom. To put it mildly, I had a complete breakdown at that moment, sitting in detention,” Krasnov said.About 300 detainees from Russia and other post-Soviet countries filed a lawsuit last November, calling their detention discriminatory, and demanding freedom for people they argue were held without a justification. A federal judge ruled in February that the court lacked the jurisdiction to review the detention policy and dismissed the case.View image in fullscreenAmong those mentioned in the lawsuit was Polina Guseva, a political activist and volunteer on the team of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Guseva arrived in the US in July 2024, applied for asylum and was sent to a detention center. She said Ice officers at the Louisiana detention facility where she’s being held “openly say that Russians are not being released”.Still, she does not regret coming to the US, she said, adding safety concerns in Russia left her with no other choice.“Two thoughts help me a lot. First, better to be here than to be raped with a dumbbell in a Russian prison,” Guseva said. “And second, my friend Daniil Kholodny is still in prison in Russia. He was the technical director of the Navalny Live YouTube channel. He was tried alongside Alexei Navalny in his last trial and sentenced to eight years. He has been imprisoned for more than two years now. If he can hold on, why shouldn’t I?”Alexei Demin, the former naval officer and longtime protester, was supposed to have his first asylum court hearing reviewing his asylum case in early February, but the hearing was rescheduled to mid-April because of the judge’s sickness. By that time, he will have been in detention for more than 300 days. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump acknowledges Navalny’s death days later, without mentioning Putin

      by

      Donald Trump has offered a belated acknowledgement of the purportedly sudden death of Alexei Navalny, three days after the Russian opposition leader collapsed in one of Russia’s penal colonies. But Trump failed to join with – or acknowledge – international outrage at Navalny’s political nemesis, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network. The former US president and presumptive Republican White House nominee added: “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”Trump’s statement, which turned a grave global political issue into one of significance to his agenda, comes one day after Nikki Haley – his lone remaining opponent in the Republican presidential primary – criticized him for avoiding substantial comment on Navalny’s death.“Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents – or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Haley said on Sunday on ABC News’ This Week. “Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.”Separately, minutes before his Truth Social post about Navalny on Monday, Haley had appeared on Fox News and said: “It is amazing to me how weak in the knees [Trump] is when it comes to Putin.”“He is yet to say anything about Navalny’s death, which – Putin murdered him,” Haley said.Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s presidency, joined other prominent American politicians, including Joe Biden, in condemning Putin for Navalny’s death.Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, on Monday accused Putin of killing her husband. She also accused Russian authorities of hiding his corpse and of waiting for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to disappear from his body.“I urge you to stand next to me,” Navalnaya said in comments directed to Russians generally. “I ask you to share the rage with me – rage, anger, hatred towards those who dared to kill our future.”But Trump, who frequently praised Putin during his single term in the White House, has largely elected to remain silent about Navalny’s death.Haley’s criticism of Trump’s approach to Navalny’s death comes as the former president leads her by 30 percentage points in polling ahead of the forthcoming Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, where she was once governor.At a recent campaign rally in that state, Trump claimed to have told the head of state “of a big country” while he was in the Oval Office that if the foreign leader’s nation did not meet its financial obligations to Nato, then Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” as far as Trump was concerned.The Republican US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Sunday said that he supported Trump’s call for fair contributions to the Nato alliance. “I want to have a system where if you don’t pay, you get kicked out,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut, Graham added, “No, I’m not inviting Russia to invade Ukraine,” as it did nearly two years ago.In his statement on Navalny, Trump identified only his personal political priorities and issues, alluding to the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border and his lies that he lost the 2020 election to Biden because of electoral fraud.He also referred to “unfair courtroom decisions” as he faces more than 90 pending criminal charges, including for subversion of the election that he lost to Biden. Trump additionally is grappling with how to pay civil judgments in excess of half a billion dollars after being adjudicated a business fraudster as well as being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming the magazine columnist E Jean Carroll.“WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!” he wrote in his post about Navalny.Despite his reluctance to dwell on Navalny, polls at the moment suggests Trump enjoys a slight advantage with the American electorate over Biden. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Nikki Haley condemns Trump for not commenting on Alexei Navalny death

      by

      Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley on Sunday criticized her party’s leading contender for the White House nomination, Donald Trump, for avoiding meaningful comment on the death of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned political nemesis of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.“Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents – or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Haley said Sunday on ABC News This Week. “Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.”The attack which Haley aimed at Trump with respect to Navalny came six days before her home state of South Carolina was scheduled to host its Republican presidential preference primary. With the rest of the Republican field having dropped out, polls show Haley, the ex-governor of South Carolina, trails the former president by more than 30 percentage points.Haley joined other prominent US politicos – including Democratic president Joe Biden – in blaming Putin for Navalny’s death Friday at a Russian penal colony. Trump, on the other hand, has declined to directly remark on the death of Navalny, which authorities reportedly explained to his mother as occurring from “sudden death syndrome”.The former president – who once appointed Haley to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations – has only pledged on social media to “bring peace, prosperity and stability” if he is given another term in the Oval Office.Haley on Sunday said that Trump’s response had not gone nearly far enough.“I think it’s important to stand with the Russian people who believe Navalny was really talking for them,” Haley told the host of This Week, Jonathan Karl. “I mean you look at this hero – he was fighting corruption, he was fighting what Putin does. And what did Putin do? He killed him just like he does all his political opponents. And I think that’s very telling.”Haley added that the 47-year-old Navalny’s death was an opportunity for political leaders in the US “to remind the American people that Vladimir Putin is not our friend”.“Vladimir Putin is not cool. This is not someone we want to associate with,” Haley said. “This is not someone we want to be friends with. This is not someone that we can trust.”Haley’s remarks alluded to how Trump – during his presidency from 2017 to 2021 – demonstrated favor and, arguably, subservience to Putin. They also came a little more than a week after Trump caused global alarm with a campaign speech in South Carolina during which he declared that he would encourage Russia to attack any Nato allies whom he considered to have not paid enough to maintain the alliance.The former UN ambassador on Sunday called Trump’s earlier Nato comments “bone chilling”.“All he did in that one moment was empower Putin,” Haley said.Throwing in a reference to Russia’s jailing of Wall Street reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges which the US have dismissed as bogus, Haley continued: “All [Trump] did in that one moment was he sided with a guy who kills his political opponents – he sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage.“And he sided with a guy who wanted to make a point to the Russian people: ‘Don’t challenge me in the next election, or this will happen to you, too.’”Haley said Americans needed to “start waking up to what this means”, and she called it essential for Ukraine to fend off the invasion Russia launched nearly two years earlier.Trump was entering the South Carolina primary under indictment on more than 90 criminal charges, including for trying to illegally nullify his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election. He is also faced with having to pay civil judgments in excess of half a billion dollars after being adjudicated a business fraudster as well as being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming magazine columnist E Jean Carroll.Nonetheless, polls at the moment show Trump enjoys a relatively slight advantage with the American electorate over Biden. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleads for more arms as frontline Ukrainian city falls

      by

      Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a desperate plea for fresh arms on Saturday as his army commanders announced that Ukrainian troops were pulling out of the key eastern city of Avdiivka, handing Moscow its first major military victory since last May, just days before the second anniversary of the Russian invasion.Ukraine’s leader told the Munich Security Conference that the slowing of weapons supplies was having a direct impact on the frontline and was forcing Ukraine to cede territory.“Keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war,” he said.The retreat from Avdiivka hands the initiative in the conflict to Vladimir Putin, a month before rubber-stamp elections that will hand him another six years in office, and a day after the death of the leading Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.Referring to the US Congress’s decision to call a two-week recess instead of voting on a $60bn military aid package, Zelenskiy warned that “dictators don’t go on vacation”.“Hatred knows no pause,” he said. “Enemy artillery is not silent due to procedural troubles. Warriors opposing the aggressor need sufficient strength.”Ukraine’s military announced in the early hours of Saturday that it was withdrawing forces from Avdiivka, a decision that has been regarded as inevitable for some time as Russian forces cut off the industrial city on three sides. “I decided to withdraw our units from the town and move to defence from more favourable lines in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen,” said the newly appointed army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi in a statement.Soldiers had raised concerns that Avdiivka could be “another Bakhmut” – the city that Ukraine defended fiercely last spring, but which ultimately fell after heavy losses.Soldiers involved in the retreat painted a chaotic picture of risky and terrifying withdrawal, in which they were sometimes forced to leave wounded behind. A top army commander wrote on the messaging service Telegram that “a certain number of Ukrainian servicemen” were taken prisoner during the retreat.Viktor Biliak, a soldier with the 110th Brigade, described earlier in the week how he and others had left a garrison in the south of Avdiivka. “There was zero visibility outside,” he wrote on Instagram. “It was just plain survival. A kilometre across a field. A group of blind cats led by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is littered with our corpses.”View image in fullscreenFewer than 1,000 civilians are left in the town, which was once home to 30,000 people and a sprawling coke plant. Close to the major city of Donetsk, which has been occupied since 2014, it has long been a fortified outpost, and has been the scene of intense fighting since October.Ukrainian forces are under pressure along the length of the frontline as the anniversary approaches on 24 February, and in Munich, the mood at the conference was darkened by Zelenskiy’s sombre warning that Ukraine will lose without more long-range weapons, drones and air support.The US Senate has approved a bill that allocates $60bn in new aid for the Ukrainian military. But it has been held up in the House of Representatives, which last week announced a sudden two-week recess. At a joint press conference with Zelenskiy, the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said that Washington “must be unwavering” and that “we cannot play political games”.Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said at a side meeting that everything depended on when Ukraine received further aid. “I am optimistic but the timing is critical,” he said. He was dubious that European aid, without sufficient US support, would be enough to prevent Ukraine ceding further territory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmong the politicians present, there was frustration not just with US isolationists, but with Europe’s failure to turn its promises of extra ammunition into a reality. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she did not understand why countries such as Germany and France that did have extra ammunition were not sending it to the frontline now. “The sense of urgency is simply not clear enough in our discussions,” she said. “We need to speed up and scale up.”Addressing Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, Zelenskiy said Putin was responsible. “Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader or anyone who seems like a target to him,” he said.On Friday, the Munich conference was rocked when Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, addressed the conference hours after reports of his death broke.Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said investigators in the city of Salekhard had refused to release Navalny’s body to his mother, who had arrived there on Saturday morning.Georgy Alburov, another ally, said that authorities wanted to prevent an independent autopsy by delaying the release of Navalny’s body.Prison authorities claim Navalny “fell unconscious” during a walk at the IK-3 prison in the Yamalo-Nenets region where he was serving a 19-year sentence widely seen as politically motivated.OVD-Info, a Russian NGO that monitors law enforcement, said that at least 359 people in 32 cities had been detained at vigils held in support of Navalny across Russia. Many had laid carnations at makeshift memorials under the eye of riot police. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden blames Putin for Navalny’s death as Republican ‘apologists’ condemned

      by

      Joe Biden put the blame for the reported death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Friday squarely on Vladimir Putin, as many US politicians condemned Putin but also reacted angrily to the silence of some Republican lawmakers.“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” the US president said from the White House.“What has happened and evolving is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target citizens of other countries, as we have seen in what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”Meanwhile some leading Republican politicians also decried Navalny’s death, while pointing the finger at some in their own party for appearing to appease the Russian leader.“There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin. RIP Alexey Navalny,” wrote the former vice-president Mike Pence on social media.Pence added: “Putin is a war criminal and only understands strength”, and urged Congress to “set aside the politics of the moment” and to pass legislation supporting aid to Ukraine.The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis also criticized Republicans who have expressed qualified sympathies for the Russian president.“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” Tillis said.“Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”Both men were apparently referring to members of the Republican party who have in recent weeks slowed the passage of a $60bn military aid package to Ukraine.Last week, the Republican senator Ron Johnson was apparently moved to vote against the aid after watching Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson. Johnson said that while Putin “is a war criminal [who is] obviously not telling you the whole truth”, his sit-down with the former Fox News host was “very interesting”, and that “an awful lot of what Vladimir Putin said was right … accurate and obvious”.Others, including the Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a House Freedom caucus member, have recently expressed open admiration for the Russian president.“Putin is a studied man of resolute spirit, and he always comes across as very sincere in his beliefs. You come away from a conversation with him thinking ‘I may not believe what he says, but I know he believes what he says,’” Higgins has said.In his address on Friday, Biden said that “history is watching the House of Representatives” and a “failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It will go down in the pages of history. It’s consequential, and the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”While none of the leaders immediately put out statements about Navalny, the Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who heads the foreign affairs committee, said: “If confirmed, the death of Alexei Navalny is a tragedy. He was a voice for a better Russia amid the corruption and brutality of Putin’s genocidal regime. The Kremlin must be held to account for this outrage.”Democratic leaders, for their part, expressed united outrage at Navalny’s death. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, called Navalny’s death in prison “a further sign of Putin’s brutality”.Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible, and we will have more to say on this later,” Harris said at the top of keynote remarks at the Munich Security Conference.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReports of Navalny’s death come days after the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, said the US would not defend Nato allies from Russian attack, a core principle of the alliance, if they did not meet their obligation to spend 2% of their national economic output on defense.On Friday, before the Navalny news, the Biden re-election campaign pushed out a fresh ad targeting Trump’s comments. “Trump wants to walk away from Nato. He’s even given Putin the green light to attack America’s allies,” it states, calling the former president’s rhetoric “shameful”, “weak” and “un-American”.Speaking at the White House, Biden took another swipe at Trump for his Nato comments, saying: “All of us should reject the dangerous statements made by the previous president that invited Russia to invade our Nato allies if they weren’t paying up.”Referring to Trump, Biden went on: “He said if an ally did not pay their dues, he encouraged Russia to, quote: ‘Do whatever the hell they want.’“I guess I should clear my mind a little bit and not say what I’m really thinking, but let me be clear – this is an outrageous thing for a [former] president to say. I can’t fathom it.“As long as I’m president, America stands by our sacred commitment to our Nato allies.”Trump did not mention the Navalny reports on Friday in their immediate aftermath, and instead posted a message about how he would save the Teamster union from the effects of immigration and another about the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley hit out at Trump for his past praise of the Russian leader.“Putin did this,” Haley wrote on Friday morning on X, in response to news of Navalny’s death in prison. “The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends. The same Trump who said: ‘In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.’”Biden, asked directly by a reporter at the White House whether Navalny’s death was an “assassination”, responded:“We don’t know exactly what happened but there’s no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Biden says Putin a 'worthy adversary' ahead of talks – video

      by

      Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents

      Biden says US-Russia relations at low point but ‘we’re not looking for conflict’
      Vladimir Putin refuses to guarantee Navalny will survive prison
      Joe Biden to use Nato summit to atone for damage of Trump years More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      Will the US and Russia Start Over?

      by

      It’s winter in Russia, which is not a season for the faint-hearted. The pandemic is still hitting the country hard, with the number of new COVID cases hovering around 20,000 a day, which has cumulatively put the country in the global top five in terms of infections.

      Under these inauspicious conditions, if you are brave enough to face down the cold and COVID to protest openly against the government of President Vladimir Putin, your reward may well be a trip to jail. If you’re very good at your job of protesting, you might win the grand prize of an attempt on your life.

      Yet, for the last two weeks, Russians have poured into the streets in the tens of thousands. Even in the Russian Far East, protesters turned out in Yakutsk (45 below zero) and Krasnoyarsk (22 below). Putin has predictably responded with force, throwing more than 5,000 people into jail.

      The US Will Need Turkey to Counter Russia

      READ MORE

      Media coverage of the Russian protests focus, not surprisingly, on Alexei Navalny. After recovering in Germany from an assassination attempt, the Russian opposition leader returned to Moscow on January 17. He was promptly arrested at the airport where his plane was rerouted. His close associates, who’d shown up at the original destination of his flight to welcome him home, were also detained. These arrests, and the government’s desire to lock Navalny away in prison for as long as possible, triggered the latest round of demonstrations throughout the country.

      Putin has ruled over Russia for more than two decades. Because of the constitutional changes he rammed through last year, he has effectively made himself leader for life. Will these latest protests make a dent in his carapace of power?

      Meanwhile, the US and Russian governments this week exhibited a modest form of engagement by extending the New START treaty on nuclear weapons for another five years. Despite this hopeful sign, no one expects anything close to a full reset of US–Russian relations during a Biden administration.

      But as Putin faces protests in the street and US President Joe Biden deals with recalcitrant Republicans in Congress, the US and Russia might at least avoid direct conflict with one another. More optimistically — and can you blame a boy for dreaming? — the two countries could perhaps find common cause against the global scourges of nuclear weapons, climate change and pandemics.

      Putin vs. Navalny

      Although they face each other across the Russian chessboard, Putin and Navalny share some basic attributes. They are both adept politicians who know the power of visuals, symbols and stories. They rely on the media to sustain their popularity, Putin using state-controlled media and Navalny exploiting social media.

      .custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      And they have both been willing to adjust their messages to grow their appeal among everyday Russians by turning to nationalism. Putin started out as a rather conventional Soviet bureaucrat, with a commitment to all of the ethnic groups within the Soviet Union. Even when he became the leader of Russia in 1999, he thought of himself as the head of a multiethnic country. Particularly after 2014 and the conflict with Ukraine, however, Putin began to make appeals to russky (ethnic) Russians rather than rossisky (civic) Russians. He has made the defense of ethnic Russians in surrounding regions — Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics — a priority for his administration.

      Navalny, meanwhile, started out as a rather conventional Russian liberal who joined the reformist party Yabloko. Liberalism, however, has never really appealed to a majority of Russians, and parties like Yabloko attracted few voters. Navalny began to promote some rather ugly xenophobic and chauvinistic messages. As Alexey Sakhnin writes in Jacobin:

      “He participated in the far-right Russian Marches, waged war on “illegal immigration,” and even launched campaign “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” directed against government subsidies to poor, ethnic minority-populated autonomous regions in the south of the country. It was a time when right-wing sentiments were widespread, and urban youth sympathized with ultra-right groups almost en masse. It seemed to Navalny that this wind would fill his sails — and partly, it worked.”

      Navalny used nationalism to wipe away any memories of his unpopular liberalism, but it was difficult to compete with Putin on that score. So, increasingly, the oppositionist focused on the corruption of the Putin regime, publishing exposes of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wealth and most recently a video tour of a huge palace on the Black Sea said to be the Russian president’s (which Putin denies).

      With these critiques of the ruling elite’s corruption, Navalny can bring tens of thousands of angry protesters, particularly young people, onto the streets. Unlike present-day Belarus or Ukraine 2014, the Russian protesters don’t represent the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens. Putin remains a relatively popular figure in Russia. Although his approval ratings have dropped from the 80% range that was common five years ago, they still hover around 70%. US presidents would be thrilled with those numbers. Approval of the Russian government is considerably less — around 50% — which suggests that Putin has successfully portrayed himself as somehow above everyday politics.

      Putin Is Worried

      Still, the Russian leader is worried. In his latest speech at the World Economic Forum, Putin spoke in apocalyptic terms of a deteriorating international situation. “The pandemic has exacerbated the problems and disbalances that have been accumulating,” he said. “International institutions are weakening, regional conflicts are multiplying, and the global security is degrading.”

      His comments on the global situation reflect more parochial concerns. Because of COVID-19, the Russian economy contracted by 4% in 2020. Although the government implemented various measures to cushion the impact, many Russians are suffering as a result of rising unemployment and falling production. The Russian economy depends a great deal on sales of oil and natural gas. Any further reduction in global trade — either because of the pandemic or tariff wars — would complicate Russia’s economic recovery and consequently undermine Putin’s political position.

      The immediate challenge comes from the parliamentary elections later this year. Putin’s United Russia party currently holds a comfortable majority in the Duma. The other two top parties are led by nationalists who are equally if not more fanatical — Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party. But a political force coalescing around a figure like Navalny could disrupt Putin’s balance of power.

      That’s why Navalny returned to Moscow. And that’s why the Russian court decided this week to lock Navalny away for more than two years — for violations of parole that required him to report to the authorities that tried to kill him. Navalny has taken an enormous risk, while Putin is taking no chances. The Russian leader has long deployed a preemptive strategy against any potential rival. Those who dare to oppose him have been killed (Boris Nemtsov), poisoned (Vladimir Kara-Murza), jailed (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) or forced into exile (Garry Kasparov).

      Embed from Getty Images

      Civil society is also under siege in Russia, with activists vulnerable to charges of being, basically, spies and saboteurs under a “foreign agent law.” Yet the environmental movement, the women’s movement, the LGBT community and others continue to protest against the country’s authoritarian system. And these protests are not just taking place in relatively liberal enclaves in the western part of the country like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Large-scale demonstrations took place at the end of 2020 in Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, over the arrest of the region’s independent-minded governor. While Navalny gets the press, civil society activists have quietly built up networks around the country that can turn people out onto the streets when necessary.

      Like all authoritarians, Putin uses “law and order” arguments to his advantage. Russians have a horror of anarchy and civil strife. They have long favored an “iron fist” approach to domestic politics, which helps explain the persistent, posthumous fondness for Joseph Stalin, who had a 70% approval rating in 2019. According to polling conducted last year, three in four Russians believe that the Soviet era was the best period of time for Russia, and it certainly wasn’t the dissident movement of that period that made them nostalgic.

      The protesters thus have to tread carefully to avoid losing popular support among a population fond of an iron fist but also deeply disgusted by the corruption, economic mismanagement and social inequality of the Putin era. The Russian opposition also has to grapple with the distinct possibility that getting rid of Putin will usher in someone even worse.

      US-Russia Relations: A New START?

      The extension of New START, the last nuclear arms control treaty in effect between Russia and the United States, is a spot of good news in an otherwise dismal outlook for relations between the two countries. Joe Biden has prided himself on his knowledge of and commitment to arms control. So, if the two countries can agree on terms of selective engagement, the next four years could be profitably taken up by a series of negotiations on military weaponry.

      New START merely establishes ceilings on nuclear warheads for both sides and addresses only strategic, not tactical, nukes. So, as Stephen Pifer argues, a follow-on treaty could establish a ceiling on all nuclear warheads, for instance at 2,500, which would cover battlefield nuclear weapons and result in at least a 50% cut in the arsenals of the two sides. Another option for bilateral negotiations would be to focus on limitations to missile defense or, at the very least, cooperation to protect against third-party missile attacks. A third option would be to focus on conventional weaponry and constraints on weapons sales.

      The Biden administration could even move more quickly with an announcement of a no-first-use policy of nuclear weapons — something Biden has supported in the past — and agreeing with Moscow to de-alert intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) much as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev de-alerted another leg of the nuclear triad, strategic bombers, back in 1991.

      This arms control agenda is only part of a larger potential program of selective engagement. The US and Russia could return to their coordination around the Iran nuclear deal. They could explore ways to cooperate on global challenges like climate change and pandemics. They could even start addressing together the harmful effects of economic globalization, a topic Putin brought up in his recent Davos speech.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To do so, however, the two countries will have to manage the numerous points of friction in their relationship. For one thing, they’ve gone head-to-head in various proxy battles — in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. Russia is legitimately furious that NATO expanded to its very doorstep, and the United States is legitimately concerned about Russian interventions in its “near abroad,” most recently in Ukraine. The US has lots of evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — not to mention Russian involvement in a coup attempt in Montenegro that same year and its meddling in the presidential election in Madagascar two years later — and Russia is pissed off at US “democracy promotion” in the Color Revolutions and within Russia itself. Russia is eager to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring natural gas to Germany, while the US is eager to sell its own gas to its European ally. Then there’s Russia’s penchant for assassinating Russians in other countries and repressing protestors at home.

      Any of these issues could scuttle cooperation between Moscow and Washington. One way of negotiating around this minefield is to delink the agendas of cooperation and conflict. Arms control advocates have a long history of doing just that by resisting calls to link other issues to arms control negotiations. Thus, the Iran nuclear deal focuses exclusively on the country’s nuclear program, not its missiles, not its relations with other countries in the region, not its human rights situation. The same lack of linkage has historically applied to all the arms control agreements between Washington and Moscow.

      This strategy of delinking doesn’t mean that these other issues are completely off the table. They are simply addressed at different tables.

      Those who desperately want a new cold war with Russia will not be happy with such a practical solution. They don’t want to talk with Putin about anything. As repugnant as I find the Russian leader, I have to acknowledge that he heads up an important global player and he has the support (for the time being at least) of much of his population. So, even as we challenge the Russian leadership’s conduct at home and abroad, we must also work with Moscow in the interests of global peace, prosperity and sustainability.

      Of course, there’s another word for all this: diplomacy.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More