While condolences have poured into the Czech Republic from dozens of world leaders, neither Russian President Dmitri Medvedev nor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have extended any such sympathies.

On Sunday, US President Barak Obama praised Havel’s role in helping create a united Europe. French President Nikolai Sarkozy said that “Europe has lost one of its wise men,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Havel’s “dedication to freedom and democracy is as unforgotten as his great humanity.”

December 19 was designated a national day of mourning in the Czech Republic.

President Havel passed away on December 18 following a long battle with respiratory illness. Known for leading Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution and helping democratize the former Soviet republic, he has criticized the Russian government as “a specific combination of old stereo types and a new business-mafia environment.”

Commenting on the recent protests that have swept Russia following fraudulent elections on December 4, Havel opined in Novaya Gazeta that “There can be no talk of democracy as long as the leaders of the state insult the dignity of citizens, control the judiciary, the mass media and manipulate election results.”

Meanwhile, President Medvedev did extend his sympathies on Monday to the North Korean people on the death of leader Kim Jong Il.

“Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to Kim Jong Un following the death of Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Kim Jong Il,” read a press release on the Kremlin’s website.

Several days ago I spoke at a conference in Washington on the subject of the reset in relations between Russia and the US organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which traditionally represents the interests of the Republican Party. The fact that the main presenter was Speaker of the House of Representatives and Republican John Boehner shows how seriously the Republican Party is going to look at this issue during the upcoming electoral cycle. And there is nothing shocking about this. Every other foreign policy issue, whether it’s Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq, is linked in one way or another with the actions of the Bush administration, while the idea for the reset in relations with Russia and the bets that were hedged on Medvedev – or, more specifically, on a split within the tandem – was thought up and materialized by the Obama administration. Putin’s imminent return to the post of president makes obvious the failure of Obama’s attempt to support “liberal modernizers” in the Kremlin, which the Republicans will undoubtedly remind him of before the next election.

What was more unexpected was the attention this conference got within the Kremlin. As quickly as the next morning, Foreign Minister Lavrov advised the House speaker to use more traditional lines of communication with the current government and interparliamentary contacts. There were more than a few Russian journalists in the auditorium, who usually don’t indulge their attention in events like this that lack official status. The first question to presenters is always posed by the head of the Washington bureau of ITAR-TASS, Andrei Shitov. He did not entertain any particular notions of variety. I, for instance, was asked a question from the traditional Kremlin propaganda arsenal: why are the views of the opposition not popular among the Russian people? When asked my counter question – when is the last time he saw me on federal television – he shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t remember. Interestingly, this dialogue was preserved in the official ITAR-TASS report, where my presentation was noted in totally correct fashion. But two days later the news resource Infox released a piece of Kremlin agitprop about how bloodthirsty Kasparov is calling on the US to make war against Russia.

The Kremlin’s reaction is completely understandable, because the main stress of my presentation was on the need to pass a law on sanctions against particular Russian civil servants. This piece of legislation, already looked at by the Senate, proposes introducing sanctions against figures involved in the persecution and killing of Sergei Magnitsky, and could be expanded to include the list of those involved in persecuting the company Yukos and another bunch of high-ranking civil servants who have violated both Russian federal law and our country’s international obligations.

The Russian government reacted extremely severely to the threat to their financial interests – they warned the Americans of retaliatory measures that would include an end to transit to Afghanistan (the penetration of the Taliban into Central Asia, inevitable in the event of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, is fraught with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in this volatile region – a factor, of course, that is not remotely significant compared to the ability for Russian bureaucrats to purchase foreign property unhindered). As could be expected, the Obama administration, having made the reset in relations with Russia one of its primary foreign policy trump cards, is doing everything possible to keep this bill from passing. That’s why we have this secret list drawn up by the State Department that the Americans hastened to trumpet and which immediately received a rebuff from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which announced that a retaliatory Russian list will be worse than the American one.

It’s obvious that no secret lists are going to have any effect. The Putin regime is afraid most of all of the publicity of this issue. But the bill has a chance of being passed, as it is already supported by many prominent Republicans and Democrats. Paradoxically, the top-priority issue of the reset – having Russia accepted into the WTO as soon as possible – prevents the White House from disrupting the consideration of the Magnitsky Act in the US Senate. Completing negotiations over the WTO issue makes it necessary to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment, without with the US cannot ratify Russia’s entrance into this organization, and despite the anachronistic character of the amendment, which was adopted back in 1974, many senators and congressmen continue to see it as the singular link between the observance of human rights and bilateral relations. In such a situation, it is totally probable that there will be an exchange of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which prejudices the commercial interests of the entire country, for Bill S1039, which affects the concrete interests of unbridled civil servant thieves.

Leaders who have been stripped of democratic legitimacy know that their power is based on the absolute loyalty of their apparatus and on maintaining an image of toughness and invincibility. Putin’s inability to protect the interests of bureaucrats and oligarchs on such key issues like visas and foreign bank accounts will inevitably lead to a collapse of the entire system.

That is why the Kremlin feels that an attack on Putin’s clique is comparable to declaring war on Russia – an attempt to pass off the interests of Putin and his cronies as the interests of the entire country has become the de-facto cornerstone of all current Russian foreign policy. In all of my presentations abroad I have called on representatives of Western countries to learn to separate the interests of Putin’s oligarchy from those of the Russian people. At the conference in Washington I specially noted that banks, not tanks, need to be used in the battle against the Putin regime. A regime that grows on unlimited corruption and made control over financial flows the goal of its existence, vulnerable most of all precisely on the banking front.

P.S. The full text of my presentation was already published the day after the conference and anybody who wants to can read it and look for any calls to war against Russia. I also hope that the editors of the generally quite serious news resource Infox.Ru will soon find some translators and publish a retraction of Nikolai Petrov’s article “Kasparov Calls for War on Russia.”

Why Vladimir Putin Is Immune to the American Reset
A Talk by Garry Kasparov
October 25, 2011
The Heritage Foundation

Thank you for inviting me to attend this important event here at the Heritage Foundation today. My thanks to Speaker Boehner and all the other participants for their interest and their comments.

For a little introduction of myself, there’s one fact from my biography that is always omitted. Many here might not be aware that I myself am from the Deep South, right next to Georgia.

Of course, I’m referring to the Deep South of the Soviet Union! That’s my hometown of Baku, Azerbaijan, where I was born in 1963, next to what is now the Republic of Georgia.

Of course much has changed since then. There are no more Communists in the Republic of Georgia – much like there are no more Democrats in the state of Georgia. And Georgia is as good a place as any to begin my talk on the Putin regime’s immunity to America’s attempts at a reset. Georgia is currently under great pressure from the US and others to allow Russia to join the World Trade Organization, despite two large pieces of Georgian sovereign territory being occupied by Russian forces.

Many in the media and even some governments refer to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “disputed territories,” not occupied, ignoring the fact they were taken by military force. Often this is the same media that refers to parts of Palestine as “occupied” by Israel. Despite heavy pressure from Putin’s Russia, Georgia has remained staunchly pro-democratic and pro-western, and yet it appears that getting Russia into the WTO is of greater importance to this US administration that protecting the rights and territory of an ally.

Putin’s administration has been quick to boast of this success, celebrating how they kept Georgia and Ukraine out of NATO. WTO membership will be another feather in this cap. Putin is making no concessions on Georgia and so far, his belief that doing business with Russia will trump protecting Georgia seems well founded. Even when a series of terror bombings in Tbilisi were tied to Russian intelligence, Hillary Clinton only politely hinted at this atrocity, at least in public. This is just the sort of display of weakness, a fear of public confrontation, that feeds the sense of impunity that has empowered dictators throughout history. The American “reset” policy with Russia began right after the Russian-Georgian war, spitting on the deal negotiated by Sarkozy and giving a clear indication of the Obama administration’s priorities in the region.

I have no qualms about using that word, “dictator” when referring to Vladimir Putin, and nor should anyone else at this point. What has been clear to the Russian opposition for a decade should now be clear to any casual observer. Putin has no intention of ever giving up power. That Russia has these spectacles they call elections does not change anything. To make it clear, I have a picture here of a Russian polling station, updated again for the upcoming election.

You can see they keep updating the box on the left, while the one on the right never changes. Here in the US your elections have fixed rules and unpredictable results. In Russia we have unpredictable rules and fixed results!

No new political parties have been registered in Russia since 2004. Putin’s United Russia controls every step of the process: registration of parties, finances, campaigning, the media, and, of course, the counting. With every avenue of political opposition shut down, the regime has turned to closing off every form of public protest as well. In our marches, we are frequently outnumbered by riot police ten to one. Putin understands force, and makes an overwhelming show of force whenever he has the chance.

We are proud that all the force used in all of these protests was on the side of the police. We have been entirely peaceful, with not even a broken windows, no burned cars.

In Moscow and St. Petersburg in particular, the voice of the opposition is rarely if ever allowed at all in public. Last week, Medvedev spoke at the Moscow State University journalism department, the famous zhurfak. Except Medvedev did not speak to University students there. The 300 members of the audience had all been brought in from outside groups loyal to the Kremlin while the actual students were no allowed to attend. Three students, three brave girls, who did try to get into the event were detained. This sort of circus is very much along the lines of the return to Soviet methodologies mentioned by Speaker Boehner in his remarks. These policies are promoted both internally and externally.

And please don’t tell me about Putin’s supposed popularity in Russia as a way of diminishing his oppression of the Russian people. How do you know? Not long ago, Hosni Mubarak enjoyed 90% approval in last December’s elections. Qaddafi was probably near 100%! The high price of oil allows Putin to make payoffs and to increase the budget for internal security forces and propaganda, even while the economic infrastructure collapses. If you must do business with Putin’s Russia, that is business. But do not provide him with democratic credentials.

The systematic destruction of Russia’s nascent democracy by Putin has increased its pace in recent years. This acceleration took place as soon as Putin realized he would face no real opposition in the West, no matter how many journalists were killed, how many activists were jailed, how many times gas to Europe was shut off. Here in the West there is a tragic assumption that dictators follow the same political logic as exists in democracies. In return, Putin’s mentality has always been that democracy in the West is just another form of control, a successful model of keeping people in line. That is, he doesn’t believe it is really about the power of the people or representation, but that the object is to make people think they have a voice, which makes them easier to control.

And you know what? Putin now thinks he has been proven correct! Every time America and other western leaders betray their founding principles it confirms Putin’s belief that everything has a price, that everything is negotiable, that democracy and human rights are just chips on the table along with gas rights, trade treaties, and weapons agreements. Political freedom is for sale, just like the former German chancellor he hired to work for Gazprom, or the 10% of Facebook now owned by Russian oligarchs, or the New Jersey Nets.

Putin is happy to trade some small chips, things he doesn’t really care about, as long as he concedes nothing on the things that really matter to him and his allies. He gives you something in Afghanistan and maybe you do not complain about rigged elections. He gets what he wants, and he doesn’t have to worry about getting Congressional approval. (Not to give your administration any ideas.) Putin was a KGB lieutenant-colonel and you can view his regime’s history as a series of case files.

Most of you will be familiar with the famous cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his company Yukos. Eight years ago, on this very date, Yukos chairman Khodorkovsky was arrested and jailed. The richest man in Russia was sentenced to eight years, and would have been freed today had the Kremlin not decided to invent further charges against him in 2007, then this year finally sentencing him for another 12 years. In 2003 he was imprisoned for not paying taxes on the oil his company sold. This year, the charges were that he had stolen the oil he was arrested for not paying taxes on! Yukos was dismantled, its assets quickly sold off to Putin’s cronies, and the money cleaned with a western IPO. Now Exxon has been brought in to share the benefits in an Arctic exploration deal with Rosneft, the main protagonist in the looting of Yukos. And by the way, this troubling collusion of American companies does not end with oil. There are serious concerns that the Kremlin is pressuring Microsoft to hand over the encryption keys to their popular online communication service Skype. We in the opposition in Russia, and those resisting many other dictatorships around the world, rely on Skype for our only secure communications.

And you know Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen warlord who boasted of killing his first Russian soldier at the age of 15, now put in charge of the devastated region by Putin. Kadyrov’s agents have assassinated his enemies in other Russian cities as well as on foreign soil. It is hard to compare what Putin has done to the Russian Caucasus to anything else anywhere. He is not interested in attempting to better integrate these peoples, who are, after all, Russian citizens. Putin only wishes to ensure that the unrest does not affect the flow of money into the Kremlin.

And Operation: Reset, what a great KGB success! You thought it was an American plan, but that is why it has been so effective. You have been kept busy with working groups, summits, and other superficialities while Putin changes nothing. The most successful part of it has been Operation: Medvedev. It was a variation of the old Soviet game, letting the West think there is a chance of promoting moderates, of a rift in the hierarchy. Putin’s announcement that he would be reclaiming the presidency makes it clear it was always the trick many of us said it was, that Medvedev has never been anything more than a shadow.

But the US spent considerable time trying to strengthen the supposed Medvedev faction, dreaming about a split between Putin and Medvedev, fantasizing about liberal reform despite all evidence to the contrary. A very successful operation indeed.

The success of Putin’s Magnitsky operation is not yet guaranteed, and you here in this room have a say about its success or failure. The young Russian attorney, active against the Putin administration, died in police custody on November 16, 2009, just days before the one year he could be held without trial was due to expire. He had been tortured and denied visits and medical treatment. There was an impressively impassioned reaction to this horror both inside Russia and abroad. But two years later, we are seeing Russia’s success at watering down these responses on the international front.

There have been moves here to take steps that would actually have an impact on the Putin regime by banning visits from those officials complicit in the Magnitsky case, possibly extending it to the Yukos case as well. This is the sort of tough action that would actually have an impact on the vertical of power in Russia, as the low-level bureaucrats begin to feel that Putin might not be able to protect them and all the money they have stashed in the West. And this is the key. The Putin regime is best understood not in political terms, but in criminology terms. Not Kremlinology, criminology! The minions and the oligarchs are loyal to Putin because he is the capo di tutti capi and he offers them protection. They can commit any crimes they like in Russia, but as long as they stay loyal they can get rich and take their money to America, to London, wherever. This is why the possibility of a strong bill hitting such people caused such panic in the Kremlin. Top Putin fixer Vladislav Surkov even came here personally to threaten officials with reciprocity. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has promised Russia will make a ban list even longer than the Magnitsky list. Take these reactions as a good sign you are moving in the right direction!

Pushing back hard and setting a firm, even confrontational line, is the only message the Putin regime will respond to. They respect only strength. All this talk of engagement transforming Russia slowly has been disproven. 20 years ago it was expected that Russia would eventually embrace the manners of the West, but now it’s clear the opposite has happened. Countries dealing with Russia have conformed again and again to the corrupt practices institutionalized by Putin. As I said in my testimony on the Hill last June, the system is not corrupt; corruption IS the system. So if you are going to go after these guys, you have to use banks, not tanks. Hit them in their wallets, because that is what they care about.

Senate Bill 1039, titled the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act” would do exactly that, it is a bill that has the real teeth that Speaker Boehner referred to. Just one bureaucrat punished for his participation in crimes against human rights and the rule of law would have a huge ripple effect in Russia. Sadly, the State Department has attempted to preempt such tough action by issuing their own ‘secret’ list for a travel ban on select Russian officials. This should be seen for what it is, watering down a serious effort with a superficial one. The entire point must be to publicize the list, to name names, to confront the criminals and their crimes. Make it clear there are standards that will be defended. Resolution and openness are the best weapons against a mafia structure.

Jackson-Vanik is an obsolete structure, of course, but do not trivially discard it without putting something in its place that makes clear America’s commitment to human rights and its willingness to defend them. Senate 1039 is such a piece of legislation and I would urge everyone to make it a reality.

25 years ago, Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik and the last Soviet leader had an ambitious reset proposal. I remember this meeting well. Reagan refused the offer categorically, refused to make concessions to a system he understood to be evil, refused to compromise on principles where they mattered most.

How about this as a model for a reset with Putin’s Russia?

Stand up for your principles. Make a reset that supports the Russian people, not our oppressors. Make that distinction clear. As in 1987, resolve is required. You must never be afraid to confront dictators because strength is the only language they understand.

To remove a dangerous virus, a reset or a reboot is not enough. The entire system must be replaced, and that is what we hope to do. Thank you.

Question and Answer Session

- – -

Q: Thanks Garry for your presentation. I’m a Russian journalist here with TASS, my name is Andrei Sitov. I was listening to this and I thought – it’s a good speech. And what’s also good about it is it’s available in Russian. I mean, you can read all of this on the Internet in Russian. It’s available to the Russian public. The case has been made many times over the years. Yet, if and when we claim that the regime is not popular at all, it’s not true. If we claim that the opposition is more popular than the regime, it’s not true. So my question to you is about the democratic opposition. Why is it that the case that is made to the Russian public in their own language – why doesn’t it find the response that you’re probably hoping for? And you also said – and that’s my own answer to my question, in a way – when you finish your speech saying the entire system must be replaced – I think this is what the Russians are afraid of. That these guys want to come in again, do another revolution, uproot everything again, make life hard again. And they never showed that they can do better than even these guys. We did have a few moments when – you probably remember when – when [Former Prime Minister Sergei] Kiriyenko was appointed, they said -

A: I had nothing to do with Kiriyenko.

What?

I think the problem is, you know, I have nothing to do with Kiriyenko or anybody who was in power. I was never elected in any position through Russia. Never was a member of the parliament. And as for the availability of everything in Russian, can you tell the audience when the last time Garry Kasparov was interviewed by Russian television Channel One, Two, Three, or Four? Can you tell – you don’t know! Because your memory doesn’t go that far. Now, we are – I’m very happy – I remember when I was arrested in 2007. There was only one camera next to me, CNN. And of course I made comments during my arrest in English. Vladimir Putin paid attention to that, blaming me for complaining in English. I’m very happy to prove that my Russian is far superior to Putin, Medvedev, and all their cronies. Unfortunately, we cannot talk to them. Because they only participate in staged conferences as the one I mentioned. It was taken as a great shame even for many of Putin’s loyalists by detaining girls who wanted to – from the journalist faculty in Moscow State University – they just wanted to ask Medvedev a question which was not rehearsed. I don’t know how popular Mr. Putin is. I know in some regions his popularity goes to 109%, as we saw already in Chechnya or some other places where the rules of mathematics have been simply broken by the iron fist of Mr. Kadyrov or alike. I would be delighted to see the real results. The problem is, maybe you didn’t hear it – from 2004, no single political party, new party, was registered in Russia. Period. There were a number of attempts, not only by liberals, but also by the nationalists or by the left wing. No political party that is playing by Kremlin rules has a chance to go through the process of registration. So we have the same menu. It’s an old-fashioned Soviet menu and you should not be mistaken that there are seven parties instead of one, because they’re all part of the same puppet show. I think that Mr. Putin enjoys certain popularity in the country. There is no doubt about it. But in order to measure this, we have to make normal debates where we can talk about a number of things. For instance, I’d be happy to discuss – the fact is that one of the greatest records of my country during Putin’s rule was the number of billionaires on the Forbes list. And the speed with which Russian people, in fact, close friends of Mr. Putin, have been accumulating enormous wealth. For instance, Gennady Timchenko, known as a very close friend of Vladimir Putin since the late ’80s, he trades roughly 35-40% of the entire Russian oil even being a citizen of a foreign country. And there are many other interesting things that we would like to discuss. We just want to get this chance. Will the Russian democratic opposition, liberal forces, win the election? I don’t know. I think that what will happen in Russia if we have a free and fair election today – there will be a split parliament. Because Russians, they have no clear ideas about the future of our country. What they know is that they’ve been denied, constantly denied the voice to participate in the formation of their government. No doubt we will have maybe second round for the presidential elections, and one thing I’m confident – Mr. Putin, if he goes through the normal process of registration, probably will not survive his own test. Because he will be caught in lying in every statement that he’s making about his personal wealth, about his connections to other Russian oligarchs, and about certain dubious actions that he committed as being the leader of Russia for so long.

Q: I’m the spokesperson of the Confederation of Iranian Students. I have the honor of representing millions of young Iranian students who seek freedom and democracy in Iran and I just want to know if you have a message to those young people in Iran that are struggling for freedom and democracy today.

A: I have one message to people from Iran, Venezuela, and countries where dictators are prevailing temporarily. That while the dictators are working together – we can see Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and alike getting together and working frantically to extend their rules. We have to build relations to make sure that people who cherish freedom, they will be also having the chance to share the experience and work. And eventually I hope that Russia and Iran – not Putin and Ahmadinejad – will make friends in the future.

Q: Mr. Kasparov, a number of people have mentioned today that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is eight years in prison as of this very day. And you’ve been arrested at various times. Something that puzzles a lot of us – what is the mechanism, what is the formula by which the Putin regime decides who is going to be sitting in prison and who’s going to be allowed to speak and for how long? You’re speaking out here, what you’re saying is going to trouble some people in this regime. How do you know what happens when you go back home? What are the rules and how are they different from the Soviet era?

A: Now, as I pointed out, it’s no longer the Soviet Union. It’s more like in a very sophisticated mafia structure. And the success of a mafia boss depends very much on his ability to read the law enforcement officers. And Putin was very good in creating the psychological playground where he could outwit Western leaders. And I think that he understands that there are certain limits. And under no circumstance can he go into this open repressions, you know, Stalin-type, because unlike Stalin, he and his cronies – they keep money in the West. So that’s a trick that makes the whole equation very different. So when Western leaders keep asking the same questions – we don’t have any bargaining chips, how can we negotiate, because Putin has everything. Yes, he has gas, he has oil, he has aluminium, metals, timber – but the proceeds from these sales, they’re all in the western banks. And don’t tell me that FBI or MI-5 are not aware of all these bank accounts. If you want to get serious by pressing Putin and prevent him from selling nuclear technology to Iran or helping Chavez sell drugs to Mexico, hit them where they feel it. Just, you know, start investigating Abramovich. Or find out who is this mysterious third person in the infamous Hamburg company with Timchenko, a Swedish guy, and a certain name that is not known. So just start looking into what is really important for Putin. And just understand that Putin is always trying to find a silver lining. So he knows that there are certain cases where he must use force, and he does it. But at the end of the day, he doesn’t feel that it’s necessary to go all the way down to the very bottom by using brute force if it doesn’t bring results. I think he’s very good at measuring the balance. And the Khodorkovsky case was sort of a brilliant execution of his true intentions. And it sent a clear message to all our oligarchs: you should not pay taxes to the Russian treasury, you should deal with me. So that was the message. And they got it. So the Russian oligarchy is under full control, which was by the way was proven recently by the very short-lived political career of Mikhail Prokhorov. Who seemed to be an independent guy, because unlike many others he cashed in 2008 most of his fortune – I don’t know how much, but probably 80-90%, is elsewhere, not in Russia. Still, the moment not Putin, but Surkov just put pressure, Prokhorov was dissolved as a political entity. With all his billions of dollars, he knows that unless he plays by the rules, he might be in real trouble. So that’s what makes Putin unique. I mean, let’s give him credit. He’s very good in reading human psychology and creating an atmosphere where his plans can prevail.

Q: You mentioned Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Georgian occupied territories. I understand there is not an easy answer to that question, but I was wondering if you could give us your opinion, how do you see the ways of resolving this problem.

A: Abkhazia and South Ossetia should not be probably viewed separately from the overall problems of the Soviet borders. Because we had many conflicts, one was just as close – Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, Azerbaijan – and many other places where the Stalin-created borders – because we know that was Stalin’s land mine operation, where he just created borders that caused the future effects of putting nations or nationalities, different ethnic groups, one against another. I think that any attempt to change the borders was and still is very dangerous, because there’s no end. So unless there is a consensus, using force to change the Soviet borders – which I have to admit, some of them were not just. And many of these borders were wrong. But I mean, you have to start – you cannot start from scratch. You have to avoid what’s happening in ex-Yugoslavia, for instance. Some nations may not be happy about that. But like in Crimea. I wasn’t sure why Crimea was part of Ukraine, because I feel myself a Russian citizen, but at the end of the day, it’s happened. So it’s like looking for a lesser evil. Any attempt to reconsider leads to bloodshed. So Putin’s action against Georgia and takeover of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – in my view, actually, was not a demonstration, as many believe, of imperial powers. I think it’s – and I spoke about it – after Putin gained – I don’t want to use the word bought, but gained – rights to organize the Winter Olympics in the south tropical resort of Sochi, the war against Georgia was inevitable. Because if you look at the map…the Olympic Village in Sochi is located about five miles away from the official border with Georgia, the Abkhazian border. So there was no chance that Putin could afford to have the Olympic games so close to the Georgian territory. So annexation of Abkhazia – which I believe was the main purpose, North Ossetia and South Ossetia was a good pretext to do that – but Abkhazia was the main target. And he succeeded in building a very nice piece of real estate. Because for Putin, Sochi is like St. Petersburg for Peter the Great. Those he chose a very warm city in a better climate. And also, Abkhazia has been serving as the supply for all the construction materials. Because quickly, Putin’s engineers recognized that it would not be possible to bring a hundred million tons of construction materials from the north, because the landscape of the region is such that you have to spend tons of money just building the roads. So Abkhazia is important both politically and as a material factor to secure Putin’s dream project, Sochi. So if you look at the relations between Putin and Georgia, Ukraine, Belorussia, it’s not a classical imperialist approach, because he wants businesses of his friends to be successful. So for him, the difference between Saakashvili and Lukashenko is almost the same. Both are very tall. And the classical case I think is Ukraine, because you couldn’t imagine a more pro-Russian government in Ukraine than Yanukovych, a more pro-Russian leader. But at the end of the day, Putin is pressing Yanukovych and his oligarchs to share the industries they control. And even Yanukovych is resisting, because they understand it’s not about friendship. Putin doesn’t care about friendship or the restoration of the Soviet Union. For him, Gazprom and Rosneft are far more important. So that’s why I think that in the years to come, I don’t think – I think Putin will not use force anymore, because the Sochi Olympiad is too close. But we can see that now another Russian oligarch of Georgian origin is trying to enter Georgian politics. So we may see other attempts of Putin to take over control of Georgia, same way he’s trying to take control of Ukraine and Belorussia. Business. Nothing personal.

Q: I wanted to mention that Kadyrov is mentioned in the Magnitsky Act. It’s not very well-known, partly because of the name of the act, and I also wanted to ask you about the effects of the extremism law on Russian civil society and religious communities.

A: It’s an excellent question, because when people in this town, or in the West, hear the word “extremism,” they think about terrorists, you know, blowing up trains, planes, creating havoc among peaceful civilians. No, in Russia, the so-called E-Department of Extremism in Russia, which we called “E-stapo,” is aimed only – and I have to emphasize, only – at curbing the activities of the political opposition. And you can’t come up with any fact of political opposition groups being involved in some kind of violent activities. This is what we succeeded in preventing in any form and shape. And these guys who are working in this E-Department, they’re not even hiding their agenda. All they’ve been doing, you know, they’re filming the activists, they’re collecting the materials, they’re trying to disrupt our peaceful activities. And we don’t see any results of this extremism law on the North Caucasus. On the regions like Dagestan or Chechnya or Ingushetia, where every day, literally every day, we have reports of people being killed. So it seems that these officers find it far more comfortable to operate in the environment of Moscow or St. Petersburg rather than trying to fight terrorism – not extremism, terrorism – in the forests and the hills of Dagestan or Ingushetia.

Q: I think that in some ways in Gorbachev’s period was very successful, because the Soviet Union collapsed. And if you have mafia and corruption as a system, do you have a positive program on how to struggle with mafia and not to destroy the state?

A: I mean, your question contains an assumption that there is a state. Actually, we don’t have the state in Russia as people used to know elsewhere. Because it’s privatized. So it’s every segment of the state is in charge of people who are appointed by Putin. Do you believe that Chechnya is a part of Russia? Can you tell me that the Russian law can be applied to Chechen territory? Do you have any kind of accountability of billions of dollars syphoned to Kadyrov from Moscow? No. The same happens with ministries. So do you believe that there is any accountability on the federal level or on the regional level, where bureaucrats are given rights to benefit from the ministries or entities they are given just for temporary use? It’s more like a feudal system, with the center and regions and dues being paid to the centralized power. I don’t have even to come up with any numbers, so the best number comes from – what is his name, Medvedev. It’s just – when you want to look at the corruption, official numbers presented by Medvedev about corruption in the system of state procurement, the state orders – $35 billion. That’s what Medvedev said a year ago. We all believe the numbers are much higher. When you look at the Transparency International report, the actual size of the corruption in Russia is way over the entire budget of my country. But even if we deal with the number 35 billion, any case, any criminal case, open against these people – because in Russia all the orders are made in electronic form. So if Medvedev says $35 billion was stolen, I guess – they’re people, they’re not ghosts from Mars, they’re real people who are stealing this money and buying whatever, penthouses in Miami or a soccer club in London. But nothing happens. That’s a clear demonstration there’s no state in Russia. Because state assumes there’s certain measures taken. If, technically, the head of the executive in the country is coming out with such a strong statement, some actions must follow. No. So that’s my conclusion. We do not have a state, and all we should do is start this cleansing operation. Do I believe that we can succeed and this process will bring Russia back to normal? I’m not sure. It might be too late. But every day we’re losing makes the end of the Russian state inevitable. I’ve been saying it for many years. The survival of the Putin regime means the end of my country. So that’s why dismantling the Putin regime – and let me emphasize what we said – dismantling, demontazh, po-russki – dismantling, not ruining, dismantling, it’s like a cattle-engineering process. It’s the only chance for Russia to survive. It might be too late, because we have problems on the east side, where China is gradually grabbing territories. The popular joke in Irkutsk, for instance – the Chinese are crossing our borders in small groups of one hundred thousand each. With the boiling temperature in the North Caucasus, I don’t know whether we can succeed. But we have to try. Because the continuation of this rule means that the country will be wiped out from the map.

According to movement member Sergei Ageyev, ten environmentalists held an “exchange of information” with Posner at the house of activist Konstantin Fetisov in the outer-Moscow village of Gavrilkovo.

During the discussion, the movement’s leader, Yevgenia Chirikova, told Posner about their work to save the forest from a dubious highway construction project, and also brought to his attention attacks on activsts – including Fetisov – and multiple other human rights abuses by members of the project’s private security forces.

Chirikova made particular note that French contractor Vinci, party to the UN agreement on principles of business conduct, is involved in the project. Correspondingly, she said, the company is violating the UN agreement by taking part in a construction project that has involved multiple human rights violations.

In sum, Chirikova told Posner that the highway was an international project “that, by the way, is violating human rights,” and that the US should “react” to everything that happens around the Khimki Forest because Russia is a country that is “struggling for human rights and democracy.”

As part of his visit to Russia, Posner spoke on Ekho Moskvy Radion on October 12 and noted that the US generally blocks entry through its borders to anyone involved in demonstrated human rights abuses.

Days after the United States State Department blacklisted a group of Russian officials involved in perpetrating the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the “reset” in relations between Russia and the US appears to be on the verge of faltering – despite general sentiments of improvement.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

The White House touts its “reset” policy toward Russia as one of its key diplomatic successes. But the Russian authorities were caught off-guard when Washington quietly barred some of their officials from traveling to the United States this week, a move that threatens to undo some of the gains Washington has made boosting ties with Moscow.

The State Department blacklist targets those connected to a scandal that’s drawn widespread international condemnation: the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer jailed in 2009 after accusing police of bilking the government of more than $200 million. A report commissioned by President Dmitry Medvedev himself concluded Magnitsky was denied medical care and probably severely beaten before he died.

Magnitsky’s supporters have been lobbying Western countries to ban Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s death.

But speaking on a talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio, Leonid Slutsky, first deputy chairman of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said he couldn’t believe the United States went ahead and did it, adding the information could have been made up as a provocation to harm ties.

The Kremlin soon reacted more strongly. Medvedev’s spokeswoman told the “Kommersant” newspaper the president was preparing retaliatory steps. “We were bewildered by the State Department’s action,” she said, adding that nothing like it happened “even in the deepest years of the Cold War.”

Ironically, the blacklist appears to have been intended to head off an effort to impose even stronger sanctions. A group of U.S. senators is sponsoring a bill that would include more Russian officials, freezing their U.S. assets in addition to denying them visas.

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal “Russia in Global Affairs,” said the nuance seems to have been lost on Russian officials. “Everybody expected the U.S. Senate to act,” he said, “but the preventive or preemptive measure by the State Department was quite unexpected.”

Other signs of fraying ties emerged this week. Senator Jon Kyl (Republican, Arizona) has called for more investigation into a recent bomb blast outside the U.S. Embassy in Georgia that U.S. intelligence officials say may have been linked to a Russian agent. In Brussels on July 28, the Russian ambassador to NATO dredged up old complaints about plans for a U.S. missile-defense shield in Europe.

While relations between the two sides often appear precarious, the latest developments mark the biggest challenge to President Barack Obama’s Russia “reset.” The White House says its policy has delivered major gains for U.S. national security, including Russian cooperation over Afghanistan — for which Moscow is well-paid — help over sanctions against Iran, and the signing of the new START nuclear-arms treaty.

Another sea change has been much less visible. Under Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, cooperation between diplomats on various levels all but ended in favor of a direct dialogue between presidents. Much was made of their personal relationship, but when Bush left office, relations stood at Cold War lows.

The bureaucratic ties have since been restored. Russian diplomats say collaboration with their U.S. counterparts is even better now than in the relatively friendly 1990s. If decisions at top levels once took many weeks to implement, now agreements such as a recent deal over U.S. adoptions of Russian children can be put in place more quickly.

But top Russian officials threatened to curtail cooperation on Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea over the Senate’s Magnitsky bill, according to a leaked State Department memo that first made the blacklist public on July 26.

Although the memo argued against stronger measures, political expert Andrei Piontkovsky said he thinks the Russian threats may have had the opposite of their intended effect. “My reading of this development is that people at the very top,” he said, “maybe the president himself, were shocked by such [direct] language and decided not to submit to blackmail.”

Observers said that although the memo was probably leaked to show the White House to be keen on protecting relations, the blacklist was nevertheless evidence of a significant change in Washington.

Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Center said it poses a challenge to the Russian leadership, shown to be unable to protect loyal officials from punishment abroad. “By now it’s well known denying visas to Russian officials is a sensitive spot that could potentially expand to other countries, to Europe,” she said, “which may be more important to Russian officials.”

The blacklist has been praised by Russian human rights activists and other critics who worry Washington has sacrificed support for Western values in favor of better relations with the Kremlin.

The U.S. action may help usher in a new, potentially rockier phase in the relationship. While the fate of the Senate’s Magnitsky bill remains unclear, the Russian parliament has been preparing its own bill in response.

But few believe cooperation over important issues will be affected. The Carnegie Center’s Lipman pointed out that previous incidents that could have worsened relations, such as revelations from U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and Washington’s expulsion of 10 Russian intelligence agents last year, did not visibly affect ties.

Lukyanov of “Russia in Global Affairs” agreed the blacklist won’t change the nature of relations. “Of course it won’t contribute to a better relationship,” he said, “but I don’t think it will damage much because in areas where Russia and the United States cooperate now — like Afghanistan, nuclear disarmament, even Iran — both sides are interested in it.”

But Lukyanov said that even if relations suffer, Russian and U.S. politicians are focused on presidential elections in each of their countries next year, and will make no significant moves until 2013.

According to Nemtsov, who says he only learned of the ban today, the about-face was influenced by today’s resolution by the European Parliament criticizing Russian authorities both for refusing to officially register his political party and for introducing the travel ban.

“Seven hundred deputies – every single faction and party in the European Parliament – demanded the immediate annulment of the ban on my ability to travel outside of the country,” Nemtsov said in response to the announcement. “Naturally, Putin’s corrupt entourage got scared that it would be banned from Europe in return.”

The opposition leader said that decisions made by European institutions have a serious influence on the Russian government and that “this resource has to be used.”

“Here [in Europe - ed.] they have children, bank accounts, real estate, yachts that they ride on,” Nemtsov said of Russian civil servants. “They need to be brought to their senses precisely through Europe; they don’t understand anything else. As a matter of fact, this was a very optimistic incident; this needs to be kept up.” He added that other parts of the European Parliament’s resolution could be carried out in Russia under due pressure from Europe.

The Federal Bailiff Service, which first denied the travel ban altogether, said that an enquiry had concluded that the ban had been “premature” and would now be lifted.

According to Kasparov.ru, the ban was initiated by businessman Gennady Timchenko, who accused the two politicians of failing to fulfill a judicial order to change two remarks in their opposition report “Putin. Results. 10 Years” that he says damaged his reputation.

The ruling ordered Nemtsov and Milov to publically retract their assertion that Timchenko used his friendship with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to become a billionaire. While a retraction was published in the newspaper Kommersant, “Mr. Timchenko was unhappy that the font was too small in that retraction, so he demanded that we should be kept inside the country for six months,” Nemtsov explained to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

While providing an unexpected but immediate benefit to the two oppositionists, the European Parliament’s resolution was first of all dedicated to a scathing criticism of Russia’s recent refusal to register their new political party, Parnas, thus preventing its representatives from participating in upcoming elections for the State Duma and presidency.

Parnas’s predicament united virtually every political faction in the European Union, with the resolution garnering support from liberals, socialists, conservatives and members of the Green Party.

The document calls on Russian authorities to lessen the requirements for new parties to register and to guarantee equal conditions for all parties and candidates during upcoming electoral campaigns, including access to television broadcast media.

As a general rule, many oppositionists – including Boris Nemtsov, Garry Kasparov, Eduard Limonov and others – are not allowed to be shown on Russia’s state-controlled television.

Commenting on the resolution, Estonian Deputy Kristiina Ojuland said that “Putin has until September to come to his senses, although it’s already clear how the rails to the future State Duma have been laid.”

According to a press release sent by Hermitage Capital Management to TheOtherRussia.org on Monday, Dutch legislators made the decision while taking into account that “Sergei Magnitsky died while in detention in Russia under circumstances that give rise to suspicion, after he uncovered a massive corruption scheme, and also the fact that his case has exposed the deteriorating condition of the observance of human rights [in Russia], and acknowledging that, among a range of other measures, the US Senate and House of Representatives have taken initiatives connected with limiting the ability of Russian civil servants who have taken part in Magnitsky’s death to enter the country and freezing their assets.”

The representatives stressed that the situation was unacceptable and that Russian civil servants responsible for Magnitsky’s death remain unpunished more than a year and a half after the fact.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Russian Foreign Ministry has denounced the Dutch sanctions as “unacceptable.”

The Dutch vote follows a number of measures currently under consideration by US lawmakers to ban Russian civil servants connected with the case from the country. In April 2010, US Senator Benjamin Cardin sent a list of 60 people responsible for the lawyer’s persecution and death to the US State Department.

This past June, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov presented US congressional leaders with a list of more than 300 Russian civil servants against whom he said the US should introduce visa sanctions on account of violations of Russia’s obligations under international law to respect civil rights and freedoms.

Kasparov called upon the US to annul the antiquated Jackson-Vanik amendment and introduce in its stead specific visa sanctions against “those [civil servants] who violate democratic and human rights in Russia.”

Russian lawmakers have threatened their Western counterparts with respective sanctions in the case that measures are taken against those involved in the Magnitsky case.

As the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg comes to a close, business leaders from around the world ponder over whether Russia’s political leadership is as invested as it says it is in stimulating the country’s economy. Political analysts, meanwhile, continue to scuffle over ostensible squabbles within the ruling elite and how the upcoming presidential elections will affect Russia’s future.

On the other side of the globe, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov appeared before United States congressional leaders on Friday to explain that Russia’s economic and political situation need to be seriously considered in an entirely different light.

Fred Hiatt from the Washington Post writes:

He is the greatest chess player of his generation, but when asked to predict Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s next move, Garry Kasparov demurs.

“When you play chess, you have rules,” Kasparov told a few of us during a visit to The Post Thursday. “He can change the rules whenever he needs.”

Still, Kasparov isn’t reluctant to offer sharply delineated views on Russia’s future, and for a couple of reasons they command attention. His intellect is as formidable as you might imagine — he is probably best known in this country for taking on IBM’s chess-playing computer more than a decade ago — but it’s not just that. Kasparov is also far more charismatic than you might imagine, coming across as balanced, funny and very human. Given that chess champions are rock stars in Russia, he could have settled into an easy life of celebrity there. Or he could have joined the opposition to Putin’s kleptocracy, as he has, but from a safe and comfortable apartment in London or Manhattan.

Instead, he has maintained a life in Russia, where — given the grisly fate met by many journalists and human rights advocates — he lives with bodyguards and anxiety.

He does not live without hope for Russia’s future, however. And to that end, he came to Washington (meeting with executive and congressional officials) with three essential messages:

First, the ostensible power struggle between Putin, now prime minister, and his hand-picked president, Dmitry Medvedev, is a sham. Putin pulls the strings. Americans, including the Obama administration, have been taken in by this shadow play, Kasparov says, which is useful for Putin — Medvedev gives the regime a friendlier face to the West — but essentially irrelevant.

Second, Putinism is not working, and therefore its continuation is not inevitable. Despite being an oil exporter at a time of sky-high oil prices, Russia’s economy is ailing. Capital is fleeing, infrastructure is decaying, and people are noticing.

“I think the patience of ordinary Russians could be running out,” Kasparov said. “They can see that the one thing that’s going up is the number of Russian billionaires on the Forbes list.”

And having quarantined Russia from democracy movements that flared in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, Putin now has to worry about infection from the Arab Spring. “Putin did everything to prevent an Orange Revolution, but now comes the ghost of Tahrir Square,” Kasparov said.

Finally, the United States has at its disposal a practical tool that could help undermine Putin’s hold on power — specifically, a bill sponsored by Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin that would ban visas for and freeze assets of Russian officials implicated in rank abuses of justice or abrogations of freedom inside Russia.

“To outsiders, this may not seem like much,” Kasparov said. But it would undermine what Kasparov sees as the fundamental principle and purpose of Putin’s regime: that officials who are loyal to Putin can accumulate assets and park them abroad — and that Putin can protect them.

“If you are loyal to the boss, to the capo di tutti capi, you are safe, inside Russia and out — in Dubai, London, Lake Geneva,” Kasparov said. “If something happens to even a small group of these people, it will cause a dent in the monolith of power.”

Putin has bought off and corrupted so many European officials that Europe will not act first, Kasparov said. But the United States could — and because Russian oligarchs increasingly are investing in the United States, U.S. action would make a big difference.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have leverage,” Kasparov said.

Your move, Congress.

“America offered Putin’s regime more or less a veto right over a US missile defense system. So again, this is your business, because it’s your country, but I think it was absolutely wrong to bring Putin’s regime to the same level, because what we saw, Obama and Medvedev signing the treaty, is like a recreation of the Cold War era with Nixon and Brezhnev or Gorbachev and Reagan. There is no need for America to elevate an undemocratic Russian regime to the same level of importance.”

Now, missile defense negotiations between Russia and NATO have broken down – possibly definitively – and Russia continues to threaten to pull out of New START altogether.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

For a while now, well out of the limelight, Russia and NATO have been negotiating about how to cooperate on missile defense. On Wednesday we got the announcement that the talks have broken down. For good? Hard to say. But the atmospherics don’t sound promising.

There is, potentially, a lot at stake. The Russians have been dropping hints that they might pull out of New START, the much-ballyhooed treaty on nuclear arsenals that went into force earlier this year, if a deal can’t be reached. Even President Dmitry Medvedev, not usually known as a saber-rattler, has allowed himself a few dire predictions. In May he warned about the possibility of a “new Cold War” if talks on missile defense were to fail. (This actually shouldn’t come as such a surprise. It was Medvedev, after all, who vowed to shift Russian short-range missiles to Kaliningrad a few years back in order to deter construction of the European missile shield.)

If the Russians were to make good on this threat, it would effectively scupper the signal foreign policy achievement of the Obama Administration – the “reset” in Russian-American relations that followed a few years of cool in the later stages of George W. Bush’s term in office. New START, signed by both presidents last year in Prague, is the centerpiece of this rapprochement. Judging by some of President Obama’s statements in recent months, a positive outcome on missile defense talks with the Russians was going to be the next big take-away.

The irony is that the current White House managed to get to this point in part by watering down the Bush Administration’s more ambitious missile defense system plans. Soon after he came into office, President Obama declared that the U.S. would opt for a system based on shorter-range mobile missiles rather than fixed-site interceptors. The Russians (and many Europeans) initially reacted with relief. But the mood has soured since then.

It’s hard to know precisely what NATO was offering the Russians to make them feel better about the missile defense project. The Russians don’t like the idea of a European missile defense system at all, since they fear that it undercuts their own nuclear deterrent. They want NATO to give them pledges that the system won’t be used against their own missiles – essentially giving them a veto over the defense system’s operation. Plus they want a whole host of other reassurances:

Russia wants a treaty on the matter to include information on the total number and the kinds of missile interceptors that would be deployed in the shield as well as their speed and deployment locations, Kommersant reported.

Moscow also wants a joint “sectoral” defense with both NATO and Russia at the controls, giving the Kremlin a “finger on the trigger,” as it were. But it’s extremely hard to imagine any NATO countries signing up for that. NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly stated that that’s not what NATO wants:

What we have in mind is cooperation between two independent missile defense systems. If we achieve this, if will be a tangible demonstration that NATO and Russia can build security together, rather than against each other.

The Americans and their allies have talked about giving the Russians a role as a “stakeholder” in the existing system (whatever that means). But what these negotiations actually seem to have done in practice is to expose just how deep the gulf between the two sides remains.

Some experts also wonder whether the Russians are really ready to make good on their threats to pull out of New START. Carol Saivetz, a Russia expert at the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that Moscow needs the treaty more than Washington does since so much of Russian nuclear arsenal is either outdated or under-maintained. Meanwhile, the restart has benefited the Russians by effectively taking NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia “off the table.” She notes that the collapse of the missile defense talks has gone largely unmentioned in the Russian media.

Still, you can’t help but wonder whether the premise of these negotiations was flawed from the start. How do you design an effective European missile defense that the Russians would really be willing to swallow? Sure, I understand the argument that a system designed to protect against a small number of missiles from Iran won’t be effective against a large-scale attack from the Russians – meaning that the proposed NATO missile defense doesn’t really undermine Moscow’s strategic deterrent. But it’s also easy to imagine all sorts of political and strategic reasons why the Kremlin would never want to be seen accepting such a thing without getting a whole lot in return. Europe needs a missile defense system. Russia will probably have to find a way to live with it.

So let’s see what happens when Robert Gates meets his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Serdyukov, for talks today. Perhaps there will be more news then.

- Christian Caryl

“In place of sanctions against Russia – such as the Jackson-Vanik amendment – the United States should introduce personal sanctions against individual representatives of the regime who have violated the rights of Russian citizens,” Kasparov said.

In addition to Kasparov, Thursday’s meeting was attended by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and House Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia Chairman Dan Burton. Solidarity political council member Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr. was also present.

Kasparov had previously discussed visa restrictions on Russian civil servants with US Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman and Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission Co-Chairman James McGovern during a meeting in January 2011.

During a November 2010 visit to Washington, Solidarity bureau member Boris Nemtsov also called for the US Congress to ban Russian civil servants who took have violated international standards for democracy, legality and human rights from entering the United States. Immediately upon returning to Moscow, Nemtsov was assaulted by members of the radical pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi.