On Wednesday, the Russian State Duma passed a bill to counter the Magnitsky Act in its second reading. This version of the bill contains amendments that ban American citizens from adopting Russian children and expands measures against any country – not just the United States – that violates the rights of Russian citizens. In addition, it would ban NGOs financed by the U.S. that deal with political issues or present a “threat” to Russian interests from operating in Russia. The bill needed 226 votes to pass, and received 400 for, four against, and two abstentions.

In this blog post for Ekho Moskvy, journalist Anton Orekh questions whether this bill is not itself a threat to Russian interests.

Kind Putin Will Save the Children
By Anton Orekh
December 19, 2012
Ekho Moskvy

The story of the anti-Magnitsky law and its anti-child amendment has revealed not only the true faces of these deputies, but their real purposes as well. It is not as if we ever had any illusions about this collection of mandated citizens. It is just that these scoundrels really showed the full extent of their foolishness when they started retaliating against America by harassing our orphans and the disabled. But it is precisely because of their foolishness that we keep them.

What a clever move for our top leaders. America passes a law to protect itself from our swindlers and killers. We have nothing to respond to this law with! We are going to hide our swindlers and killers to the very end, and we have nothing to present to the Americans. But we really want to. You cannot just brush yourself off and move on. And then four hundred clowns burst into the arena and scoff, throwing about all manner of drivel and demonstrating the outrage of the state. This is how we declare the awesome position of our state, its unanimous patriotism and other crap.

But if the anti-Magnitsky law really is passed as it reads now, then the rest of the world is going to think that our country has turned into a wild territory filled with crazy humanoids with balalaikas. But we are not entirely apathetic about global public opinion. We love giving foreigners a good impression. And right at the moment that this parliamentary rapture reaches its climax, it is time for completely different people to come to the fore. Ones who say something like: we share your sense of worry and dismay; we understand your emotions and indignation. But let us not react to this so harshly; let us smooth out our language. We can give the Americans and our other enemies and enviers one more chance to redeem themselves. Putin, Medvedev, Matvienko and whichever other big fish can softly temper our position. They play good cop.

And on one hand, we show our people that our deputies do supposedly care about our children and the future of our country; we show the world how the representatives of our people practically unanimously express their ire and readiness to tear to shreds these treacherous Yanks, and on the other hand, we make a conciliatory gesture. They will say: look, we are holding this national anger in check, but this is not easy to do, because national anger is great and all-encompassing.

That is the role of our deputies. When we need them to turn into silent punch card machines that stamp documents without looking at any actual laws. When we need to display them as wild monkeys, jumping high in the air. Regardless, they will to be displayed as morons who only do what their leaders tell them. And that is why they are deputies. The question is: how did they wind up in our Duma?

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov had these harsh words for President Vladimir Putin on the day of his annual address to the Russian Federation Council:

Approaching the President’s Address
December 12, 2012
Boris Nemtsov

The fact that Putin is going to give his address on Constitution Day is conspicuous and cynical. This man, who has persistently and purposefully destroyed our constitutional rights with remarkable diligence over the past twelve years, has now decided, in truly hypocritical fashion, to time his speech to coincide with this holiday.

He swore on the constitution – thrice – that he will fight for our rights, but really he was mercilessly trampling over it all that time.

Putin’s oprichniki continue to do this with growing intensity every single day. Take, for instance, December 11. Raids were carried out on the apartments of our fellow oppositionists Taisiya Aleksandrova, Anna Kornilova, and Yury Nabutovsky. The main reason for the raids was their participation in seminars on electoral monitoring. The seminars were in Latvia, which gave the Investigative Committee reason to see the event as preparation for a “colored revolution,” as General Markin, unblinking, announced in a measured tone.

Another thing happened as well – the release of all the figures in the so-called “gambling case,” including all the judges, investigators, and police officers who covered up illegal gambling businesses in outer Moscow, were declared to be “socially close” to the regime and sent home.

But do you remember theft of 5.4 billion rubles from the state budget that Sergei Magnitsky uncovered, instead of throwing the butchers who tortured Sergei in jail, these defenders of thieves and murderers are trying to scare Americans with asset freezes in the Russian Agricultural Bank and their property in the Nizhny Novgorod region.

A tough symmetrical response to the Magnitsky law would have been to immediately remove their children from American universities, immediately close their accounts in American banks, and immediately sell the property they own in the West.

Only then would I believe in the sincerity of the theatrical rage among these Zuganovites, Mironovites and Zhirinovskyists. The end of the day was marked by the absolutely prevocational, one hundred percent anti-constitutional decision by the government not to allow the Freedom March.

The provocateurs from the Kremlin and Moscow City Hall want clashes, they want arrests, they want to frighten free citizens. We have been through this many times before, on the 31st of the month and on other dates. They will not break us. On December 15 at 15:00, I will be on Lubyanka Square. The weather will be bright. Exactly for us free people.

In his latest op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov stresses the urgency of passing the Magnitsky Act – a US Senate bill that would block entry to the country and freeze the assets of 60 Russian officials involved with the cover-up and murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. In a significant move towards its eventual passage, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the bill on Wednesday.

How Obama Can Support Russia and Oppose Putin
By Garry Kasparov
June 27, 2012

President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for two hours last week during the Group of 20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. The meeting was described in the press as “chilly,” which is no surprise. For Mr. Obama, seeing Mr. Putin across from him was a concrete reminder that his administration’s “reset” policy has been a bust, that all the time spent promoting the fantasy of former president Dmitry Medvedev as a liberal alternative to Mr. Putin had been a waste.

Immediately prior to the G-20 summit, top Russian officials announced that Mr. Putin’s highest priority in meeting Mr. Obama would be the Magnitsky Act, a piece of pending U.S. legislation that would apply travel and financial sanctions against Russian functionaries complicit in the 2009 torture and murder of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Critically, the act can also be extended to those who commit similar crimes.

This was a startling admission for the Putin regime to make. I have long promoted the idea of going after the money and travel privileges of the Kremlin loyalists who keep Mr. Putin’s criminal regime operational. The surprise was his in effect confessing how afraid of the act he is. He clearly felt it necessary to publicly reassure his rank and file that he would fight to protect their ill-gotten wealth and lifestyles.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is focused on improving trade relations with Russia, emphasizing the need to repeal the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which prevents the U.S. from granting most-favored-nation status to countries that restrict emigration. In doing so she has argued that even the Russian opposition is in favor of repealing Jackson-Vanik.

This is a half-truth. We of the opposition are hardly of like mind on everything, but nearly all of us agree that it is important to replace the obsolete Jackson-Vanik Amendment with the Magnitsky Act instead of simply repealing it. The objective of such a law is to deter further human-rights violations in Russia by altering the climate of impunity.

Mr. Putin’s May 7 inauguration was followed by crackdowns against the pro-democracy movement, including raids on the homes of opposition leaders and their families and a massive raise in the fines and jail sentences for participating in demonstrations. While more than a dozen protesters are already behind bars, the raids and arrests continue. As ever, the application of the law is focused on punishing opposition activities that are supposed to be protected by the Russian constitution. The police and judiciary understand that by protecting Mr. Putin’s power, they gain ultimate immunity.

The Magnitsky Act would shake the foundation of Mr. Putin’s power base. It is less clear why the Obama administration has worked so hard to bury it. Abroad, Mr. Putin’s Russia continues to sell arms to the Assad dictatorship in Syria and generally do everything possible to keep the Middle East at a boil—the better to keep oil prices high.

In March, President Obama was overheard telling Mr. Medvedev he would have “more flexibility” to address Russian interests after his re-election. Yet Mr. Obama looks all too flexible already. Negotiating on trade or missile defense is all well and good, but when you put moral values on the table with a dictatorship you lose every time.

America should be siding with the Russian people, not with Mr. Putin. Russia is not America’s foe. We have much in common—struggles with radical Islam, concerns about Chinese influence and expansionism, real shared strategic interests. Mr. Putin’s Russia, on the other hand, is concerned only with power and the oil and gas profits needed to maintain it. Yes, a free Russia will compete with the U.S., but it will not be an unwavering adversary.

Ronald Reagan understood history and its lesson that appeasing dictators never works for long. By passing the Magnitsky Act, which was unanimously approved Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the United States will be supporting the Russian people, strengthening democracy and the rule of law, and protecting its own long-term interests. Being “flexible” on these issues will only prove the old saying that by standing for nothing, you will fall for anything.

Mr. Kasparov is the leader of the Russian pro-democracy group the United Civil Front and chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation. He lives in Moscow.

A version of this article appeared June 27, 2012, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How Obama Can Support Russia and Oppose Putin.