By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — With elections behind them, the United States and Russia are trying to settle a rocky relationship.
Obama Calls on Russia to Renew Weapons Pact
Moscow has threatened to cancel the two-decade-old nuclear disarmament program, which has helped rid the former Soviet Union of thousands of nuclear weapon.
Obama Calls on Russia to Renew Weapons Pact
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — President Obama called on Russia on Monday to renew a two-decade-old nuclear disarmament program that Moscow has threatened to cancel as the two sides try to figure out the future of a rocky relationship now that elections in both countries are behind them.
Russia declared this fall that it would not renew the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has helped rid the former Soviet Union of thousands of nuclear weapons since the end of the cold war. But in a speech, Mr. Obama chose to interpret the Russian statements as a negotiating position to change the program rather than halt it altogether.
“Russia has said that our current agreement hasn’t kept pace with the changing relationship between our countries,” Mr. Obama said at the National Defense University, where he praised the program’s accomplishments. “To which we say, let’s update it. Let’s work with Russia as an equal partner. Let’s continue the work that’s so important to the security of both our countries. And I’m optimistic that we can.”
Whether Russia is willing to do that remains unclear. Even if it is, Moscow has suggested that it would link the renewal of the program to concessions by the United States on its plans to deploy a missile defense system in Europe intended to defend against Iranian aggression. Mr. Obama was overheard telling his Russian counterpart this year that “after my election I have more flexibility” on missile defense, prompting Republicans to accuse him of plotting to sell out the system.
Mr. Obama made no mention of missile defense on Monday, but in reaching out to Moscow he seemed to be taking the opening step in a postelection dance in which the two countries will re-evaluate their ties. His effort to reset the relationship after a rupture over the Georgia war of 2008 succeeded for a time in stabilizing ties, but the atmosphere has cooled noticeably since Vladimir V. Putin returned to the presidency this year.
In recent months, Russia ordered the United States Agency for International Development to leave and enacted laws focused on nongovernmental organizations receiving foreign financing. As a result, the National Democratic Institute, an American-financed organization that promotes democracy, moved to Lithuania last month, and its counterpart, the International Republican Institute, is likely to follow.
The announcement in October that Russia would not renew the Nunn-Lugar program when it expires in the spring underscored how sour relations had become. Through all the ups and downs over the past 20 years, Nunn-Lugar had always been largely immune to the political tides, in part because Russia saw that having American money and help in slimming down its nuclear arsenal was in its own interest.
Since it began, Nunn-Lugar has helped to deactivate 7,600 nuclear warheads and destroy or eliminate 900 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 500 missile silos, 680 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 900 nuclear air-to-surface missiles. But the program still envisioned getting rid of hundreds more weapons to meet goals for 2017.
Russia said it would take over the costs and responsibilities of continuing the program, in effect asserting that after its economic and geopolitical resurgence of recent years, it no longer needs foreign help. But Mr. Obama has not given up on preserving the program, although aides said no specific negotiations were under way to renew it.
American officials hope that last month’s election will make it possible for the two sides to get back on a better footing. After Mr. Obama’s victory, the two presidents spoke by telephone and Mr. Obama accepted Mr. Putin’s invitation to visit Russia in 2013. Presumably he would go to St. Petersburg for the Group of 20 summit meeting that Mr. Putin will host in September.
Mr. Obama’s outreach to Russia on Nunn-Lugar came during a speech paying tribute to its patrons, former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, and Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who lost a primary this year. Mr. Obama hailed them on Monday as “real visionaries” who “challenged us to think anew, to imagine, after decades of confrontation, how our nations might engage in cooperation.”
But, he added: “We’re nowhere near done, not by a long shot, and you all know this. There’s still much too much material — nuclear, chemical, biological — being stored without enough protection. There are still terrorists and criminal gangs doing everything they can to get their hands on it. And make no mistake, if they get it, they will use it.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 3, 2012
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misidentified the Indiana Republican Richard G. Lugar. As the article correctly noted, Mr. Lugar lost a primary this year. He will remain in the United States Senate until his successor is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2013; he is not a former senator.
Correction: December 3, 2012
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misidentified the Indiana Republican Richard G. Lugar. As the article correctly noted, Mr. Lugar lost a primary this year. He will remain in the United States Senate until his successor is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2013; he is not a former senator.
Times Topic: Russia
Questions About Putin’s Health
Mr. Putin’s press secretary spent much of the day on Nov. 1, 2012, denying a new round of rumors about the president’s health, explaining that he has been working from home lately rather than commuting to the Kremlin to avoid causing traffic congestion.
The same day, Vedomosti, a daily newspaper, reported that Mr. Putin has postponed a series of foreign trips — to Turkey, Bulgaria, India and Turkmenistan — until late November at the earliest, meaning that his December travel schedule will be jam-packed. The week before came the news that Mr. Putin was postponing his trademark marathon televised question-and-answer session, an event that usually takes place in December, until the spring or summer.
Reuters noted the postponed trips, and quoted unidentified government officials who said Mr. Putin was suffering from back problems that might require surgery. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said the president pulled a muscle in his back while exercising in early September, and suffered from a “painful reaction for a couple of days.” He said it was “not an injury, it’s just a mismovement” and Mr. Putin suffered no ill effects.
It is undeniable that Mr. Putin leaves his residence less frequently these days, and political observers have begun to scrutinize his body language closely. The chatter is reminiscent of the scrutiny that followed Soviet leaders, whose posture and skin tone were the subject of chatter among journalists, diplomats and analysts who pored over photographs in Western capitals.
At 60, Mr. Putin is following a term as prime minister with his third term as president in a political system that hinges on his personality. While there are powerful interest groups within the Russian government, none of them can act without Mr. Putin’s consent, leaving him at the center of a complex system that must balance disparate demands.
Background: Reclaiming the Presidency, Amid Protests
At the end of 2011, Mr. Putin announced his intention to reclaim the presidency. But the country’s mood had changed. Far from hailing the extension of the Putin era, Russia appeared to be less than enthusiastic. December’s parliamentary elections were widely dismissed as fraudulent and were followed by a series of anti-Putin street protests. Western monitors said the vote was marred by limited political competition, ballot box stuffing and the use of government resources for the party’s benefit. Mr. Putin made accusations that the United States, particularly Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was behind the protests.
In spite of the dissatisfaction, Mr. Putin won his third six-year term in the presidential elections in March 2012. During his campaign, he faced no significant opposition: three candidates he had defeated in the past, and a newcomer, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, a billionaire who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise in the United States, who posed no real threat.
The anti-Putin demonstrations grew violent in May, with the approaching inauguration. The day before the ceremony, police and at least 20,000 antigovernment protesters clashed outside the Kremlin walls, adding the images of flying bottles, smoke bombs and thumping nightsticks to those of Mr. Putin’s third inauguration as president. The next day, as he took the oath of office, the police tried to stamp out a second day of protests.
Inside the gilded chambers of the Kremlin, Mr. Putin, who will turn 60 in the fall, looked grave — and at times burdened — as he delivered a short address to a roomful of ministers, religious leaders and a sprinkling of international figures.
After being sworn in, Mr. Putin nominated Dmitri A. Medvedev as the country’s prime minister. The current political friction was noted obliquely by Mr. Medvedev, who surrendered his four-year term as president that, in the end, served largely to ensure Mr. Putin’s continued control. In his speeches, Mr. Medvedev often questioned the Kremlin’s tight grip on business and politics, leading some to hope that he would push through structural changes if he served a second term. Mr. Medvedev seemed to be explaining his decision, saying Russia could not be transformed into a modern country without “continuity in the government’s policies.”
Relations With the United States
After decades of Cold War tensions and the years of chaos and openness that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between Mr. Putin’s more Soviet-style Russia and the United States have been up and down.
President George W. Bush declared after his first meeting with Mr. Putin that he “looked the man in the eye,” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” But the relationship went downhill from there, bottoming out in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, whose president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was a favorite of Mr. Bush’s.
When the Obama administration took office, it announced that it would seek to “hit the reset button’' with Russia and return to a less contentious tone. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton worked closely with Russia on issues like United Nations sanctions on Iran, and while the two countries were not always in agreement, former President Medevdev in particular appeared to have a warm relationship with American leaders.
But Mr. Medvedev has now been replaced by Mr. Putin, whose return to the Kremlin has ushered in a frostier relationship freighted by an impasse over Syria and complicated by fractious domestic politics in both countries.
For Mr. Obama, who considers improved ties with Russia one of his signature accomplishments, the question is whether the current friction is temporary or is a sign that the reset has accomplished what it can. At some point, administration officials have said, it was inevitable that the two countries would settle into a situation in which they cooperate in some areas and clash in others.
Joining the World Trade Organization
Russia has the world’s 11th largest economy. Unlike struggling Western European economies, Russia has been relatively resilient in the face of global volatility.
In December 2011, Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization was approved, giving Mr. Putin a victory on the international stage at a time of rising domestic opposition to his hold on power. The W.T.O. sets the rules governing global commerce and provides a forum for resolving disputes. Membership ends the anomaly of having Russia, a leading oil and natural gas exporter as well as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, outside the world trade system.
Joining the W.T.O. capped a long period of transformation for Russia, which first applied for membership in June 1993 under Boris N. Yeltsin, and marked its arrival as an up-and-coming “BRIC” country, referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China. To win W.T.O. entry, Moscow had to overhaul its national laws to bring them into conformity with the global trade regime, as well as work out bilateral market-opening deals with all the members of the body.
However, corruption has been a major obstacle. According to the secret American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations, the United States harbors a dim view of the post-Soviet Kremlin and its leadership, and holds little hope that Russia will become more democratic or reliable. In the secret American description, official malfeasance and corruption infect all elements of Russian public life — from rigging elections, to persecuting rivals or citizens who pose a threat, to extorting businesses.
The corruption was described as a drag on the nation of sufficient significance to merit the attention of Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin, who, paradoxically, benefited from cronies who orchestrate graft but support the Kremlin.
Defending Syria; Blaming the West for Annan’s Departure
When the wave of Arab unrest reached Syria in March 2011, protesters were met with brutal force by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in an increasingly bloody conflict that still continues. Through it all, Russia has been the lifeline for Mr. Assad, providing weapons and diplomatic support to help keep his government afloat.
Despite global condemnation of the Assad regime, Russia — as well as China — have consistently objected to any United Nations resolutions concerning Syria that would impose sanctions or single out Mr. Assad’s government for criticism of his efforts to crush the uprising. Russia rejects the idea that the United Nations can interfere in the domestic politics of any country to force a leadership change. Russia, Mr. Assad’s most important foreign backer, has also accused the West of hypocrisy for funneling support and encouragement to Mr. Assad’s armed opponents.
In July 2012, diplomatic efforts at the United Nations Security Council to address the Syria crisis suffered another potentially fatal blow when Russia and China vetoed a British-sponsored resolution that would have punished the Syrian government with economic sanctions for failing to implement a peace plan.
It was the third time that Russia and China vetoed resolutions on Syria since the uprising against President Assad began, and the collegial atmosphere in the council chambers was tinged with bitterness and acrimony afterward.
In early August, following the announcement of Kofi Annan’s resignation as special peace envoy to Syria, Russia blamed Western nations for undermining Mr. Annan by supporting the Syrian insurgency.
A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Russia had done everything possible to support Mr. Annan’s peace plan but opposition forces had refused to negotiate, supported by “our Western partners, and certain regional states.”
Western nations, led by the United States, have accused Russia of helping to sabotage Mr. Annan’s diplomacy and have questioned the need for a United Nations monitoring presence in Syria if there is no viable peace plan to monitor.
Legislation Making it Easier to Form Political Parties
In late March 2012, responding to the outcry over disputed parliamentary elections in December and the huge street protests in Moscow that followed, Russian lawmakers unanimously approved legislation to make it easier to form and maintain new political parties.
The bill, initially proposed in December by the outgoing president, Mr. Medvedev, was passed on March 23 by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. It was expected to sail through the upper house, the Federation Council, and to be signed by Mr. Medvedev.
Supporters of the legislation said it represented a major liberalization at a time when President-elect Putin and the governing United Russia Party have been criticized as holding a tight grip on the political system and tilting it to their advantage.
The new law would reduce to 500 from 40,000 the number of members needed by a party to register with the federal authorities and be recognized to participate in local and national elections. But some critics say the legislation goes too far, making the registration of parties so easy that it will splinter the opposition like a shattered wine glass — and will only serve to tighten Mr. Putin’s grip on power unless further changes are made to allow the formation of party blocs.
A Harsh Law Aimed at Demonstrators
In June 2012, Mr. Putin signed into law a measure imposing heavy fines on people who organize or take part in unsanctioned demonstrations, giving the Russian authorities powerful leverage to clamp down on the large antigovernment street protests ignited by his decision that he intended to return to the presidency and re-energized by his inauguration in May.
Four days later, an estimated 10,000 protesters gathered in central Moscow in defiance of the Kremlin ban. As the demonstrators began to march, many said their resolve was deepened by the new law, which levies fines of $9,000 for individuals participating in rallies that cause harm to people or property — a devastating penalty in a country whose average yearly salary is around $8,500. For organizers of rallies, the penalty is $18,000, and for groups and companies, $30,000.
Mr. Putin flexed substantial political muscle to have the law adopted, brushing aside any concerns about being seen as restricting free speech or assembly and ignoring reservations even among some of his allies and supporters. Supporters of the measure said it was needed to stem what they called a rising tide of radicalism.
Opposition groups and rights advocates reacted swiftly and angrily to the new law, which includes provisions that would bar individuals from acting as protest organizers if they were found to have previously violated the law in two cases and allow local authorities to compile a list of central locations where public protests are prohibited entirely. It also provides for a sentence up to 200 hours of mandatory work as an alternative to financial penalty on individuals.
Exerting Control Over the Internet and Nonprofits
In July 2012, Russia’s upper house of Parliament moved to strengthen controls over the Internet and nonprofit organizations, prompting a warning from the United Nations human rights chief that the Kremlin is sliding back into Soviet ways.
A series of initiatives have been introduced as Mr. Putin begins a six-year term, facing an increasingly assertive opposition. The government has imposed draconian fines for people who participate in unsanctioned protests, and legislators voted to reinstitute criminal charges for slander, rolling back a reform adopted seven months ago by Mr. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s predecessor.
The approved bills would allow the government to block Web sites deemed dangerous to children and require nonprofits to identify themselves as “foreign agents” if they receive financing from outside Russia and are considered by the government to be engaged in political activities.
The law on nonprofits has alarmed a variety of business, charity and religious groups, uncertain whether they will have to carry the label “foreign agent,” a term that invokes cold war espionage.
“I urge the government of the Russian Federation to avoid taking further steps backward to a more restrictive era,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, urging officials to soften the laws passed in recent weeks.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded angrily to the U.N. chief’s statement. “We consider Ms. Pillay’s statement as unbefitting to her status as high commissioner and attempts to publicly accuse the leaders of the Russian state of failing to carry out some kinds of ‘promises’ — as outside the framework of diplomatic ethics,” the ministry said in a statement.
Rare Signs of Leniency Amid Campaign to Squelch Dissent
Amid signs of a broadening campaign to prosecute opposition politicians and activists in the summer of 2012, the country’s Supreme Court issued a rare ruling in July in favor of the most prominent political prisoner, the jailed oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky.
The ruling stopped well short of guaranteeing Mr. Khodorkovsky’s early release from prison, where his sentence has more than four years to run. It requires a lower court to review a pivotal aspect of his long legal odyssey, which has tarred the Russian judicial system in many eyes and, critics say, has paved the road for the type of politically motivated prosecutions that are now in progress.
And in August, a regional court reduced the prison sentence of Platon A. Lebedev, a business partner of Mr. Khodorkovsky. This raised the question of whether Russian courts will show leniency to Mr. Khodorkovsky. Mr. Lebedev’s 13-year sentence was shortened by more than three years, meaning he could be released in March 2013.
However, at the same time, the Kremlin began a series of coordinated actions against political activists. Mr. Putin signed two new laws, one stiffening the penalties for libel and the other giving the government new authority to shut down Web sites that publish content deemed harmful to children.
In July 2012, the powerful Investigative Committee opened criminal cases against a lawmaker, Gennady Gudkov, and an anticorruption blogger, Aleksei Navalny.
Mr. Navalny was charged with embezzlement, a statute that carries a sentence of five to 10 years in prison, the Kremlin’s most direct measure to date against a leader of the anti-Putin protest movement that erupted in Moscow in December 2011.
Prior to that time, Mr. Putin had refrained from criminal prosecutions of activist leaders, sidelining them with softer methods like short-term detentions and limited access to television. The charges suggest that the Kremlin’s eagerness to limit Mr. Navalny’s impact now outweighs the risk of a political backlash.
Punk Rock Band Attracts Worldwide Support
In late July, three members of a punk rock band, Pussy Riot, which is known for irreverent protest songs, went on trial in Moscow for hooliganism after an unauthorized performance on the altar of the city’s main Orthodox cathedral. The three women faced a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
The women had been in jail since March and a chorus of supporters, including some of the music world’s biggest stars, including Madonna and Paul McCartney, demanded their immediate release. Rallies in support of the women were held in dozens of cities around the world.
On Aug. 17, a Moscow judge showed little sympathy for the three young women, handing down stiff prison sentences of two years. While a guilty verdict against the three women was expected, suspense had built over how severe a punishment they would receive. Prosecutors had demanded three-year prison terms, but President Vladimir V. Putin had weighed in on the side of leniency.
As the judge read the verdict, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse and shouted, “Free Pussy Riot!” Riot police officers arrested dozens of protesters, including the former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is active in the Russian political opposition. Mr. Kasparov fought with the police and appeared to be beaten as he was bundled into a paddy wagon.
Many Western governments, including the United States, criticized the guilty verdict and the sentences as evidence of Russia’s increasing repression of dissenting political speech.
On Oct. 10, an appellate court in Moscow set free one of three jailed members of the band, but upheld the two-year prison sentences of the other two.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of Moscow City Court, upheld the guilty verdict against all three women on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. The judges, however, ordered the immediate release of one of the women, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, accepting an argument by her new lawyer that she had far less of a role in the cathedral stunt than her band mates, and that the lower-court judge who convicted the women in August should have taken that into account.
Undaunted by Arrests, Opposition Marches Against Putin
Russia’s opposition movement drew tens of thousands to another large anti-Putin demonstration in September 2012, sending the message that its ranks are undaunted by a battery of new government sanctions and the two-year prison sentences handed down in August to the punk-rockers of Pussy Riot.
This protest, like the ones that first jolted the Kremlin nine months previously, featured mockery of President Putin — largely sendups of a recent stunt in which Mr. Putin flew in a hang glider at the head of a flock of cranes.
The police estimated attendance at the demonstration at 14,000. Organizers’ estimates were much larger. Over all, the movement appears to have reached a kind of cruising altitude. It is not euphoric, as it was in December. But it is also not going away.
One notable change in this protest was the prominence of Communists; besides the appearance of white ribbons, associated with a liberal agenda, there were many red ribbons among the crowd. Indeed, organizers shaping the march’s platform added numerous planks like support for trade unions and caps on utility payments, seemingly to attract support from the left — a vast political force in a population much battered by its emergence into capitalism more than 20 years ago.
There is little doubt that the risks of participating in the protests are climbing. Sixteen people were charged with hooliganism, a charge that could bring a prison sentence of up to 10 years, for participating in a similar event in May that ended in a chaotic melee with police.
Putin’s Ambitions Turn to the Far East
Also in September, Mr. Putin seized on the Asia-Pacific economic summit conference held in Russia to turn assertively to the Far East, hoping to strengthen ties with the Pacific Rim and pursue ambitious development in Russia itself.
With major economies shaky in the European Union — collectively Russia’s largest trading partner — and Japan’s needing to buy vast new supplies of energy abroad, Russia, rich in gas and oil, is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities in Asia as a hedge against any contraction of its business in the West.
Mr. Putin’s look eastward also has political dimensions, as he aims to strengthen ties, particularly with Beijing. For instance, Russia and China have used their alliance at the United Nations Security Council to veto more aggressive intervention in Syria sought by other powers, including the United States.
Given the rise in global energy demands, the Kremlin has maneuvered strategically to be able to redirect its gas sales to Asia should it encounter difficulties in Europe. It has also shown few qualms about using its dominant role in the energy sector for political aims, as it did when it punished Ukraine in 2006 and 2009, inadvertently shutting off supplies to several southeastern European nations.
Russia is also nearing completion of the second phase of a trans-Siberian oil pipeline, which already reaches the Chinese border and will soon stretch to the port of Kozmino, near Japan, increasing capacity and speeding shipments to Asian customers.
Cold War Trade Sanctions Will End, Says Clinton
In September 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged that the United States would soon lift cold-war-era trade sanctions on Russia, but she did not address human rights legislation in Congress that has so far stalled passage, infuriated the Kremlin and become an unexpected issue in the American presidential race.
Attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Vladivostok, Mrs. Clinton welcomed Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization in August. And she said that the United States must now normalize trade relations so that American businesses can reap the benefits of Russia’s membership, including lower tariffs for American products.
Although the sanctions included in the 1974 law known as Jackson-Vanik are waived each year and have no practical effect, they violate W.T.O. rules, which could allow Russia to retaliate against American businesses.
The effort to grant Russia normal trade status, however, has become entangled in legislation that would punish Russian officials accused of abusing human rights, denying them visas and freezing their assets. That has raised doubts that any agreement on lifting the Jackson-Vanik provisions can be reached before the November 2012 presidential election.
The human rights bill, which has bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after being prosecuted on charges that his supporters argue were manufactured to cover up official corruption.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential challenger, injected the issue into the campaign in early September by issuing a statement saying that, as president, he would normalize trade with Russia only if the Magnitsky bill were enacted. The Obama administration, by contrast, has opposed the bill as too expansive and lobbied against mixing it with the trade issue, while expressing support for addressing rights abuses in Russia in some way.
Mr. Putin and other Russian officials have vehemently opposed the Magnitsky bill, warning of so-far-unspecified reciprocal measures if it is enacted into law.
The Jackson-Vanik trade barriers were imposed to punish the Soviet Union for its restrictions on the emigration of Jews. Although the Jackson-Vanik provisions have been waived since the Soviet Union fell apart, their continued existence in American law would allow Russia to maintain higher duties on American products of its own choosing.
Russia Orders U.S. Agency to End Support of All Programs
In late September 2012, the State Department in Washington announced that Russia had ordered the United States to end its financial support for a wide range of pro-democracy, public health and other civil society programs, in an aggressive step by the Kremlin to halt what it views as American meddling in its internal affairs.
The Kremlin’s provocative decision to end all the projects sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development — with little warning ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline — was announced on Sept. 18. The move stands to cut off aid that currently totals about $50 million a year, a relatively small sum but a potentially devastating blow for groups that came to rely on foreign money as domestic controls over politics tightened.
American officials quickly pledged to maneuver around the Kremlin. The Obama administration last October proposed the creation of a new $50 million fund — essentially an endowment for a private foundation established under Russian law — for Russian civil society groups, and one senior administration official said work on that project would speed up.
The decision by the Kremlin has stunned aid workers, infuriated American diplomats and left many nonprofit groups on the brink of collapse. It also marks the end of an extraordinary collaboration between the two former cold war enemies, one that was unimpeded, at least initially, by the suspicion that often shadows foreign aid, in part because such programs have historically in many places provided cover for intelligence activities.
With Mr. Putin facing the biggest political challenges since his rise to power 12 years ago, including an ongoing series of big street demonstrations in Moscow, the Kremlin has been moving aggressively to clamp down on dissent.
When Mr. Putin last winter accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending “a signal” to opposition groups in Russia to take to the streets, many American officials dismissed it as election-year rhetoric, aimed at propping up his campaign for president. But the move to cancel long-established foreign aid programs, including many with no connection to politics, suggests that the fear of external influence is a deeper concern, and that an effort by Mr. Putin to recalibrate his relationship with the United States is under way.
The Kremlin’s ire seems largely directed at two groups: Golos, the country’s only independent election monitoring organization, which helped expose fraud that favored the governing party in parliamentary elections last December; and Transparency International, an anticorruption group, which for a while seemed to have a good working relationship with former President Dmitri A. Medvedev.
Russian officials insist that the United States should not have been surprised by their decision. Aleksandr Lukashevich, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said there were “serious questions” about the agency’s work in Russia, including “attempts to influence the political process through the distribution of grants.”
Still, leaders of the nonprofit groups active in the political arena reject the allegations that they are puppets of the West, and say their efforts are driven by a desire to fix problems in Russia.
Moscow Court Frees One Member of Punk Protest Band
An appellate court in Moscow on Oct. 10, 2012, set free one of three jailed members of a punk protest band, Pussy Riot, but upheld the two-year prison sentences of her band mates, issuing a split decision in a case that has drawn international condemnation of Russia over the suppression of political speech.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of Moscow City Court, upheld the guilty verdict against all three women on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, stemming from a “punk prayer” performance in the city’s main cathedral in February in which they urged the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Mr. Putin.
The judges, however, ordered the immediate release of one of the women, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, accepting an argument by her new lawyer that she had far less of a role in the cathedral stunt than her band mates, and that the lower-court judge who convicted the women in August should have taken that into account.
A Rift With Turkey Over Syria
Russia and Turkey have long been at odds over the escalating conflict in Syria. The Turkish government has joined Western and many Arab nations in support of insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, while Moscow has consistently shielded Mr. Assad, its main regional ally. Russia is Syria’s main arms supplier.
Adding to the strains between the two countries, on Oct. 10, 2012, Turkish warplanes forced a Syrian passenger jet en route from Moscow to Damascus to land in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on suspicion of carrying military cargo. The next day, Russia demanded that Turkey explain why it forced the plane to land.
Moscow expressed dismay at the Turkish action and denied that there were weapons or other military supplies on the plane, which was carrying some Russian passengers.
Moscow’s complaints brought a quick riposte from Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag of Turkey, who was quoted by the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency as saying “materials that infringed international regulations” had been confiscated when Turkish officials searched the aircraft.
Russian authorities were “disturbed” that the Turkish side did not inform its embassy that Russian citizens were being held at the airport, and did not allow diplomats to speak to Russian passengers for an eight-hour period, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich, said in a written statement. The passengers were not allowed to wait in the airport building, though they were occasionally allowed to leave the aircraft for the runway, and were not given food, the statement said.
An official from a Russian arms export company, moreover, told the Interfax news service that Russia has never suspended its military cooperation with Syria but would not ship arms supplies on a civilian passenger plane.
Protesters Try to Gain Foothold in Elections
On Oct. 14, 2012, Russians voted in a vast array of regional and local elections, as opposition candidates emboldened by last year’s wave of antigovernment protests tried to gain a foothold in elected office.
The vote is expected to serve as a clue as to whether electoral reforms introduced in 2011, seemingly in response to an outpouring of anger, would usher in real political competition.
A Kremlin-controlled screening system had all but guaranteed victory to United Russia incumbents in most of the highest-profile races. But antigovernment activists have increased their scrutiny on possible voting irregularities, hoping to cast a spotlight on the uneven playing field, and reports of violations began circulating over social networks early on election day.
Officials were braced for a wave of complaints about voting irregularities and video clips to be published online, something that caught the government by surprise during December’s parliamentary elections.
Opposition Figure Says He Was Forced to Sign Confession
A jailed Russian opposition leader who disappeared from Kiev, Ukraine, on Oct. 19, 2012, was held for three days by men who threatened to kill his children if he did not sign a lengthy confession, according to an interview published on Oct. 24.
The activist, Leonid Razvozzhayev, who had visited a United Nations office in Kiev for advice on seeking political asylum, reappeared outside a Moscow courthouse. In an interview with The New Times, a magazine, he said he had been held in a tumbledown house and not allowed to eat, drink or use the bathroom for three days. After he signed the confession, he said, his captors delivered him to the authorities in Moscow.
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s top federal investigator, has said that Mr. Razvozzhayev turned himself in voluntarily and did not report any “torture, abduction or any other unlawful actions.” He said investigators would look into the report.
The Russian authorities have accused Mr. Razvozzhayev and other opposition leaders of plotting mass riots and of seeking financing from Georgia to help topple the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Razvozzhayev and Sergei Udaltsov, another defendant in the case, are members of Left Front, a radical leftist movement that joined forces with liberal and nationalist activists in a wave of antigovernment protests that began last year. The most recent protest, in September, included a stronger Communist presence and emphasized socioeconomic demands like a freeze in utility costs and pension reform. Mr. Udaltsov has cultivated relationships with leaders of the Communist Party, to whom he refers as allies.
In his interview with The New Times, Mr. Razvozzhayev said his interrogators had asked him about plans to establish a leftist party in Russia, and whether activists would work within a legal framework. He said they also pressed him on whether they were collaborating with “Western special services.”
Russians See Church and State Come Closer
As the Russian Orthodox Church continues its ascent as a political force, Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov stands at the center of a swirling argument about the church’s power and its possible influence on President Putin.
Father Tikhon, a former film student, presides over the 14th century Sretensky Monastery in Moscow, near the headquarters of the former KGB, for which Mr. Putin worked in Soviet times. A media-savvy figure, Father Tikhon has written a surprise best seller about monastic life and has been described as “Putin’s spiritual father” — a label he neither embraces nor denies.
Father Tikhon took over at the white-walled monastery, one of Russia’s oldest, in 1995. He has since transformed the structure, which served as a killing ground in Stalin’s times, into a cinematically perfect vision of Orthodoxy.
The old debate over the role of the Orthodox Church and its relationship to the state broke into the open most recently over the conviction of members of the punk band Pussy Riot for staging an anti-Putin stunt at Moscow’s biggest cathedral.
In this atmosphere, Father Tikhon’s ties to Mr. Putin have come under scrutiny. In 2007, Mr. Putin and Father Tikhon were instrumental in the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which is based in New York. The reunification is a centerpiece of Mr. Putin’s efforts to stitch together the red and white in Russian history — the Soviet and the czarist pasts.
To mark the fifth anniversary of that reunification and to promote an English translation of his book, titled “Everyday Saints,” Father Tikhon toured the United States in October 2012 with the Sretensky Monastery Choir.
At the end of 2011, Mr. Putin announced his intention to reclaim the presidency. But the country’s mood had changed. Far from hailing the extension of the Putin era, Russia appeared to be less than enthusiastic. December’s parliamentary elections were widely dismissed as fraudulent and were followed by a series of anti-Putin street protests. Western monitors said the vote was marred by limited political competition, ballot box stuffing and the use of government resources for the party’s benefit. Mr. Putin made accusations that the United States, particularly Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was behind the protests.
In spite of the dissatisfaction, Mr. Putin won his third six-year term in the presidential elections in March 2012. During his campaign, he faced no significant opposition: three candidates he had defeated in the past, and a newcomer, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, a billionaire who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise in the United States, who posed no real threat.
The anti-Putin demonstrations grew violent in May, with the approaching inauguration. The day before the ceremony, police and at least 20,000 antigovernment protesters clashed outside the Kremlin walls, adding the images of flying bottles, smoke bombs and thumping nightsticks to those of Mr. Putin’s third inauguration as president. The next day, as he took the oath of office, the police tried to stamp out a second day of protests.
Inside the gilded chambers of the Kremlin, Mr. Putin, who will turn 60 in the fall, looked grave — and at times burdened — as he delivered a short address to a roomful of ministers, religious leaders and a sprinkling of international figures.
After being sworn in, Mr. Putin nominated Dmitri A. Medvedev as the country’s prime minister. The current political friction was noted obliquely by Mr. Medvedev, who surrendered his four-year term as president that, in the end, served largely to ensure Mr. Putin’s continued control. In his speeches, Mr. Medvedev often questioned the Kremlin’s tight grip on business and politics, leading some to hope that he would push through structural changes if he served a second term. Mr. Medvedev seemed to be explaining his decision, saying Russia could not be transformed into a modern country without “continuity in the government’s policies.”
Relations With the United States
After decades of Cold War tensions and the years of chaos and openness that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between Mr. Putin’s more Soviet-style Russia and the United States have been up and down.
President George W. Bush declared after his first meeting with Mr. Putin that he “looked the man in the eye,” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” But the relationship went downhill from there, bottoming out in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, whose president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was a favorite of Mr. Bush’s.
When the Obama administration took office, it announced that it would seek to “hit the reset button’' with Russia and return to a less contentious tone. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton worked closely with Russia on issues like United Nations sanctions on Iran, and while the two countries were not always in agreement, former President Medevdev in particular appeared to have a warm relationship with American leaders.
But Mr. Medvedev has now been replaced by Mr. Putin, whose return to the Kremlin has ushered in a frostier relationship freighted by an impasse over Syria and complicated by fractious domestic politics in both countries.
For Mr. Obama, who considers improved ties with Russia one of his signature accomplishments, the question is whether the current friction is temporary or is a sign that the reset has accomplished what it can. At some point, administration officials have said, it was inevitable that the two countries would settle into a situation in which they cooperate in some areas and clash in others.
Joining the World Trade Organization
Russia has the world’s 11th largest economy. Unlike struggling Western European economies, Russia has been relatively resilient in the face of global volatility.
In December 2011, Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization was approved, giving Mr. Putin a victory on the international stage at a time of rising domestic opposition to his hold on power. The W.T.O. sets the rules governing global commerce and provides a forum for resolving disputes. Membership ends the anomaly of having Russia, a leading oil and natural gas exporter as well as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, outside the world trade system.
Joining the W.T.O. capped a long period of transformation for Russia, which first applied for membership in June 1993 under Boris N. Yeltsin, and marked its arrival as an up-and-coming “BRIC” country, referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China. To win W.T.O. entry, Moscow had to overhaul its national laws to bring them into conformity with the global trade regime, as well as work out bilateral market-opening deals with all the members of the body.
However, corruption has been a major obstacle. According to the secret American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations, the United States harbors a dim view of the post-Soviet Kremlin and its leadership, and holds little hope that Russia will become more democratic or reliable. In the secret American description, official malfeasance and corruption infect all elements of Russian public life — from rigging elections, to persecuting rivals or citizens who pose a threat, to extorting businesses.
The corruption was described as a drag on the nation of sufficient significance to merit the attention of Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin, who, paradoxically, benefited from cronies who orchestrate graft but support the Kremlin.
Defending Syria; Blaming the West for Annan’s Departure
When the wave of Arab unrest reached Syria in March 2011, protesters were met with brutal force by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in an increasingly bloody conflict that still continues. Through it all, Russia has been the lifeline for Mr. Assad, providing weapons and diplomatic support to help keep his government afloat.
Despite global condemnation of the Assad regime, Russia — as well as China — have consistently objected to any United Nations resolutions concerning Syria that would impose sanctions or single out Mr. Assad’s government for criticism of his efforts to crush the uprising. Russia rejects the idea that the United Nations can interfere in the domestic politics of any country to force a leadership change. Russia, Mr. Assad’s most important foreign backer, has also accused the West of hypocrisy for funneling support and encouragement to Mr. Assad’s armed opponents.
In July 2012, diplomatic efforts at the United Nations Security Council to address the Syria crisis suffered another potentially fatal blow when Russia and China vetoed a British-sponsored resolution that would have punished the Syrian government with economic sanctions for failing to implement a peace plan.
It was the third time that Russia and China vetoed resolutions on Syria since the uprising against President Assad began, and the collegial atmosphere in the council chambers was tinged with bitterness and acrimony afterward.
In early August, following the announcement of Kofi Annan’s resignation as special peace envoy to Syria, Russia blamed Western nations for undermining Mr. Annan by supporting the Syrian insurgency.
A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Russia had done everything possible to support Mr. Annan’s peace plan but opposition forces had refused to negotiate, supported by “our Western partners, and certain regional states.”
Western nations, led by the United States, have accused Russia of helping to sabotage Mr. Annan’s diplomacy and have questioned the need for a United Nations monitoring presence in Syria if there is no viable peace plan to monitor.
Legislation Making it Easier to Form Political Parties
In late March 2012, responding to the outcry over disputed parliamentary elections in December and the huge street protests in Moscow that followed, Russian lawmakers unanimously approved legislation to make it easier to form and maintain new political parties.
The bill, initially proposed in December by the outgoing president, Mr. Medvedev, was passed on March 23 by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. It was expected to sail through the upper house, the Federation Council, and to be signed by Mr. Medvedev.
Supporters of the legislation said it represented a major liberalization at a time when President-elect Putin and the governing United Russia Party have been criticized as holding a tight grip on the political system and tilting it to their advantage.
The new law would reduce to 500 from 40,000 the number of members needed by a party to register with the federal authorities and be recognized to participate in local and national elections. But some critics say the legislation goes too far, making the registration of parties so easy that it will splinter the opposition like a shattered wine glass — and will only serve to tighten Mr. Putin’s grip on power unless further changes are made to allow the formation of party blocs.
A Harsh Law Aimed at Demonstrators
In June 2012, Mr. Putin signed into law a measure imposing heavy fines on people who organize or take part in unsanctioned demonstrations, giving the Russian authorities powerful leverage to clamp down on the large antigovernment street protests ignited by his decision that he intended to return to the presidency and re-energized by his inauguration in May.
Four days later, an estimated 10,000 protesters gathered in central Moscow in defiance of the Kremlin ban. As the demonstrators began to march, many said their resolve was deepened by the new law, which levies fines of $9,000 for individuals participating in rallies that cause harm to people or property — a devastating penalty in a country whose average yearly salary is around $8,500. For organizers of rallies, the penalty is $18,000, and for groups and companies, $30,000.
Mr. Putin flexed substantial political muscle to have the law adopted, brushing aside any concerns about being seen as restricting free speech or assembly and ignoring reservations even among some of his allies and supporters. Supporters of the measure said it was needed to stem what they called a rising tide of radicalism.
Opposition groups and rights advocates reacted swiftly and angrily to the new law, which includes provisions that would bar individuals from acting as protest organizers if they were found to have previously violated the law in two cases and allow local authorities to compile a list of central locations where public protests are prohibited entirely. It also provides for a sentence up to 200 hours of mandatory work as an alternative to financial penalty on individuals.
Exerting Control Over the Internet and Nonprofits
In July 2012, Russia’s upper house of Parliament moved to strengthen controls over the Internet and nonprofit organizations, prompting a warning from the United Nations human rights chief that the Kremlin is sliding back into Soviet ways.
A series of initiatives have been introduced as Mr. Putin begins a six-year term, facing an increasingly assertive opposition. The government has imposed draconian fines for people who participate in unsanctioned protests, and legislators voted to reinstitute criminal charges for slander, rolling back a reform adopted seven months ago by Mr. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s predecessor.
The approved bills would allow the government to block Web sites deemed dangerous to children and require nonprofits to identify themselves as “foreign agents” if they receive financing from outside Russia and are considered by the government to be engaged in political activities.
The law on nonprofits has alarmed a variety of business, charity and religious groups, uncertain whether they will have to carry the label “foreign agent,” a term that invokes cold war espionage.
“I urge the government of the Russian Federation to avoid taking further steps backward to a more restrictive era,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, urging officials to soften the laws passed in recent weeks.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded angrily to the U.N. chief’s statement. “We consider Ms. Pillay’s statement as unbefitting to her status as high commissioner and attempts to publicly accuse the leaders of the Russian state of failing to carry out some kinds of ‘promises’ — as outside the framework of diplomatic ethics,” the ministry said in a statement.
Rare Signs of Leniency Amid Campaign to Squelch Dissent
Amid signs of a broadening campaign to prosecute opposition politicians and activists in the summer of 2012, the country’s Supreme Court issued a rare ruling in July in favor of the most prominent political prisoner, the jailed oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky.
The ruling stopped well short of guaranteeing Mr. Khodorkovsky’s early release from prison, where his sentence has more than four years to run. It requires a lower court to review a pivotal aspect of his long legal odyssey, which has tarred the Russian judicial system in many eyes and, critics say, has paved the road for the type of politically motivated prosecutions that are now in progress.
And in August, a regional court reduced the prison sentence of Platon A. Lebedev, a business partner of Mr. Khodorkovsky. This raised the question of whether Russian courts will show leniency to Mr. Khodorkovsky. Mr. Lebedev’s 13-year sentence was shortened by more than three years, meaning he could be released in March 2013.
However, at the same time, the Kremlin began a series of coordinated actions against political activists. Mr. Putin signed two new laws, one stiffening the penalties for libel and the other giving the government new authority to shut down Web sites that publish content deemed harmful to children.
In July 2012, the powerful Investigative Committee opened criminal cases against a lawmaker, Gennady Gudkov, and an anticorruption blogger, Aleksei Navalny.
Mr. Navalny was charged with embezzlement, a statute that carries a sentence of five to 10 years in prison, the Kremlin’s most direct measure to date against a leader of the anti-Putin protest movement that erupted in Moscow in December 2011.
Prior to that time, Mr. Putin had refrained from criminal prosecutions of activist leaders, sidelining them with softer methods like short-term detentions and limited access to television. The charges suggest that the Kremlin’s eagerness to limit Mr. Navalny’s impact now outweighs the risk of a political backlash.
Punk Rock Band Attracts Worldwide Support
In late July, three members of a punk rock band, Pussy Riot, which is known for irreverent protest songs, went on trial in Moscow for hooliganism after an unauthorized performance on the altar of the city’s main Orthodox cathedral. The three women faced a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
The women had been in jail since March and a chorus of supporters, including some of the music world’s biggest stars, including Madonna and Paul McCartney, demanded their immediate release. Rallies in support of the women were held in dozens of cities around the world.
On Aug. 17, a Moscow judge showed little sympathy for the three young women, handing down stiff prison sentences of two years. While a guilty verdict against the three women was expected, suspense had built over how severe a punishment they would receive. Prosecutors had demanded three-year prison terms, but President Vladimir V. Putin had weighed in on the side of leniency.
As the judge read the verdict, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse and shouted, “Free Pussy Riot!” Riot police officers arrested dozens of protesters, including the former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is active in the Russian political opposition. Mr. Kasparov fought with the police and appeared to be beaten as he was bundled into a paddy wagon.
Many Western governments, including the United States, criticized the guilty verdict and the sentences as evidence of Russia’s increasing repression of dissenting political speech.
On Oct. 10, an appellate court in Moscow set free one of three jailed members of the band, but upheld the two-year prison sentences of the other two.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of Moscow City Court, upheld the guilty verdict against all three women on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. The judges, however, ordered the immediate release of one of the women, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, accepting an argument by her new lawyer that she had far less of a role in the cathedral stunt than her band mates, and that the lower-court judge who convicted the women in August should have taken that into account.
Undaunted by Arrests, Opposition Marches Against Putin
Russia’s opposition movement drew tens of thousands to another large anti-Putin demonstration in September 2012, sending the message that its ranks are undaunted by a battery of new government sanctions and the two-year prison sentences handed down in August to the punk-rockers of Pussy Riot.
This protest, like the ones that first jolted the Kremlin nine months previously, featured mockery of President Putin — largely sendups of a recent stunt in which Mr. Putin flew in a hang glider at the head of a flock of cranes.
The police estimated attendance at the demonstration at 14,000. Organizers’ estimates were much larger. Over all, the movement appears to have reached a kind of cruising altitude. It is not euphoric, as it was in December. But it is also not going away.
One notable change in this protest was the prominence of Communists; besides the appearance of white ribbons, associated with a liberal agenda, there were many red ribbons among the crowd. Indeed, organizers shaping the march’s platform added numerous planks like support for trade unions and caps on utility payments, seemingly to attract support from the left — a vast political force in a population much battered by its emergence into capitalism more than 20 years ago.
There is little doubt that the risks of participating in the protests are climbing. Sixteen people were charged with hooliganism, a charge that could bring a prison sentence of up to 10 years, for participating in a similar event in May that ended in a chaotic melee with police.
Putin’s Ambitions Turn to the Far East
Also in September, Mr. Putin seized on the Asia-Pacific economic summit conference held in Russia to turn assertively to the Far East, hoping to strengthen ties with the Pacific Rim and pursue ambitious development in Russia itself.
With major economies shaky in the European Union — collectively Russia’s largest trading partner — and Japan’s needing to buy vast new supplies of energy abroad, Russia, rich in gas and oil, is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities in Asia as a hedge against any contraction of its business in the West.
Mr. Putin’s look eastward also has political dimensions, as he aims to strengthen ties, particularly with Beijing. For instance, Russia and China have used their alliance at the United Nations Security Council to veto more aggressive intervention in Syria sought by other powers, including the United States.
Given the rise in global energy demands, the Kremlin has maneuvered strategically to be able to redirect its gas sales to Asia should it encounter difficulties in Europe. It has also shown few qualms about using its dominant role in the energy sector for political aims, as it did when it punished Ukraine in 2006 and 2009, inadvertently shutting off supplies to several southeastern European nations.
Russia is also nearing completion of the second phase of a trans-Siberian oil pipeline, which already reaches the Chinese border and will soon stretch to the port of Kozmino, near Japan, increasing capacity and speeding shipments to Asian customers.
Cold War Trade Sanctions Will End, Says Clinton
In September 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged that the United States would soon lift cold-war-era trade sanctions on Russia, but she did not address human rights legislation in Congress that has so far stalled passage, infuriated the Kremlin and become an unexpected issue in the American presidential race.
Attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Vladivostok, Mrs. Clinton welcomed Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization in August. And she said that the United States must now normalize trade relations so that American businesses can reap the benefits of Russia’s membership, including lower tariffs for American products.
Although the sanctions included in the 1974 law known as Jackson-Vanik are waived each year and have no practical effect, they violate W.T.O. rules, which could allow Russia to retaliate against American businesses.
The effort to grant Russia normal trade status, however, has become entangled in legislation that would punish Russian officials accused of abusing human rights, denying them visas and freezing their assets. That has raised doubts that any agreement on lifting the Jackson-Vanik provisions can be reached before the November 2012 presidential election.
The human rights bill, which has bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after being prosecuted on charges that his supporters argue were manufactured to cover up official corruption.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential challenger, injected the issue into the campaign in early September by issuing a statement saying that, as president, he would normalize trade with Russia only if the Magnitsky bill were enacted. The Obama administration, by contrast, has opposed the bill as too expansive and lobbied against mixing it with the trade issue, while expressing support for addressing rights abuses in Russia in some way.
Mr. Putin and other Russian officials have vehemently opposed the Magnitsky bill, warning of so-far-unspecified reciprocal measures if it is enacted into law.
The Jackson-Vanik trade barriers were imposed to punish the Soviet Union for its restrictions on the emigration of Jews. Although the Jackson-Vanik provisions have been waived since the Soviet Union fell apart, their continued existence in American law would allow Russia to maintain higher duties on American products of its own choosing.
Russia Orders U.S. Agency to End Support of All Programs
In late September 2012, the State Department in Washington announced that Russia had ordered the United States to end its financial support for a wide range of pro-democracy, public health and other civil society programs, in an aggressive step by the Kremlin to halt what it views as American meddling in its internal affairs.
The Kremlin’s provocative decision to end all the projects sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development — with little warning ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline — was announced on Sept. 18. The move stands to cut off aid that currently totals about $50 million a year, a relatively small sum but a potentially devastating blow for groups that came to rely on foreign money as domestic controls over politics tightened.
American officials quickly pledged to maneuver around the Kremlin. The Obama administration last October proposed the creation of a new $50 million fund — essentially an endowment for a private foundation established under Russian law — for Russian civil society groups, and one senior administration official said work on that project would speed up.
The decision by the Kremlin has stunned aid workers, infuriated American diplomats and left many nonprofit groups on the brink of collapse. It also marks the end of an extraordinary collaboration between the two former cold war enemies, one that was unimpeded, at least initially, by the suspicion that often shadows foreign aid, in part because such programs have historically in many places provided cover for intelligence activities.
With Mr. Putin facing the biggest political challenges since his rise to power 12 years ago, including an ongoing series of big street demonstrations in Moscow, the Kremlin has been moving aggressively to clamp down on dissent.
When Mr. Putin last winter accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending “a signal” to opposition groups in Russia to take to the streets, many American officials dismissed it as election-year rhetoric, aimed at propping up his campaign for president. But the move to cancel long-established foreign aid programs, including many with no connection to politics, suggests that the fear of external influence is a deeper concern, and that an effort by Mr. Putin to recalibrate his relationship with the United States is under way.
The Kremlin’s ire seems largely directed at two groups: Golos, the country’s only independent election monitoring organization, which helped expose fraud that favored the governing party in parliamentary elections last December; and Transparency International, an anticorruption group, which for a while seemed to have a good working relationship with former President Dmitri A. Medvedev.
Russian officials insist that the United States should not have been surprised by their decision. Aleksandr Lukashevich, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said there were “serious questions” about the agency’s work in Russia, including “attempts to influence the political process through the distribution of grants.”
Still, leaders of the nonprofit groups active in the political arena reject the allegations that they are puppets of the West, and say their efforts are driven by a desire to fix problems in Russia.
Moscow Court Frees One Member of Punk Protest Band
An appellate court in Moscow on Oct. 10, 2012, set free one of three jailed members of a punk protest band, Pussy Riot, but upheld the two-year prison sentences of her band mates, issuing a split decision in a case that has drawn international condemnation of Russia over the suppression of political speech.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of Moscow City Court, upheld the guilty verdict against all three women on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, stemming from a “punk prayer” performance in the city’s main cathedral in February in which they urged the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Mr. Putin.
The judges, however, ordered the immediate release of one of the women, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, accepting an argument by her new lawyer that she had far less of a role in the cathedral stunt than her band mates, and that the lower-court judge who convicted the women in August should have taken that into account.
A Rift With Turkey Over Syria
Russia and Turkey have long been at odds over the escalating conflict in Syria. The Turkish government has joined Western and many Arab nations in support of insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, while Moscow has consistently shielded Mr. Assad, its main regional ally. Russia is Syria’s main arms supplier.
Adding to the strains between the two countries, on Oct. 10, 2012, Turkish warplanes forced a Syrian passenger jet en route from Moscow to Damascus to land in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on suspicion of carrying military cargo. The next day, Russia demanded that Turkey explain why it forced the plane to land.
Moscow expressed dismay at the Turkish action and denied that there were weapons or other military supplies on the plane, which was carrying some Russian passengers.
Moscow’s complaints brought a quick riposte from Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag of Turkey, who was quoted by the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency as saying “materials that infringed international regulations” had been confiscated when Turkish officials searched the aircraft.
Russian authorities were “disturbed” that the Turkish side did not inform its embassy that Russian citizens were being held at the airport, and did not allow diplomats to speak to Russian passengers for an eight-hour period, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich, said in a written statement. The passengers were not allowed to wait in the airport building, though they were occasionally allowed to leave the aircraft for the runway, and were not given food, the statement said.
An official from a Russian arms export company, moreover, told the Interfax news service that Russia has never suspended its military cooperation with Syria but would not ship arms supplies on a civilian passenger plane.
Protesters Try to Gain Foothold in Elections
On Oct. 14, 2012, Russians voted in a vast array of regional and local elections, as opposition candidates emboldened by last year’s wave of antigovernment protests tried to gain a foothold in elected office.
The vote is expected to serve as a clue as to whether electoral reforms introduced in 2011, seemingly in response to an outpouring of anger, would usher in real political competition.
A Kremlin-controlled screening system had all but guaranteed victory to United Russia incumbents in most of the highest-profile races. But antigovernment activists have increased their scrutiny on possible voting irregularities, hoping to cast a spotlight on the uneven playing field, and reports of violations began circulating over social networks early on election day.
Officials were braced for a wave of complaints about voting irregularities and video clips to be published online, something that caught the government by surprise during December’s parliamentary elections.
Opposition Figure Says He Was Forced to Sign Confession
A jailed Russian opposition leader who disappeared from Kiev, Ukraine, on Oct. 19, 2012, was held for three days by men who threatened to kill his children if he did not sign a lengthy confession, according to an interview published on Oct. 24.
The activist, Leonid Razvozzhayev, who had visited a United Nations office in Kiev for advice on seeking political asylum, reappeared outside a Moscow courthouse. In an interview with The New Times, a magazine, he said he had been held in a tumbledown house and not allowed to eat, drink or use the bathroom for three days. After he signed the confession, he said, his captors delivered him to the authorities in Moscow.
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s top federal investigator, has said that Mr. Razvozzhayev turned himself in voluntarily and did not report any “torture, abduction or any other unlawful actions.” He said investigators would look into the report.
The Russian authorities have accused Mr. Razvozzhayev and other opposition leaders of plotting mass riots and of seeking financing from Georgia to help topple the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Razvozzhayev and Sergei Udaltsov, another defendant in the case, are members of Left Front, a radical leftist movement that joined forces with liberal and nationalist activists in a wave of antigovernment protests that began last year. The most recent protest, in September, included a stronger Communist presence and emphasized socioeconomic demands like a freeze in utility costs and pension reform. Mr. Udaltsov has cultivated relationships with leaders of the Communist Party, to whom he refers as allies.
In his interview with The New Times, Mr. Razvozzhayev said his interrogators had asked him about plans to establish a leftist party in Russia, and whether activists would work within a legal framework. He said they also pressed him on whether they were collaborating with “Western special services.”
Russians See Church and State Come Closer
As the Russian Orthodox Church continues its ascent as a political force, Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov stands at the center of a swirling argument about the church’s power and its possible influence on President Putin.
Father Tikhon, a former film student, presides over the 14th century Sretensky Monastery in Moscow, near the headquarters of the former KGB, for which Mr. Putin worked in Soviet times. A media-savvy figure, Father Tikhon has written a surprise best seller about monastic life and has been described as “Putin’s spiritual father” — a label he neither embraces nor denies.
Father Tikhon took over at the white-walled monastery, one of Russia’s oldest, in 1995. He has since transformed the structure, which served as a killing ground in Stalin’s times, into a cinematically perfect vision of Orthodoxy.
The old debate over the role of the Orthodox Church and its relationship to the state broke into the open most recently over the conviction of members of the punk band Pussy Riot for staging an anti-Putin stunt at Moscow’s biggest cathedral.
In this atmosphere, Father Tikhon’s ties to Mr. Putin have come under scrutiny. In 2007, Mr. Putin and Father Tikhon were instrumental in the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which is based in New York. The reunification is a centerpiece of Mr. Putin’s efforts to stitch together the red and white in Russian history — the Soviet and the czarist pasts.
To mark the fifth anniversary of that reunification and to promote an English translation of his book, titled “Everyday Saints,” Father Tikhon toured the United States in October 2012 with the Sretensky Monastery Choir.
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via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 12/4/12
Post-Soviet Military Alliance Reaffirms Missile Defense Plans
Post-Soviet Military Alliance Reaffirms Missile Defense Plans
The Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance of six former Soviet republics, plans to build an integrated air and missile defense system, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said on Tuesday.
Post-Soviet Military Alliance Reaffirms Missile Defense Plans
The Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance of six former Soviet republics, plans to build an integrated air and missile defense system, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said on Tuesday.
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