I’ve just finished reading Red Notice by Bill Browder, a big-time investment guy in the Russian stock market who was hounded out of Russia a few years ago by Vladimir Putin’s goon squad of corrupt cops, secret agents, judges and high government officials. It’s a thrilling read and a true story of a successful high-risk capitalist whose grandfather ran for president as head of the U.S. Communist Party. How ironic is that?
Red Notice lays bare the horrifying levels of corruption, deceit, murder and deception practiced by the same Putin whom Donald Trump seems so enamored with.
And it will make it clear to you why we should all support the bipartisan movement in Congress to limit Trump’s ability to relax the sanctions, which are the only thing we’ve done, in both the Obama and Trump administrations, to blunt Putin’s effort to recreate the Soviet empire.
The sanctions punish many of those same corrupt officials and tycoons who are busy stealing their fellow Russians blind and violating their basic human rights with impunity. Congress will be voting on this sanctions bill this week, and Browder is testifying today before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Browder’s quest for justice revolves around a young, idealistic Russian lawyer, one Sergei Magnitsky, whose brutal murder by Putin’s operatives violated every aspect of Russian criminal law. The murder eventually led Congress, under the leadership of Sens. John McCain (no stranger to wrongful imprisonment and torture) and Ben Cardin, Democrat from Maryland, to pass a law banning about 60 of those associated with Magnitsky’s murder from entering the U.S., where many of them liked to spend their stolen money on lavish vacations and multi-million dollar homes.
It’s called the Sergei Magnitsky Law, the very law that prompted Putin’s operatives to arrange those meetings with Trump family members and campaign officials.
The Putin oligarchs and henchmen can’t stand having their gross crimes publicly exposed by America and their foreign wings clipped by sanctions. Putin himself banned the adoption of disabled Russian orphans by American families in retaliation for this law. He can’t seem to do enough to punish the innocent, even as his action will mean that a number of these children will die for want of medical attention.
But why should we care? Don’t we have enough of our own problems to worry about? Isn’t all this fixation with Russia just a way for sore-loser Democrats to try to keep President Trump from carrying out his campaign promises, as the far-right media suggest?
This is serious business, and it affects us all.
The world has recently seen the rise of leaders who are following the Putin model of tough-guy authoritarianism, under the pretense of nationalism and/or anti-immigrant populism. It’s true in Turkey, in Venezuela, in Poland, possibly South Africa, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe (not to mention all the former Soviet republics now being run by thugs who murder and steal at will).
In all these countries, the practice of democracy is being subverted to one-man, or one-party, rule. If the Putin model of strongman leadership continues to inspire other world leaders to follow his lead, democracy will everywhere be threatened – including here in America. We will find ourselves, in Browder’s words, in a “mafia-run” world. It is in this sense that we must take Russian meddling in our elections seriously. It was not so much out of pique at Hillary Clinton; it was much more to try to make the world safe for Putin’s henchmen.
I am left with three deeply troubling questions about Russia.
Why do Russian leaders lie so flagrantly, and continuously, to their own people and to the world, seemingly without the merest trace of inhibition?
Why do the Russian people continue to support Putin and to accept such pervasive mendacity as an inevitable attribute of their government?
And why does the rest of the world do so little to hold Putin accountable for his flagrant violation of the United Nation’s universal declaration of human rights?
I am not naïve – all (or almost all) leaders lie when it suits their purposes or saves their face. But it is likely that no savvy diplomat takes anything that Russian officials say on face value.
As to the passivity or paralysis of the Russian populace in the face of such dishonesty, I can only surmise that after centuries of autocratic rule, from the czars to Stalin to Putin, and after nearly a century of communist ethics that boast that the end always justifies the means, most Russians must assume that this is what rulers always do.
Make no mistake: The Russian people are a soulful, patient, intelligent people. There are real heroes among them who have sacrificed their lives in the cause of freedom. Their tragedy is to see the hope for democracy and justice flicker and die within a generation.
And the rest of the world? Well, one can only hope that as the full nature of the Russian kleptocracy and aggression becomes apparent, the world will begin to realize the extent of the threat that this poses not only to democracy, but to civilization itself.
Congress is likely this week to pass a bipartisan bill that McCain has risen from his sick bed to champion. Even in its weakened form (after intense lobbying by the Trump administration) it prevents the president from unilaterally relaxing sanctions on Russia and specifically mentions Putin’s annexation of the Crimea, his attempts to subvert democracy in Ukraine and his atrocious human rights violations.
Browder’s unceasing efforts to seek justice for his murdered friend Magnitsky and to hit back at Putin’s murderous ways continues to find a sympathetic ear in the halls of Congress. We should care, too. Freedom, morality and the rule of law are at stake.
(Robert L. Fried of Concord is a retired educator who is now a writer, gardener and tinkerer. He can be reached by email at rob.fried@gmail.com.)