Russian President Vladimir Putin has found himself increasingly under the glare of the international community of late. On Wednesday, President Obama announced that he has canceled a planned summit with Putin in Moscow next month on the basis of displeasure with the Russian government’s decision to grant temporary asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
But, the reality is that the relationship between the two countries has frozen to the point that a meeting of the two leaders is not likely to accomplish anything of significance. On issues that include Syria, the adoption of Russian children by Americans, Europe’s missile defense and the state of human rights in Russia, the United States has found itself continually in sharp opposition to the Kremlin.
Snowden proved to be the straw that broke the White House’s back.
“If you’re looking at a summit and thinking, ‘There’s no there there,’ this provides a nice excuse for him not going,” said former National Security Council Russian Director James Goldgeier. “Usually, you like to have something happen at a summit, like have something positive to say together, or to say you agreed on something, and it doesn’t look like they’ve got anything big to say or do … Part of the problem is they decided they were going to have this summit originally.”
Hurt feelings
The president’s actions are in sharp contrast from last June, when Snowden arrived in Moscow. ”We’ve got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia. And I’m not going to have one case of a suspect who we’re trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I’ve got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues simply to get a guy extradited, so that he can face the justice system here in the United States,” Obama said.
“I get why it’s a fascinating story from a press perspective. And I’m sure there will be a made-for-TV movie somewhere down the line. But in terms of U.S. interests, the damage was done with respect to the initial leaks.”
The White House has chafed underneath the Putin government’s refusal to extradite Snowden back to the U.S. Many politicians took this as an intentional slight — a chance to score points by standing up to the demands of Washington.
“Given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months, we have informed the Russian government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.”
The White House reaffirmed the summit June 17, during a meeting in Northern Ireland involving the two world leaders. However, according to Carney, the White House began a “careful review” in July concerning the need for the summit; deciding to cancel based on U.S.-Russian relations over the last year.
Historically, Russia had little reason to turn over Snowden, despite the White House’s allusion to cooperation in extraditions. In 2002, Chechen rebel leader Ilyas Akhmadov sought asylum in the United States, despite the Russians requesting immediate extradition back to Russia. The Russians deemed Akhmadov a terrorist charged with organizing terrorist training camps and leading 2,000 armed insurgents … in the 1999 Dagestani incursion.” Karl Linnas, an alleged Nazi war criminal, was requested three times by the Russians on charges of running a Nazi death camp. In 1947, Kiril Alekseev, the Soviet trade representative in Mexico, defected to the United States.
In all of these cases, the United States said no to Russia. “It is a well-established principle of international law that no right to extradition exists apart from treaty. No extradition treaty exists between the United States and the Soviet Union,” the State Department said in a statement in defense of the decisions.
There is reason to think Putin did not intend for things between the United States and Russia to go as far as they have. “Sure, Putin uses this rhetoric, but it’s not so much anti-American as anti-Euro-Atlantic,” said Evgeny Minchenko, a Kremlin-connected political strategist, to Time. “And keep in mind that he has tried to stop short of a head-on collision.”
Yet, it is exactly a head-on collision that Putin now finds himself in. “It’s clear that this decision is linked to the situation we did not cause, [the one] regarding the former American special services employee Snowden. The U.S. is still not ready to build relations on an equitable basis,” said Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin, to the Russian media.
A government under fire
Putin has yet to respond to the White House’s snub, but this may be the smallest of his problems. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights has ordered the Russian government to pay damages to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been held in prison for a decade after the state took over his Yukos Oil Company.
President Obama has also came down hard on Putin on the passage of Russian legislation that bans the use of “propaganda” regarding “nontraditional sexual relations.” “I’ve been very clear that when … you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that I think should transcend every country,” On Tuesday’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” Obama said, “And I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.”
Russia’s anti-gay posture comes at a most inconvenient time. In January, Russia will host the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Questions about gay athletes’ safety in Russia have forced hard questions on if the games can be reasonably conducted within Russia’s borders. Nick Symmonds, a medal hopeful at the track and field championship at Moscow next week, has become the first athlete to speak out about Russia’s oppressive policy.
“Several people who know me to be a relatively vocal athlete when it comes to political issues were excited to hear me discuss what it’s like to compete in a country with questionable human rights laws,” Symmonds wrote for Runner’s World magazine. “Given that I have always been adamant in my support of gay rights at home in the United States, I assumed these followers were referring to Russia’s ‘anti-gay propaganda’ legislation.
“These laws, which do not expressly prohibit being homosexual, criminalize public discussion of homosexuality, especially with foreigners. As an American, I believe in freedom of speech and equality for all, and therefore disagree with the laws that Russia has put in place.”
This is compounded by a recent report from Human Rights Watch that argues that local authorities in Russia have allegedly harassed journalists and activists that have questioned publicly the Sochi Games. “Trying to bully activists and journalists into silence is wrong and only further tarnishes the image of the Olympics,” said Jane Buchanan, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “One of the non-negotiable requirements of hosting the Olympics is to allow press freedom, and the authorities’ attempts to silence critics are in clear violation of that principle.”
The International Olympic Committee has promised to investigate the allegations of human rights abuses, but little is expected to change. Despite calls to move the Olympics to a secondary site, for economic reasons alone it is unlikely that this will occur. Many of the Olympics’ corporate sponsors — including NBC — have spoken against the moving of the Games, and President Obama conceded that it is not likely.
“I think Putin and Russia have a big stake in making sure the Olympics work,” Obama told Leno Tuesday night. “And I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn’t tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently.”
While it is unclear if this new pressure will force the Putin government to resolve its ways, one thing is clear: the world will be watching.