While
American news media offered differing interpretations of the meeting
between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,
debating whether Mr. Trump had shown resolve or had fallen into a trap
set by Mr. Putin, the Russian press disagreed on only one thing: the
proper translation of the word “tremendous,” which Mr. Trump used to
describe the meeting. Headlines in state-owned media, state-dominated
media, and the lone independent Web-based TV channel offered
translations that hewed closer to “grand,” “outstanding,” or “amazing.”
Those distinctions aside, all agreed: The meeting was a triumph.
Mr.
Putin has for years — 17 years, to be exact, for this is how long he
has been in power — been clear about what he wanted from his
relationship with the United States president: He wants to be treated as
an equal partner on the world stage and not to be questioned about or
pressed on the Russian government’s actions inside Russia or in what he
considers his sphere of influence. Despite the friendly tenor of Mr.
Putin’s relationship with George W. Bush and the offer of a “reset” made
by Barack Obama’s administration, Mr. Putin never achieved his
objective — until now. His fourth American president has given him
exactly what he wanted: respect, camaraderie and freedom from criticism.
The one accomplishment of the meeting — a limited cease-fire in Syria
— is exactly what Mr. Putin wanted. Not the cease-fire, that is: He
wanted an acknowledgment that the United States and Russia are equal
negotiating parties in the Syrian conflict. He spent years cajoling and
then blackmailing the Obama administration into accepting Russia’s
decisive role in the Middle East. Now, Mr. Trump has handed him much
more than that. He has demonstrated that Russia and the United States
can negotiate Syrian life and death without involving any Syrians.
But
what was really important was what was apparently missing from the
meeting: any criticism of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including its
occupation of Crimea, and of the crackdown on political dissent inside
Russia itself. In his accounting of the meeting,
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson mentioned Ukraine only to say that a
new United States representative on the matter would be appointed. He
then managed to avoid answering the one question from a journalist about
Ukraine and sanctions imposed in response to the Russian war there. Nor
did the correspondents at the briefing appear concerned with getting
answers on Ukraine. They were much more interested in the details of the
two presidents’ discussion of Russian meddling in the American
election. This is a topic that Mr. Putin clearly enjoys: It testifies to
his political power, apparently unbounded by international borders.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
What
was entirely absent from the briefing, the reporters’ questions, and,
it is probably safe to assume, the two-hour-and-15-minute meeting
itself, was any discussion or even acknowledgment of any of the
following:
■
Russia has intensified its crackdown on dissidents. Last month, more
than 1,700 people were arrested for peaceful protest — the largest
number of arrests in a single day in decades.
■
Aleksei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who plans to challenge
Mr. Putin in the 2018 presidential election, has been attacked
physically and is facing a slew of trumped-up charges. The night before
the summit, his Moscow headquarters were raided and one of the staff
members was beaten by police. The day after, as Mr. Navalny’s supporters
campaigned around the country, dozens of them were arrested — more than
30 people in Moscow alone.
■ More than a hundred gay men have been targeted by purges in Chechnya.
Three deaths have been confirmed. Several men are still missing, and
dozens more are in hiding elsewhere in Russia. In response to earlier
international pressure, the government in Moscow has promised to
investigate the matter, but nothing is known about the progress of this
investigation.
■
A Moscow court has reached a guilty verdict in the case of five men
accused of killing opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015. The
court failed to interrogate their motives, however; nothing is known
about who ordered the hit.
■
The number of political prisoners in Russia is growing. They include
people arrested for peaceful protest and even for statements made on
social media. They also include Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a 20-year sentence on trumped-up charges of terrorism.
■
Most recently, law enforcement targeted a Moscow contemporary theater
called Gogol Center. Former managing director Aleksei Malobrodsky is in
jail. He is accused of embezzling state funds earmarked for a production
of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which the prosecution falsely claims
was never staged.
Since
at least the 1970s, Russian leaders and Soviet leaders before them had
to face questions about political freedoms and human rights whenever
they met with their American counterparts. The Trump administration has
ended that tradition. In May, Mr. Tillerson, in a rare public statement
on policy, said that American economic and strategic interests had to
take precedence over human rights advancement. When he traveled to
Moscow in April, he declined to meet with human rights activists,
breaking with decades of tradition. It is no surprise that Mr. Trump
broached none of these issues. No wonder Mr. Putin and his news media
view the meeting as a triumph.
Masha Gessen is a contributing opinion writer and the author of “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. NYT
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment