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John McCain aims broadside at Vladimir Putin with reply editorial John McCain aims broadside at Vladimir Putin with reply editorial
(about 1 hour later)
The Republican Senator John McCain has delivered a rejoinder to Vladimir Putin, writing in an editorial for Pravda.ru that the Russian president has made himself and his country a friend to tyrants. Senator John McCain has taken to the web pages of Pravda.ru to tell
/>Russians their ruler is corrupt, repressive and violent, in a
/>blistering riposte to Vladimir Putin's commentary last week in the New York Times.
McCain accuses Putin of corruption, repression and self-serving rule in the online opinion piece, which answers the Russian leader's newspaper broadside published a week earlier in the New York Times and elsewhere. The veteran US senator and former presidential candidate used almost
/>every line of his article for the Pravda.ru website to blast Putin for human rights abuse, cronyism and election-rigging, as well as foreign policy.
In the opinion piece headlined "Russians deserve better that Putin", McCain singles out Putin and his associates for punishing dissent, specifically the death in prison of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The Russian presidential human rights council found in 2011 that Magnitsky, who had accused Russian officials of colluding with organised criminals, was beaten and denied medical treatment. The tit-for-tat editorials come just after a temporary thaw in the deep freeze of US-Russian relations with a bilateral agreement on disarming Syria of its chemical weapons on Saturday, but that agreement is already fraying over differences on how it should be implemented.
McCain criticises Putin for siding with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a two and a half year civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people. While Putin used his editorial to present the US administration as war-mongers and himself as a peacemaker in Syria, McCain sought to
/>paint the Russian leader as "supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities."
Pravda.ru is a Russian news website set up after the Pravda national newspaper was broken up in the post-Soviet era. "He is not enhancing Russia's global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world," the senator writes.
McCain insists he is not anti-Russian but rather "more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today". Putin's column has also been criticised as hypocritical by Human Rights Watch, which pointed out that Russia is the main supplier of arms to the Syrian regime.
/>
/>A report by Oxfam on Thursday revealed that Russia was contributing 3% of its fair share to a UN fund for responding the Syrian humanitarian crisis.
"President Putin doesn't believe ... in you. He doesn't believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn't believe Russians can. So he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you," McCain writes. McCain's broadside against Putin also focused on human rights by Putin's government. Noting that he had been invited to write by Pravda.ru's editor as "an active anti-Russian politician", he insisted: "I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today."
McCain assails Putin and his associates for writing laws that codify bigotry, specifically legislation on sexual orientation. A new Russian law imposes fines and up to 15 days in prison for people accused of spreading "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" to minors. He added that Putin and his associates "punish dissent and imprison
/>opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media. They
/>harass, threaten, and banish organisations that defend your right to
/>self-governance. To perpetuate their power they foster rampant
/>corruption in your courts and your economy and terrorise and even
/>assassinate journalists who try to expose their corruption."
On Syria McCain says Putin is siding with a tyrant. "He is not enhancing Russia's global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world." McCain's choice of website has historical resonance. Pravda was the
/>Soviet Union's state newspaper, but the Pravda.ru news website was set
/>up after the famous paper was dissolved and sold off in the wake of
/>the collapse of communism.
McCain criticises the imprisonment of the all-women punk rock band Pussy Riot. Three members were convicted of hooliganism after staging an anti-Putin protest inside a Russian Orthodox church. A newspaper called Pravda is now published by the Russian Communist party but has no connection with the Pravda.ru website. The editors of the website say a court has ruled both it and the newspaper are successors to the Soviet title.
The article by McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, comes a few days after the US and Russian officials reached an ambitious agreement that calls for an inventory of Syria's chemical weapons program within a week and its complete eradication by mid-2014. Diplomatic wrangling continues.
Last week, in an opinion piece for the New York Times, Putin blamed opposition forces for the latest deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria and argued Barack Obama's remarks about America were self-serving. Putin said it was dangerous for America to think of itself as exceptional, a reference to a comment Obama had made.
McCain is not the first US lawmaker to respond to Putin. The House armed services committee chairman, Howard "Buck" McKeon, wrote in an editorial for the Moscow Times about suppression of the Russian people and disregard for basic human rights.
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