The U.S. Congress’s attitude to Russia and Ukraine

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In December 2012 the U.S. Congress passed the so-called Magnitsky Act which was later signed into law by President Barack Obama (see here). This law had to punish certain Russian officials and was passed after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant of a private company, had died in a Moscow pre-trial detention center. Magnitsky was detained in this center because he had been accused of organization of a large-scale tax evasion.

Spoiler

Magnitsky had never been a member of an opposition party, he had never taken part in any opposition actions, he had never published critical articles about Russian government etc.

However, after his death his former colleagues alleged that he had been a lawyer who had allegedly conducted an investigation against some Russian officials. Magnitsky was called a “lawyer” in the above-mentioned Congress’s Act too.

It’s important to repeat that this person had been an accountant of a private company; he had University education in the field of finances and he also had the title of “аудитор” (auditor) what in the Russian language means “an accountant who has the right to officially examine the accounts of organizations”.

The lie about Magnitsky’s lawyer degree can be refuted very easily - information about any lawyer always includes exact data about the University which awarded him a lawyer's degree, about the year when he received it, etc. (e.g. see here).

But you can never find any such information about the lawyer's degree of Magnitsky; you can find only information about his financial education.

Therefore, he - as an accountant of a private company – could not have any qualification to conduct an investigation.

But nevertheless, members of the U.S. Congress were so impressed by his death in the Russian pre-trial detention center that they passed the above-mentioned Act because of this death.

However, members of the U.S. Congress aren’t impressed at all by the fact that in Ukraine hundreds of persons die every year in detention centers or prisons and jails. For example, the Ukrainian Attorney General told that in 2019, in the last pre-pandemic year 517 (in words five hundred and seventeen) men and women had died there (see here).

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Another part of the above-mentioned U.S. Congress’s Act deals with the problem of “tragic and unresolved murders” of journalists and other persons in Russia; their list includes 9 names (see below).

1. Nustap Abdurakhmanov
2. Maksharip Aushev
3. Natalya Estemirova,
4. Akhmed Hadjimagomedov
5. Umar Israilov
6. Paul Klebnikov,
7. Anna Politkovskaya,
8. Saihadji Saihadjiev
9. Magomed Y. Yevloyev

I have looked in Internet for these names and found that by December 14, 2012 – when this Act had been signed by Barak Obama - five deaths had already been resolved. Magomed Y. Yevloyev (no.9) was accidentally shot dead in the Russian region of Ingushetiya by another Yevloyev - Ibragim Yevloyev - who had been convicted for manslaughter in 2009.

Umar Israilov (no. 5) had been murdered in Austria and three persons were sentenced in Austria in 2011, one of them to life imprisonment.

Three persons (no. 1, no. 4 and no. 8 ) were – according to official information, which is mentioned in Internet – terrorists who had been killed on October 27, 2008 during a special operation in the Russian region of Dagestan.

Suspects of murder of the female journalist Anna Politkovskaya (no. 7) in Moscow had already been detained by December 2012 and one of them was convicted in that month; five other suspects were convicted later, two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment.

As a result, only three names remain in the above-mentioned list. Paul Klebnikov (no. 6) was an investigative journalist who was shot dead in Moscow in 2004. But he did not criticize the Russian government after Putin had come to power in 2000; on the contrary, Klebnikov's two critical books dealt with the persons - Berezovsky and Noukhayev - who were opponents of the Russian government at that time.

The deaths of human rights activist and businessman Maksharip Aushev (no.2) and female human rights activist Natalya Estemirova (no. 3) unfortunately remain unresolved, but Russia is a great country; it has population of 147.2 million and some deaths can remain unresolved within such a great population.

Ukraine is smaller than Russia; Ukrainian population – without Crimea and parts of Donbass - is estimated to be 37.3 million, i.e. one-fourth of the Russian population.

But Ukraine has – as far as I know – a greater number of unresolved deaths of journalists, opposition figures and lawyers.

For example, in 2016 Iurii Grabovskii, a Ukrainian lawyer, defended in court a Russian citizen A. Aleksandrov who was accused of terrorism in Ukraine. Grabovskii was abducted and then a video was posted in Internet in which Grabovskii refused to defend Aleksandrov; after that Grabovskii was shot dead and his body was buried. And his death remains unresolved so far.

No culprits have been found even in the Odesa Trade Unions House fire, one of the greatest tragedies of post-Maidan Ukraine.

On May 2, 2014, in the Ukrainian city of Odesa, the building of the Trade Unions House, political center of opponents of Ukrainian rulers, was surrounded by these rulers’ supporters who throw stones and Molotov cocktails onto the building. Then a fire began and as a result forty-two opponents of Ukrainian rulers died.

Ukrainian pro-government and Western media immediately declared that these victims allegedly were “pro-Russian separatists”. But since the end of February 2014 – after the President Yanukovych was illegitimately removed from his post - Odesa was under full control of the new government. Police, secret service, public prosecutors etc., all of them obeyed this new government. But they never took any actions against people in the Trade Unions House because these people weren’t opponents of Ukraine, they were opponents of the illegitimate overthrow of the previous government, they were against repeal of the Law on Languages of Ethnic Minorities etc. All their demands were lawful therefore police, secret service etc. had no grounds to intervene from February to May.

Although the criminal case, which has been launched because of the deaths of these 42 men and women, remains unsettled for more than 8 years, the U.S. Congress hasn’t passed any Acts against Ukrainian officials yet.

There was a list of allegedly unresolved nine deaths in Russia in the above-mentioned Congress’s Act dated December 14, 2014, although most of these deaths had been already resolved by that time.

Therefore, I would like to end this article of mine by a list of forty-two persons (see here) whose death in Odesa in 2014 really hasn’t been resolved so far.

1. Andrei Biriukov
2. Aleksandr Zhulkov
3. Nikolai Iavorskii
4. Gennadii Petrov
5. Andrei Brazhevskii
6. Vadim Papura
7. Igor Zaiats
8. Ruslan Kushch
9. Anna Varenikina
10. Anatolii Kalin
11. Maksim Nikitenko
12. Igor Ostrozhniuk
13. Viktor Bullakh
14. Igor Ivanov
15. Viacheslav Markin
16. Vadim Negaturov
17. Evgenii Gnatenko
18. Alla Poluliakh
19. Irina Iakovenko
20. Gennadii Kushnarev
21. Sergei Mishin
22. Svetlana Pikalova
23. Nikolai Kovriga
24. Aleksandr Sadovnichii
25. Vladimir Brigar
26. Dmitrii Nikitiuk
27. Evgenii Mitchik
28. Viktor Stepanov
29. Sergei Kostiukhin
30. Vladimir Novitskii
31. Viktor Polevoi
32. Kristina Bezhanitskaia
33. Nina Lomakina
34. Aleksandr Kononov
35. Andrei Gnatenko
36. Aleksei Balaban
37. Khristina Gibaliuk
38. Igor Lukas
39. Kristina Aleksa
40. Ivan Milev
41. Mikhail Shcherbinin
42. Aleksei Kolpakov

Source

 

When we add nearly 130 persons who were killed during Euromaidan to 48 victims in Odessa on May 2, 2014 – 42 burnt alive and 6 killed on the streets – and add 4 policemen who were killed at Ukrainian parliament on August 31, 2015 during a meeting of nationalists, and add opposition figure Kalashnikov and writer Buzina who were shot dead in April 2015 (see here), add lawyer Grabovskii who was shot dead in March 2016, and add journalist Pavel Sheremet who was murdered in a car explosion in July 2016, we get at least 185 unresolved political murders in Ukraine – whose population is 40-43 millions - in the last 8 years.

And there is no concern of the U.S. Congress about such a great number of unresolved deaths.

But the U.S. Congress was in 2012 deeply concerned about 9 unresolved murders in Russia – whose population was 143-144 millions – in the period from 2004 to 2012 (please see the first post of this thread).

 

The US Congress has never met a war it didn't like.

Not sure of your point in this thread, but the US Congress is heavily vested in having the Nazis prevail. Many congresscritters have visited Ukraine, movie stars too like Ben Stiller, to shake hands with the Nazi-In-Chief.

 

My point is to show – with figures – that the US Congress can be “deeply concerned” by a dozen unresolved political murders in Russia but can be totally indifferent to almost 200 unresolved political murders in Ukraine whose population is approximately one-fourth of the Russian population.