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November 21, 2005

US Senate criticizes Siberian exile

Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza picks up a Russia news story concerning a US Senate resolution about the imprisonment of the two former oligarchs of now-defunct Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Having been charged and convicted of tax evasion, they are serving out their sentences in Siberia and on the Yamal Peninsula, above the Arctic Circle. This is in violation of Russian penal law, which indicates that convicts serve their sentence either in the area where they reside or where they were convicted - in the case of the Yukos chiefs, this would be Moscow. The prisons that house Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are among the most notorious in Russia. The US Senate has therefore passed a resolution calling on their transfer out of these remote penal colonies back to the Moscow area.

The Senate resolution, of course, has no authority over the Russia government, and it taken as a symbolic gesture. These resolutions are not altogether uncommon - they are seen by US senators as easy ways of placating domestic constituencies. US newspapers do not take such resolutions particularly seriously, and none have reported on this case. But this story in the flagship Polish paper is suggestive of a number of things. First, Poles care much more about the US Senate taking a hard line on Russia than Americans seem to. Second, Poland still grants the US a measure of moral authority, something unlikely in the rest of Europe. Third, it turns out that Khodorkovsky has a certain level of organization and political support in the US. And finally, perhaps this is a sign that US lawmakers are resigned to their own bad reputation concerning detainees, and rather then defending their own record prefer to point out abuses elsewhere.

Posted November 21, 2005 11:23 PM

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