Majalla

To say that the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki caused an international outrage would be an understatement. The fallout, primarily directed at President Trump, was so severe that the infamously crude-mannered president had to make a retraction a day later. Unfortunately, the hidden, and not so hidden, disturbing messages that came out of that meeting were all too abundant to be remediated by the replacement of a “would” with a “wouldn’t.” One such message, uttered very strategically by Mr. Putin at the press conference, merits extra attention as it tells a story of corruption, murder, and international espionage on the highest levels in Russia. The story of a wealthy US-born investor’s decade-long crusade against Putin is well known to most foreign policy pundits, but much less known publicly. The events that led to the adoption of the Magnitsky Act in the US, Canada, and Europe, serve as an illustration of just how far and deep the Putin regime is willing to go when it comes to silencing its critics and hoarding money. It is also a story of astonishingly successful, yet fragile, international cooperation in support of human rights.

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