President Biden said last week that he was “considering all options” to carry out his 2021 warning to President Vladimir Putin that Russia would face “catastrophic” consequences if Alexei Navalny died in prison. ” Now that President Putin has treated that warning with his usual disdain, Biden is calling it a matter of moral clarity and personal credibility, as well as a strategic strategy to show the dictator that America’s threat is not empty. It is necessary to act as a responsibility.
But how? Some analysts say the administration, which vowed to impose tougher sanctions on Tuesday, will struggle to find ways to make them more effective and that the only policy that is best to hit Putin is suggests continuing to support Ukraine militarily. They are right about the second point. But as several close observers of Russia have told me, there is still much work to be done on the former.
There are four main approaches.
finance: Investor and political activist Bill Browder said Monday that the most important thing we can do to fight back against Putin is confiscate $300 billion in Russian bank reserves frozen for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction. “Enact legislation to do so,” he wrote to me. Browder is best known for promoting the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials involved in corruption and other human rights abuses.
Mr. Browser’s suggestion is not new. And it is being resisted by U.S. officials who worry it goes beyond what is allowed under U.S. law and could encourage a flight from dollar assets. However, as Harvard law scholar Larry Tribe and a team of experts from the Kaplan firm pointed out in a report for the Democracy Restoration Initiative last year, the seizure of Russian assets was explicitly called a “countermeasure.” It is allowed and this is the intended behavior. forcing the aggressor to comply with international law; The dollar flight argument might have some force if the need to save Ukraine and punish Russia was less urgent.
Seizing Russian assets “is like two fingers in the eyes of the West,” Browder added. “Putin doesn’t care how many of his soldiers are killed, but he cares very much about his money. What’s more, all countries should call this new law Navalny’s Law. .”
recognition: “Do not recognize Putin as President of Russia after March 17th. It’s simple,” legendary chess and human rights champion Garry Kasparov told me by phone from Berlin. “We do not recognize the government as legitimate.”
Mr. Kasparov was hinting at next month’s fake presidential election in which Mr. Putin will run for a fifth term. But he also nods to a deeper point. That is, while President Putin may be indifferent to questions of legitimacy, he craves and is sensitively attuned to the trappings of political legitimacy, especially internationally, that strengthen his claims to rule. is.
This point was emphasized to me by economist Konstantin Sonin, a University of Chicago professor who was arrested in absentia in a Russian court this month. “President Putin and his henchmen should be recognized and treated as a gang whose seizure of power in Russia is based more on brutal violence than any legitimacy,” Sonin said. “There is no point in negotiating with President Putin because any agreement would have to be renegotiated if his regime collapses.”
Dissident: When Natan Sharansky called me from Jerusalem, that great Soviet reject, who had exchanged letters with Navalny last year, almost immediately turned to another imprisoned dissident, Vladimir Kara-Murza. I relied on Like Navalny, Kara-Murza, 42, survived poisoning and a coma. Like Navalny, he is being held in a “strict regime” penal colony, serving a 25-year sentence for opposing President Putin.
Sharansky said that “if there is no change” in Western policy, Putin “could kill Kara-Murza tomorrow.” Western countries need to understand that these dissidents are true friends of the free world and should consider them as candidates for a prisoner exchange. Sharansky has been particularly critical of the 2022 swap of Russian bigwig Viktor Bout for basketball star Brittney Greiner, which tempted the Kremlin to publish an article last March in the Wall Street Journal. It certainly got reporter Evan Gershkovich arrested. “The United States has shown itself to be a bad negotiator,” Sharansky lamented.
Sharansky is seconded by Royel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The great Soviet dissidents taught us that they were strengthened by Western attention to their plight,” Gerecht told me. “Today, we don’t know what kind of dissidents in Russia, what kind of ‘rogue’ Russians are becoming, who will inspire Russians who hate the regime.”
Power: One of my sources for this column, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of his current position, is a long-time and respected energy market expert. “American liquefied natural gas is now part of NATO’s arsenal against Russia,” he told me. He said Biden would “restore confidence in the United States as an LNG exporter by lifting the administration’s ‘pause’ on new LNG permits, thereby giving Europe and Japan the confidence to halt imports of Russian LNG.” You can do it,” he advised.
Russia’s oil and gas revenues have fallen sharply since the Ukraine war began, but still reached nearly $100 billion last year, enough to fund the Kremlin’s war machine. What else could hurt? David Petraeus, a retired general and former CIA director, offered a concrete proposal: “The White House should announce the delivery of Army tactical missile systems to Ukraine, which would double the range of the missiles the United States has provided to Ukraine to approximately 300 kilometers.” Date. “
Mr. Petraeus, like everyone I spoke with, believes that the provision of these missiles will only happen if the $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine approved by the Senate last week can overcome a wall of Republican opposition in the House. recognized that it was possible. It is incumbent upon every Republican who remembers what their party once stood for to vote yes on that bill. Just as Biden has a duty to ensure that no evil goes unpunished and that Mr. Navalny did not die in vain.