Putin signs law allowing him 2 more terms as Russia's leader

April 06, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law allowing him to potentially hold onto power until 2036, a move that formalizes constitutional changes endorsed in a vote last year.

The July 1 constitutional vote included a provision that reset Putin's previous term limits, allowing him to run for president two more times. The change was rubber-stamped by the Kremlin-controlled legislature and the relevant law signed by Putin was posted Monday on an official portal of legal information.

The 68-year-old Russian president, who has been in power for more than two decades — longer than any other Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — said he would decide later whether to run again in 2024 when his current six-year term ends.

He has argued that resetting the term count was necessary to keep his lieutenants focused on their work instead of “darting their eyes in search for possible successors.” The constitutional amendments also emphasized the primacy of Russian law over international norms, outlawed same-sex marriages and mentioned “a belief in God” as a core value. Nearly 78% of voters approved the constitutional amendments during the balloting that lasted for a week and concluded on July 1. Turnout was 68%.

Following the vote, Russian lawmakers have methodically modified the national legislation, approving the relevant laws. The opposition criticized the constitutional vote, arguing that it was tarnished by widespread reports of pressure on voters and other irregularities, as well as a lack of transparency and hurdles hindering independent monitoring.

In the months since the vote, Russia has imprisoned the country's most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, The 44-year-old Navalny was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

In February, Navalny was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation while convalescing in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated — and which the European Сourt of Human Rights has ruled to be unlawful.

His team says Navalny had lost a substantial amount of weight even before he started a hunger strike Wednesday to protest authorities’ failure to provide proper treatment for his back and leg pains. Navalny complained about prison officials’ refusal to give him the proper medications and to allow his doctor to visit him. He also protested the hourly checks a guard makes on him at night, saying they amount to sleep deprivation.

In an Instagram post Monday, Navalny said that three of 15 people in his room at the penal colony were diagnosed with tuberculosis. He noted that he had a strong cough and a fever of 38.1 Celsius (100.6 Fahrenheit).

Later on Monday, the newspaper Izvestia carried a statement from the state penitentiary service saying Navalny was moved to the prison colony's sanitary unit after a checkup found him having “signs of a respiratory illness, including a high fever.”

In an acerbic note, Navalny said he and other inmates studied a notice on tuberculosis prevention that underlined the importance of strengthening immunity with a balanced diet — advice that contrasted with a prison ration of “glue-like porridge and frozen potatoes.”

Putin's COVID-19 vaccination to be kept out of public eye

March 23, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin will be getting his first vaccination against COVID-19 on Tuesday, but out of sight of the cameras, his spokesman said, prompting questions about whether the gesture will boost comparatively low immunization rates in Russia.

Asked whether the Kremlin will release any photos or footage of Putin getting his coronavirus vaccine shot, Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call that they would have to "take (our) word for it.”

“When it comes to getting vaccinated on camera, he has never supported that, he doesn't like that,” Peskov said. Peskov wouldn't reveal whether Putin will go to a vaccination facility or the shot will be brought to him in his office or residence, saying only that “it will done in a way that would the least affect” Putin's working schedule.

Putin announced that he would get vaccinated at a government meeting the day before. The statement came several months after widespread immunization against COVID-19 kicked off in Russia. Kremlin critics have argued that Putin's reluctance to get vaccinated was contributing to the already existing hesitancy about the vaccine.

Only 6.3 million people, or 4.3% of Russia's 146-million population, have received at least one dose of a vaccine. It lags behind a number of other countries in terms of the vaccination rate. Surveys by Russia’s top independent pollster, Levada Center, have shown that the number of Russians reluctant to get vaccinated with the domestically developed Sputnik V shot has grown in recent months — to 62% in February from 58% in December.

Pressed by reporters over whether Putin should get vaccinated on camera in order to boost slow vaccination rates, Peskov argued that Russians “will hear” about the president's vaccination and that Putin is already doing “a lot" for promoting the vaccination campaign.

“The president ... dedicates a rather significant time in his working hours to events, discussions, meetings related to vaccination, production of vaccines and so on. So the president does a lot for propaganda of the vaccines,” Peskov said.

The Kremlin spokesman refused to reveal which one of the three vaccines authorized for use in Russia Putin will receive, saying only that all three are “absolutely good, reliable, effective.” Russian authorities have given regulatory approval to three domestically developed shots — Sputnik V, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac. All three received the authorization before completing advanced trials experts say are necessary to ensure their safety and effectiveness in line with established scientific protocol.

However, a recent study in the British medical journal the Lancet showed that Sputnik V is 91% effective and appears to prevent inoculated individuals from becoming severely ill with COVID-19, although it’s still unclear if the vaccine can prevent the spread of the disease. No data on efficacy of the two other vaccines have been released.

Group of Seven slams Russia annexation of Crimea, 7 years on

March 18, 2021

BERLIN (AP) — The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Thursday issued a strong condemnation of what it called Russia's ongoing “occupation” of the Crimean Peninsula, seven years after Moscow annexed it from Ukraine.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. said in a joint statement that Russia’s actions continue to “undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”

“We unequivocally denounce Russia’s temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol,” the seven countries said. “Russia’s attempts to legitimize it are not, and will not, be recognized.”

They accused Russia of human rights abuses on the peninsula and called for international monitors to be given access there. Moscow has argued that Crimea was incorporated after the vast majority of local residents voted for joining Russia, even though most of the world rejected the referendum as illegitimate.

The G-7 statement also cited Russia’s role in the ongoing conflict between pro-Moscow separatists and the government in eastern Ukraine. “We call on the Russian Federation to stop fueling the conflict by providing financial and military support to the armed formations it backs in eastern Ukraine, as well as by granting Russian citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens,” they said.

The G-7 called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict that implements a series of agreements forged in Belarusian capital Minsk. Russia was suspended from the Group of Eight, as it then was, in 2014, over its actions in Ukraine.

Russia scores points with vaccine diplomacy, but snags arise

March 07, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's boast in August that it was the first country to authorize a coronavirus vaccine led to skepticism at the time because of its insufficient testing. Six months later, as demand for the Sputnik V vaccine grows, experts are raising questions again — this time, over whether Moscow can keep up with all the orders from the countries that want it.

Slovakia got 200,000 doses on March 1, even though the European Medicines Agency, the European Union's pharmaceutical regulator, only began reviewing its use on Thursday in an expedited process. The president of the hard-hit Czech Republic said he wrote directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin to get a supply. Millions of doses are expected by countries in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East in a wave of Russian vaccine diplomacy.

“Sputnik V continues to confidently conquer Europe,” anchor Olga Skabeyeva declared on the Russia-1 state TV channel. Dmitry Kiselev, the network's top pro-Kremlin anchor, heaped on the hyperbole last month, blustering: “The Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, is the best in the world.”

State TV channels have covered vaccine exports extensively, citing praise from abroad for Russia and running segments about the difficulties countries are having with Western vaccines. The early criticism of Sputnik V has been blunted by a report in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet that said large-scale testing showed it to be safe, with an efficacy rate of 91% against the virus.

That could help revamp Russia's image to one of a scientific, technological and benevolent power, especially as other countries encounter shortages of COVID-19 vaccines because richer nations are scooping up the Western-made versions or manufacturers struggle with limited production capacity.

“The fact that Russia is among five countries that were able to quickly develop a vaccine … allows Moscow to present itself as a high-tech power of knowledge rather than a petrol pump in decline,” said foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov.

Some experts say boosting the use of vaccines from China and Russia — which have not been as popular as those from the West — could offer a quicker way to increase the global supply. Others note that Russia wants to score geopolitical points.

“Putin is using (the vaccine) to bolster a very tarnished image of Russia’s scientific and technological prowess,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University professor and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “He’s using it for geostrategic purposes in areas where Russia would like to have spheres of influence.”

Whether Russia can deliver is another question. China has supplied millions of doses to other countries, but the output of Sputnik V appears for now to be far lower than the demand. “They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in terms of this vaccine actually being a viable, marketable product," said Judy Twigg, a political science professor specializing in global health at Virginia Commonwealth University. "They’ve made all of these explicit and implicit promises to people inside and outside Russia about access to this product that now is unexpectedly great. And now they’re stuck trying, scrambling, trying to figure out how to deliver on all those promises.”

Russia also must take care of its own. Authorities have announced plans to vaccinate 60% of adults, or roughly 68 million people, by the end of June. The domestic rollout in Russia has been slow, compared with other nations, with about 4 million people, or less than 3% of the population, vaccinated as of late February. Some of that could also be due to widespread reluctance among Russians to trust vaccines.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which bankrolled and markets the vaccine abroad, has not responded to a request for comment on how many doses are going to other countries. It said earlier that it has received requests for 2.4 billion doses from over 50 nations.

Airfinity, a London-based science analytics company, estimates that Russia agreed to supply about 392 million doses abroad, and there are talks with countries for at least another 356 million. Judging by production and exports so far, “Russia is very far from being able to deliver this,” said Airfinity CEO and founder Rasmus Hansen.

Russia manufactured just over 2 million doses last year amid reports of local producers having problems with buying equipment and making the second component of the two-shot vaccine. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Feb. 20 that over 10 million doses of Sputnik V have been produced.

Sputnik V is a viral vector vaccine, which uses a harmless virus that carries genetic material to stimulate the immune system. Producing it is a complicated process, said Elena Subbotina, a consultant with the pharma consultancy CBPartners’ Central and Eastern Europe Team. Producers can’t guarantee stable output because working with biological ingredients involves a lot of variability in terms of the quality of the finished product.

Some countries that have been offered large batches of Sputnik V have yet to approve it for use. In India, which has been pledged 125 million doses, the vaccine is undergoing studies to determine if it produces a comparable immune response. Brazil’s health ministry said it is negotiating to purchase 10 million doses, but the nation’s regulatory agency has yet to authorize its use. Nepal, which has been offered 25 million doses, also hasn’t given its approval.

Other countries have had delays in receiving Sputnik V shipments. Argentina got nearly 2.5 million doses by March 1, even though at one point the government was expecting 5 million in January and over 14 million more in February. Officials in Hungary, who agreed to buy 2 million doses over three months, said Jan. 22 they were expecting 600,000 doses in the first 30 days, but got only 325,600 by early March. Mexico signed a deal for 24 million doses and was hoping to receive 400,000 in February but got only 200,000.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund has agreements with manufacturers in countries including Brazil, South Korea and India to boost production, but there are few indications that manufacturers abroad have made any large amounts of the vaccine so far.

The Brazilian company Uniao Quimica is in the pilot testing phase, the results of which will be shared with Russia before the company can produce it for sale. Indian drugmaker Hetero Biopharma, with a deal to make 100 million doses, was to begin production at the start of 2021, but it isn’t clear if it has actually started.

South Korean company GL Rapha, which expects to make 150 million doses this year, will be manufacturing finished products by sometime in March, said company official Kim Gi-young. Russia so far hasn't faced any criticism for delaying supplies of Sputnik V to other countries, with foreign officials optimistic about the deals.

Hungary is still awaiting large shipments, but expressed optimism about receiving them. “The Russian side, with minimal delay, will meet the 600,000 doses agreed to in the first phase, and then the additional 1.4 million doses,” Hungary's State Secretary Tamas Menczer said last month. Prime Minister Viktor Orban added Friday: “The Russians are pretty much keeping their promises.”

Promising more than can be delivered appears to be a universal problem with coronavirus vaccines, and it is a real risk for Russia as well, said Theresa Fallon, director of the Brussels-based Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies.

“They have won the gold medal for creating this very effective vaccine," she said. "But the problem is, how are they going to implement it?”

Associated Press writers Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi, India; David Biller in Rio de Janeiro; Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Justin Spike and Bela Szandelszky in Budapest, Hungary; and Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed.

Russians lay flowers to mark opposition leader's killing

February 27, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of people streamed to a Moscow bridge overlooking the Kremlin on Saturday to lay flowers and mark the sixth anniversary of the killing of Boris Nemtsov, a top Russian opposition figure.

Nemtsov, 55, a former deputy prime minister, was shot to death as he walked along the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge late at night on Feb. 27, 2015. Among those who attended Saturday's commemoration was Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny's detention in January upon returning to Moscow from five months of recuperating in Germany from a nerve-agent poisoning set off a wave of nationwide protests. Nemtsov was one of Russia’s most energetic and charismatic opposition figures, and his death was a blow to political opponents of President Vladimir Putin.

An officer in the security forces of Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader was sentenced to 20 years for firing the shots that killed Nemtsov. Four other men were sentenced to 11 to 19 years for involvement.

New US envoy to UN gets red carpet welcome from Russia

February 25, 2021

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Linda Thomas-Greenfield takes up her post as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday and a senior Russian diplomat said the red carpet will be rolled out and Moscow is ready to work with the Biden administration -- but “it takes two to tango.”

After being sworn in on Wednesday by Vice President Kamala Harris, Thomas-Greenfield headed to New York where she is scheduled to present her credentials to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Thursday afternoon.

She will be jumping right into her new job, tackling global peace and security issues with Russia, China and a dozen other countries because the United States takes over the rotating presidency of the powerful U.N. Security Council on Monday. And she might even decide to attend a council meeting on Friday.

“We are looking forward to interactions with her,” Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told a group of reporters Wednesday. “You can count on our most favorable attitudes and positive emotions towards her as a member of our Security Council family.”

Noting Thomas-Greenfield's decades as a U.S. diplomat, he said “it's always easier to interact with professionals." But he said America’s view that Russia is “an enemy” and a “threat” hasn’t changed under Biden, so “it’s very difficult to imagine how the interaction with us might change with such starting points of the positions of the new administration.”

Nonetheless, Polyansky said, “there are a lot of things Russia and the United States can do together” and “we will judge the new administration by what it does.” “We’re in favor of cooperation,” he said. But “it takes two to tango, and really we’re ready to dance, but we need a good and reliable partner who knows all the moves and who respects us” as a country with certain positions, “doesn’t view us as a threat” and sees “our obvious national interests in many issues.”

Thomas-Greenfield, a retired 35-year veteran of the U.S. foreign service who rose to be assistant secretary of state for Africa, resigned during the Trump administration. She will be the third African-American, and the second African-American woman, to hold the U.N. post.

Her confirmation on Tuesday was hailed by Democrats and advocates of the United Nations who had lamented former President Donald Trump’s “America First” unilateral approach to international affairs and rejoiced at President Joe Biden’s return to multilateralism.

At the Senate hearing on her nomination, Thomas-Greenfield called China “a strategic adversary” that threatens the world, and called a speech she gave in 2019 that praised China’s initiatives in Africa but made no mention of its human rights abuses a mistake.

The Senate voted 78-20 to confirm her with Republican opponents saying she was soft on China and would not stand up for U.S. principles at the U.N. Thomas-Greenfield said at the hearing that Washington will be working not only with allies “but to see where we can find common ground with the Russians and the Chinese to put more pressure on the Iranians to push them back into strict compliance” with the 2015 agreement to rein in their nuclear program. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018 and Biden has indicated the U.S. will rejoin it, though how that might happen remains a major question.

Polyansky said Russia welcomes the “”positive developments” on the Iran nuclear deal and the U.S. agreement to extend the START nuclear agreement, adding that Moscow is ready for serious and meaningful discussions “first and foremost in the area of strategic stability.”

Thomas-Greenfield stressed at the hearing that the U.S. will be reengaging internationally and promoting American values -- “support for democracy, respect for universal human rights, and the promotion of peace and security.”

Louis Charbonneau, United Nations director for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press that Thomas-Greenfield should promote human rights as “a top priority.” “She should abandon the Trump administration’s selective approach to human rights – enthusiastically condemning its enemies’ abuses while ignoring rights violations of allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“But there’s room for continuity on China and Syria," Charbonneau said. “She should make expanding the coalition of nations willing to speak out against Beijing’s human rights abuses one of her chief goals at the U.N., above trying to bring African, Asian, and Latin American states into the fold. And she should continue to push for expanded humanitarian access to all parts of Syria.”

EU to hit more Russian officials with sanctions over Navalny

February 22, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to impose new sanctions against Russian officials linked to the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and expressed concern that the government in Moscow appears to see the 27-nation bloc as an adversary.

“We reached a political agreement to impose restrictive measures against those responsible for (Navalny's) arrest and sentencing and persecution,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said after chairing their meeting in Brussels. He gave no details about the sanctions, but said that he hoped they would be finalized in about a week.

Borrell suggested that those targeted wouldn't include oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, as Navalny's supporters have requested. Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and Putin’s most prominent critic, was arrested in Moscow last month upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

Earlier this month, a court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated.

The European Court of Human Rights has also ruled that it’s unlawful. Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment have fueled a huge wave of protests across Russia. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown, detaining about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days.

“There is a shared assessment in the Council that Russia is drifting towards an authoritarian state and driving away from Europe," Borrell told reporters. Given Moscow's apparent path of “confrontation and disengagement,” Borrell said the bloc will work on three tracks: pushing back when Russia infringes international law, containing it when it pressures the EU, and engaging on issues that are in Europe's interests.

So far, EU countries have been deeply divided over their approach to Moscow. Russia is the EU’s biggest natural gas supplier, and plays a key role in a series of international conflicts and key issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, and conflicts in Syria and Libya.

European heavyweight Germany has strong economic interests there, notably the NordStream 2 undersea pipeline project, and a number of countries, including France, are also reluctant to wade into any sanctions battle over Navalny.

“We need Russia to resolve many international conflicts, and so that will also be a question we must deal with: How is it possible to maintain a constructive dialogue with Russia, even though relations between the EU and Russia have certainly reached a low point?” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said.

The meeting came two weeks after Borrell was publicly humiliated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a trip to the country. Russia expelled diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden, accusing them of attending a rally in support of Navalny.

Borrell found out about the move by social media. The three retaliated by each declaring a Russian diplomat “persona non grata.” Criticism of Borrell initially mounted, but Lavrov’s behavior now seems to have united the Europeans, at least publicly, in their opposition to Moscow’s attempts to further divide them.

“We confirmed our unity as our greatest asset,” Borrell said. “At the same time, we must define a modus vivendi to avoid permanent confrontation with a neighbor who unfortunately seems to have decided to act as an adversary."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined the ministers via videoconference for part of their meeting, with talks focusing on Russia but also China. Borrell said the exchange was “very, very encouraging," and showed Washington's willingness to not only renew ties but to join in global leadership on the coronavirus, economic recovery, climate change and protecting democratic values.

Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.