In his recent article in National Interest, Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the opportunities that went by the wayside of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s road to democracy.
In many ways, the record shows Medvedev as a president who talks much while doing little. From his 2008 Krasnoyarsk speech — “Liberty is better than no Liberty” — to his “Forward, Russia!” essay, “Medvedev has positioned himself as the propagandist of freedom and democracy in Russia,” Cohen writes.
But the reality of the Russian president’s achievements has fallen far short of the rhetoric:
He did not relinquish government control over the content of the main TV channels, for example, nor did he allow new, private TV channels to emerge. He failed to appoint new justices to the Supreme and Constitutional Court or to the all-important Moscow City Court, allowing these courts to continue as the tools of the executive branch, which was most obvious in the recent appeals by the former owners of the now-defunct oil company YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. In fact, while stating that those who prosecuted the late whistle-blower lawyer Sergei Magnitsky (who died in jail) “committed crimes,” and suggesting that Khodorkovsky does not represent a threat to society (and ergo should be released), Medvedev accomplished very little to reinstate justice.
He did not relinquish government control over the content of the main TV channels, for example, nor did he allow new, private TV channels to emerge. He failed to appoint new justices to the Supreme and Constitutional Court or to the all-important Moscow City Court, allowing these courts to continue as the tools of the executive branch, which was most obvious in the recent appeals by the former owners of the now-defunct oil company YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. In fact, while stating that those who prosecuted the late whistle-blower lawyer Sergei Magnitsky (who died in jail) ‘committed crimes,’ and suggesting that Khodorkovsky does not represent a threat to society (and ergo should be released), Medvedev accomplished very little to reinstate justice..
