Over recent months Russia has been a constant presence in American politics. The allegations raised during the presidential campaign of Russian interference in favour of winning candidate #Donald Trump and this week’s revelation that confirms investigations into possible collusion between members of the Trump team and Russian agents have sown doubts even in Republican politicians. This week also showed the real dangers of politics in Russia.
Fall
As reported in the New York Times on Tuesday near Moscow lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov fell from a roof suffering serious head injuries.
What makes this item of interest is the fact that Gorokhov is the lawyer for the family of Sergei L. Magnitsky who died in jail for having uncovered a major financial scandal targeting American born British financier William F. Browder.
Magnitsky had uncovered a major money laundering scheme and Gorohkov was due in court on Wednesday to assist his mother who is seeking new evidence for the appeal against her son’s sentence. As stated in the Times report the scandal he uncovered has had other strange incidents linked to it leading to deaths or injury and Gorokhov was also due to be a witness in a money laundering trial in Cyprus brought by American prosecutors.
In a strange twist of fate this week also saw reports in the Guardian and other media sources of major money laundering operations involving major British banks processing large amounts of money belonging to Russian criminal groups.
The reports state that the money involved may be as much as $20 billion since 2010.
Ukraine
The second item has potential American connections with the assassination yesterday of former Russia parliamentarian Denis Voronenkov in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. The politician had fled Russia due to his opposition to its annexation of Crimea and he was to have been a witness in the treason trial against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych which could have embarassed the Kremlin.
The American link to this news is Paul Manafort, the former Chairman of the Trump presidential campaign who had worked previously for Yanukovych. These contacts may form part of the ongoing investigations by the intelligence community into Russian interference in the presidential election won by Donald Trump.
Democracy
It is too early to know what consequences, if any, these two items will have directly on American interests and politics but they highlight once more the deadliness of Russian politics.
Over the last two decades politicians, dissidents and journalists in that country have become victims of the power games within the former Soviet Union now led by KGB Academy graduate Vladimir Putin.
This is in stark contrast to what happens in the modern Democracies beginning with the United States.
As we watch the Republicans and the Democrats battle out the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and the Republicans fighting amongst themselves over whether or not and in what form they will approve Paul Ryan’s replacement for the ACA the American and world public know that the price to be paid will be political and not in the lives of the protagonists.
This is the true glory of Democracy.
The game of numbers that is Democracy is not easy and has its faults but as we can see from these two examples from Russia the alternative is much worse.
