The very fact that the US is extremely prone to arresting people for (geo)political gain should serve as a warning to the citizens of any country the White House sees as “an adversary”. Writes Drago Bosnic
Human rights are one of the declared “cornerstones” of the political West. And yet, the belligerent power pole is quite liberal in interpreting who gets to enjoy them. Apparently, this excludes not just certain individuals, but also entire groups of people, as evidenced by the recent comments of the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, who freely called Russians “inhuman” during his joint White House press conference with the US President Joe Biden. Designating virtually any other group of people as “inhuman” would not be tolerated in any way or form; unless they’re Russians. It would seem that’s also how Washington DC sees the Russian people living in the United States and elsewhere. On December 20 Moscow announced that the US is currently holding over 60 Russian citizens as “hostages” for future prisoner swaps.
According to Reuters, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin warned in a recent statement that “the Americans deliberately ignore the existing legal mechanisms”. Vershinin was most likely talking about a treaty signed by the US and Russia in 1999, officially called the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance. He stressed that “the total number of Russian citizens who have been taken hostage exceeds 60 people.” Approximately two weeks since the prisoner exchange of Brittney Griner, an American basketball player convicted for drug possession, for Viktor Bout, allegedly an arms dealer (although some sources claim he’s an intelligence asset), which was conducted on an airport in Doha, Washington DC and Moscow have suggested they would remain open to future exchanges.
The senior Russian diplomat did not go into any specifics and it is not entirely clear how many of these hostages are just regular Russian citizens being held under the pretext of low-level offenses or maybe alleged Russian intelligence assets held for espionage. The day after the Griner-Bout exchange, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia was willing to consider future prisoner swaps with the US.
The Associated Press reported: “Asked after a summit in Kyrgyzstan whether other prisoners could be swapped, Putin replied that ‘everything is possible,’ noting that ‘compromises have been found’ that cleared the way for Thursday’s exchange of Griner for Bout. ‘We aren’t refusing to continue this work in the future,’ the Russian leader said, making his first comments about the closely watched trade.”
The US government had previously responded to these remarks, with National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby saying soon after Putin’s statements that more prisoner exchanges “remain possible”, stressing there are “active channels of communication” for this, but that the US wants “further actions and not just words out of Moscow.”
Former US Marine Paul Whelan, arrested for espionage in Russia, and school teacher Marc Fogel, arrested for drug possession just like Griner, are also supposedly high on the Biden administration’s list of priorities in terms of potential prisoner exchanges between Russia and the US. Prior to the Griner-Bout swap, on April 27 this year another ex-Marine Trevor Reed, who was convicted for attacking police officers while intoxicated, was freed by the Russian side as part of a prisoner exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who spent 12 years in a US prison for alleged drug smuggling.
For its part, the State Department said the following in response to Vladimir Putin’s remarks about future prisoner exchanges: “It’s not often we can say that we actually agree with something President Putin said, but today I can say that,” Ned Price told CNN in early December. “President Putin himself has said that these discussions will continue. These discussions absolutely will continue,” he concluded. And while these statements may seem like a sign of rare positive change in the otherwise virtually hostile US-Russia relations, they aren’t exactly reassuring to millions of Russian nationals living outside of their home country. The very fact that the US is extremely prone to arresting people for (geo)political gain should serve as a warning to the citizens of any country the White House sees as “an adversary”.
This is especially true as the US also practices the extremely controversial exterritoriality of its laws and can apply them against anyone in the world, regardless if the targeted person is an American citizen or if they ever set foot on US soil. Perhaps the best example of this is the fate of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who published millions of secret documents detailing illegal US activities around the globe, including war crimes and indiscriminate murder of civilians. His work as an investigative journalist has cost Assange 12 years of his life as the US applied maximum pressure on its vassals to extradite him, even though he is not even an American citizen. This begs the question, is anyone in the world safe if the US can arbitrarily arrest and prosecute whoever they please under any pretext?
