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Darya Pylnova: There have been other interesting events at the trial.
We know that an expert, Wesley Haun, has conducted a research,
and Mr. Haun said that it was impossible to steal oil.
In addition, we have all noticed that Mr. Lakhtin, a prosecutor,
was very unhappy over the interrogation of two other experts, financiers,
again invited by the defense team, and he tried to clarify the interpreter’s competency.
What is that? Is the prosecution scared that the situation is past the breaking point, psychologically,
or is it some other factor?
Jens Siegert: It’s hard to judge about what is happening in the prosecutor’s head.
I think there are various options.
First, I think – and western lawyers who follow the trial believe –
that the charges were prepared in a rather unskillful if not slapdash manner.
This may be explained in various ways.
One explanation is that the prosecutors are simply not good enough.
Darya Pylnova: Do you mean that they fail to do their job right?
Jens Siegert: Yes, they are bad at what they do.
Another explanation is that they are so sure that the sentence will be in their favor that they think
why try hard, if the result will be in your favor anyway.
That, by the way, goes back to the Soviet tradition and is well known.
What mattered then was observing the formalities, whereas the content did not matter much,
because it was clear that the judge would go along with the prosecutor.
The current judicial practice in Russia is the same:
99 percent of the sentences in courts are in agreement with what the prosecution brings them.
Darya Pylnova: That is, convictions.
Jens Siegert: Convictions. In Germany and other Western countries, the percentage is much lower:
from 60 to 70 percent. And the rest are…
Darya Pylnova: Acquittals.
Jens Siegert: Acquittals.
Darya Pylnova: Let us discuss other developments that have been unfolding in the country in general.
You must have heard about the recent conversation between Yuriy Shevchuk, a well-known musician, and Premier Putin.
What are your impressions from that meeting and that dialogue and from the replies of the premier and his reaction?
Sergay Nikitin: I know Shevchuk personally; he, by the way, among other merits, is, to an extent, an activist of Amnesty International –
he has taken part in one of our campaigns together with other Russian rock musicians.
From my point of view, he is a most honest man, very reserved, civilized, and intelligent,
and he is a man who very keenly feels his personal responsibility for what is happening.
In very few words, Shevchuk said very true things, very correct ones, and he managed to do that concisely.
I noted for myself that he was not at all nervous, which cannot be said about his opponent,
who, at least by how his face looked, it was evident that the questions irritated him,
and we know that Putin usually reacts to certain things that he dislikes very nervously,
and here it was written all over his face.
Darya Pylnova: Mr. Siegert, what tendencies do you think exist in Europe’s attitude toward and perception of Russia?
And what events and people here affect that?
Jens Siegert: There is one event that affects this in a very simple way: the economic crisis.
I can remind you about a memo, a strategic memorandum of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
addressed to the president, which was published a few weeks ago in Russian Newsweek magazine,
which explained why that was so: the EU is the principal strategic partner in the country’s modernization.
Darya Pylnova: Your reply anticipated my next question:
What prevents [the EU] from helping modernization in Russia do you think?
Jens Siegert: In my opinion, a simple and short answer is that, for the time being,
the country’s leadership sees modernization as a purely technical and purely administrative process,
not as a process that in reality affects the entire society and the political system.
It’s the same as with countering corruption. Everyone agrees.
I am sure that without social monitoring, without a free press, without competition,
real competition in politics, it is impossible to counter corruption.
Sergay Nikitin: Indeed, the principal institutions are lacking:
freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly.
If we move a few hundred kilometers away from Moscow, to the Russian backcountry,
where elderly people, people of my age, have no idea about what the internet is,
and even if they did, they do not have access to it anyway.
Information is limited to what comes from the television.
And in such places they very often have only Channel One and Channel Two,
official channels, where information is very uniform.
No one reads newspapers; as Shevchuk said, one and a half newspapers are in existence – such is the picture.
Possibly, that is part of the scenario;
I don’t know, maybe the people need to be preserved like that.
Darya Pylnova: What is your diagnosis of the state of civil society in Russia today?
Sergay Nikitin: I think that the citizens are rather passive.
Again, if we do not talk about Moscow alone; Moscow is a state apart.
On the scale of the entire country, the people are rather passive with respect to their concern about their political rights.
Very often, they have no idea about what human rights are, what political rights are, and what rights they have.
The Constitution is something beyond the clouds;
I doubt that many people have read it, although the text is very good.
Darya Pylnova: How do you think has the attitude toward Russia changed after the Magnitsky case?
If you are in touch with business people in Germany, are people afraid of working here?
Jens Siegert: No, they are not, but apprehension is growing.
Germany is indeed considered one of Russia’s strongest friends.
A former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, has recently been on a visit here,
and, as you know, he is a good friend of the current prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
He spoke here in the Kempinski Hotel about EU-Russia relations
and praised Russia’s investment climate and called for a closer cooperation.
I can only welcome that. Then, during the Q&A session, two German businessmen rose.
The first one was the representative of the German energy concern Ion,
which, by the way, is the largest investor in Gazprom – they own, I think, a 7-percent package in Gazprom,
and the second one was the head of the Volkswagen office here.
They began complaining about the generally-spread corruption and about facing administrative problems all the time.
Gazprom representative Mr. Hartmann, for example, complained that when they want to visit fields of Gazprom,
in which they own a share, they must place a request three months in advance, and very often their requests are denied.
There are very many administrative barriers for those who work here,
and this seems to begin to concern the German business community,
which has not been very critical of the situation here so far.
Darya Pylnova: Thank you for such a detailed story.
Jens Siegert, a political scientist, journalist, and head of the Moscow, rather, Russian division of the Heinrich Böll Foundation,
and Sergey Nikitin, director of the Moscow office of Amnesty International.
Thank for coming to take part in our program Glasnost Territory,
where we have talked about human rights, about the Khodorkovsky-Lebedev case,
and about important events that have happened in Moscow this week.