Excellent analysis! One has to be pretty damn brave to be a dissident in Russia. Putin, psychopath that he is, has no qualms murdering or imprisoning any one he thinks would threaten him. Whether the West could have helped Russians establish a liberal democracy after the USSR collapsed is questionable; in the event the West made a hash of it.
Fair points. I am worried what the Russian dissidents will whisper in Western leader's ears though. Politico recently quoted unnamed officials who explained US limitations on Ukrainian weapons use by concern about restoring relations with Russia in the futre.
I am not convinced that exchanging actual agents against political prisoners was a good signal. It shows that you can send agents to the West and if they get caught, you can exchange them for prisoners that you can easily "manufacture".
The Politico comment was denied, though it does illustrate the risk. My take is that it's worth the risk given the war-winning potential of a Russian political collapse.
When it comes to exchanges, that's something that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. I don't think the US should or would exchange Russian spies for just any dissident Russia happened to arrest. The US may be wrong about Kara-Murza's worth, but that's a matter of judgment rather than principle.
The full size of the Russian dissident community is clearly suppressed due to the intense and even lethal measures taken by the Putin regime to do just that - conceal its numbers and prevent them from gathering in numbers and growing their base. The greater challenge is that this population is not bound together by a shared ideology or political identity, but represents a broad range of disparate inspirations and goals.
Excellent analysis! One has to be pretty damn brave to be a dissident in Russia. Putin, psychopath that he is, has no qualms murdering or imprisoning any one he thinks would threaten him. Whether the West could have helped Russians establish a liberal democracy after the USSR collapsed is questionable; in the event the West made a hash of it.
Fair points. I am worried what the Russian dissidents will whisper in Western leader's ears though. Politico recently quoted unnamed officials who explained US limitations on Ukrainian weapons use by concern about restoring relations with Russia in the futre.
I am not convinced that exchanging actual agents against political prisoners was a good signal. It shows that you can send agents to the West and if they get caught, you can exchange them for prisoners that you can easily "manufacture".
The Politico comment was denied, though it does illustrate the risk. My take is that it's worth the risk given the war-winning potential of a Russian political collapse.
When it comes to exchanges, that's something that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. I don't think the US should or would exchange Russian spies for just any dissident Russia happened to arrest. The US may be wrong about Kara-Murza's worth, but that's a matter of judgment rather than principle.
The full size of the Russian dissident community is clearly suppressed due to the intense and even lethal measures taken by the Putin regime to do just that - conceal its numbers and prevent them from gathering in numbers and growing their base. The greater challenge is that this population is not bound together by a shared ideology or political identity, but represents a broad range of disparate inspirations and goals.