On Tuesday July 7th, US President Barack Obama met with representatives of the Russian opposition in Moscow.  The lunch meeting, which took place in the Ritz-Carlton hotel, brought together a wide group of politicians not connected with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.  Notables on the invite list included Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov,  Right Cause chairman Leonid Gozman, and Yabloko party leader Sergei Mitrokhin.  Each representative was given five minutes to speak.

Topics of discussion included the new trial against jailed Yukos oil company bosses Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, and the US missile defense system.

During his talk, Garry Kasparov presented Obama with a list of opposition figures who have been persecuted and killed recently, as well as a list of prisoners serving politically-motivated sentences in Russia.  (Download Kasparov’s full statement in PDF format here.)

“The US president is prepared to establish relations, not just between the White House and the Kremlin, but between the ...

Theotherrussia.org presents our interview with United Civil Front chairman Garry Kasparov after his meeting with US president Barack Obama. Kasparov was one of a group of Russian opposition figures to meet with Obama Tuesday afternoon in Moscow. (Download the interview in PDF format.)

Interview with United Civil Front Chairman Garry Kasparov after meeting with President Barack Obama
July 7, 2009 - Moscow

Q: You said at the press conference after the meeting with President Obama that his speech today was “less than what we wanted but more than what we expected.” What did you mean?

Garry Kasparov: Ideally he would have named names. He made some strong statements about democracy being the solution and the failure of totalitarianism, far stronger than anything we heard from the last two administrations. But he avoided directly criticizing Putin and Medvedev, the core of our dictatorial system. Nor did Obama mention Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose jailing by Putin and continued imprisonment by Medvedev symbolizes everything Obama was criticizing ...