THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Moscow has drawn up a retaliatory blacklist of top American officials three months after Washington announced travel restrictions on Russians linked to the 2009 death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who exposed a £144 million tax fraud.
A statement released by the foreign ministry said that Russia considered the American move to be "direct pressure on state structures" and a "political provocation". The spat threatens to derail the "reset" of US-Russian relations championed by President Barack Obama and his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
The American citizens on Moscow's list were not named, but a foreign ministry spokesman said that they included senior Washington civil servants "linked to high-profile humanitarian crimes".
He singled out the "indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the uninvestigated killings of peaceful people in Iraq and Afghanistan". » | Howard Amos, Moscow | Sunday, October 23, 2011
