Obama in Moscow

Barack Obama is meeting with my colleagues Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov tonight. That’s a good sign, Bush’s administration hasn’t dared to do such a thing. But the real question is, will there be any change in actions or is Obama just trying to play his part?

Such an action could be, for example, to impose sanctions against certain public servants who are personally responsible for suppressing democratic protest in Russia: from judges who convict innocent people on false charges to the mayor of Moscow who bans all serious protest demonstrations. It will only take a few words from Obama to put such people on the black list of DHS (and there is already legislation in place to do it), but does he have the political will to do it?