The attendance of G8 leaders at a July summit in Russia will prop up a government that has abandoned democratic principles and thus spell the G8’s death as a credible organisation, a former advisor to President Vladimir Putin said in an article published on Tuesday.
By attending the July 15-17 summit, the other G8 (Group of Eight) leaders ”will demonstrate their indifference to the fate of freedom and democracy in Russia”, said the article in the English-language Moscow Times by Andrei Illarionov, who resigned as an economic advisor to Putin last November.
”The G8 summit can only be interpreted as the support of the world’s most powerful organisation for Russia’s current leadership — as a stamp of approval of its violations of individual rights, the rule of law and freedom of speech, its discrimination against non-governmental organisations, nationalisation of private property, use of energy resources as a weapon and aggression towards democratically oriented neighbours,” the article said.
”The G8 summit will serve as an inspiring example for today’s dictators and tomorrow’s tyrants … Regardless of how the St Petersburg summit proceeds, one thing is clear. The Group of Eight as a club of advanced democratic states will cease to exist.”
The article echoes ongoing criticism in the West of Russia’s fitness to hold the rotating chairmanship of the G8 club of wealthy nations, which Moscow joined in 1997.
Illarionov was the highest-profile critic of government policy within the Kremlin until he resigned in protest at what he called an end to political freedom in Russia, symbolised by the break-up of the Yukos oil company and imprisonment of its founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
He had called that chain of events the ”scam of the year”.
He was previously responsible for coordinating Russia’s relations with the G8.
The other G8 members are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. – Sapa-AFP