The US State Department is planning to add names to the Magnitsky List of serious human rights violators in Russia and other countries — but Secretary of State John Kerry asked to delay the publication, Eli Lake writes for Bloomberg News.

The pending sanctions illustrate how President Barack Obama’s Russia policy is a balancing act: Even as the U.S. punishes President Vladimir Putin’s aides and allies, it still pursues Russia’s cooperation in the Middle East. The same week Kerry has been urging Russia to help end the war in Syria, a senior Treasury official let it slip that Putin is hiding a personal fortune from his own people.



This week, the pattern will continue. State Department officials tell me they expect to add five more names to what is known as the Magnitsky list, named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed after exposing Russia’s largest-known tax fraud and died in prison in 2009, after he was severely beaten. Russian courts have made a mockery of the investigation, leading Congress to pass a law in 2012 blacklisting the people responsible for Magnitsky’s murder in the U.S.



On Thursday evening, the State Department informed Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat like Kerry, that it would be submitting the new names to Congress on Friday, according to congressional officials. But Kerry stopped the rollout on Friday morning. A senior State Department official told me Kerry had a few additional questions but anticipated the new names would be announced this week. Kerry was too late, though, for McGovern, who on Friday sent a news release congratulating the State Department for adding the new names to the list. A spokesman for McGovern told me Friday that his office then revoked the release because it was sent prematurely.

The names to be added are not yet known, but McGovern’s office indicated one is related to Chechnya:

The fifth name on the list, according to McGovern’s now-revoked release, is a Russian national implicated in the torture and murder of a Chechen human-rights activist. McGovern noted that in the release, saying that the addition of this individual was important because Congress intended for the Magnitsky list to be a way for the U.S. government to punish a broad array of Russian human-rights violations.

Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya and accused of masterminding kidnappings and murders as well as threats to the Russian opposition, is said to be already on the classified part of the Magnitsky List.

As we have noted in the past, the Obama Administration has wanted to water down the Magnitsky List and delayed its publication for some time. Kerry, while still a senator, first worked to delay Magnitsky, then said he supported the bill in principle but wanted to “be more introspective” about US wrongs and not “point the finger” at Russia, then ultimately voted for the list but was among the last to do so.

— Catherine A. Fitzpatrick