Obama met with Russian human rights activists

US President Barack Obama on Friday met in St. Petersburg with Russian human rights activists. According to the correspondent of the "faces", the meeting took place at the end of the G20 summit at the Crowne Plaza hotel and took an hour and a half instead of the planned 40 minutes. Nine Russians participated in the meeting: Igor Kochetkov (“Russian LGBT network”), Olga Lenkova (LGBT-Organization “Exit”), Pavel Chikov (“Agora”), Evgenia Chirikova (movement in the defense of the Khimki forest), Yana Yakovleva (“Business Soyda”), Elena Milashina (New Gazeta ”), Boris deserts Boris) ("Civil Control"), Ivan Pavlov (Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information) and Dmitry Makarov (international youth human rights movement). The US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFol and presidential adviser Susan Rice also attended.

According to Kochetkov, Russian social activists asked Obama to be more honest and frank in assessing the human rights situation in Russia. However, Obama, according to him, replied that he could not raise these questions at the forefront.

Shooting Vladimir Volokhonsky:

Igor Kochetkov about a meeting with Barack Obama

Most of the meeting was devoted to the situation with human rights and freedom of information in the United States. In particular, the cases of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning were discussed.

As Chikov said on Twitter, Chirikova "asked him (Obama. - Ed.) To do in Syria without violence." “He said: why is the UN Security Council, which does not take responsibility for resolving the issue,” the head of “Agora” retold the answer of Obama.

According to Chikov, he handed over to Obama from the political prisoners of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina , who was serving time for a prayer service in XXS. “He was very revived and asked to give the response,” Chikov writes.

“The hut is a living person. There was a frank conversation. There were no sensations,” the head of Agora sums up.

Initially, it was assumed that Obama would meet with representatives of NPOs immediately upon arrival in St. Petersburg, but the meeting was transferred several times. Because of this, Moscow human rights activists Lyudmila Alekseeva, Svetlana Gannushkina and Lev Ponomarev decided to refuse a trip to St. Petersburg.

“The meeting was postponed many times, and this has already become almost impossible. To buy tickets to us,” Alekseeva explained to the “facets”. “If we considered it very important, then, we ourselves, we ourselves overcame the difficulties. And in this case, I think the meeting is ritual. A similar meeting was already during the visit of the US Secretary of State - he needed to report with the congress that the meeting was held with the meeting with Human rights activists.

On the eve of the G20 summit, Obama expressed a desire to meet with Russian LGBT activists. In turn, Vladimir Putin said that the US president is free to independently form a business program and not to coordinate it with the Russian side. At the same time, he himself spoke out for the idea of ​​meeting with gay activists, but emphasized that he would not take part in the meeting organized at the request of Obama. The leader of the Moscow Gay Praise Nikolai Alekseev, who filed an offer to the presidential administration, responded to Putin’s proposal. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the head of state would consider this proposal, but it is unlikely that the meeting will be organized quickly. On Friday, St. Petersburg LGBT activists held a mass picket on the Marse field dedicated to the summit. Opponents of LGBT from the Narodnaya Cathedral movement gathered there. Both shares were held under enhanced police control and ended without clashes and detentions (