Barack Obama To Meet With Russian Activists

Barack Obama To Meet With Russian Activists

United States President Barack Obama will meet with Russian human rights activists during his visit to Russia for the G20 summit in St Petersburg.

With some of the tensest relations between Moscow and Washington in the last years, President Obama will talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the newest proposed Russian legislation that will run over basic human rights and liberties.

The meeting is scheduled to take place this Thursday, immediately after today's state visit to Sweden, and judging by the human rights representatives invited the main topic of discussion will be gay rights and the situation of non-governmental institutions.

Human rights activists seem less than impressed with the high profile attention and say that the move is more political rather than a real interest in the situation of gay rights in the former Soviet country.

Obama cancelled the bilateral summit with President Putin after Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor that exposed secret data about the U.S.’s surveillance system received asylum in Russia.

Another issue that strained relations between the two countries was the differing view on the situation in Syria, whose regime receives the unofficial support of Russia.

Activists say they also want to bring up a new law that will make non-governmental organizations that receive funds from outside Russia register as “foreign agents”.

Posted by James Fried on Wednesday September 04 2013, 1:46 AM EST. Ref: firstpost. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0