Loudon: Obama Met Top Communist Leader In Moscow

Trevor Loudon writes on his New Zeal blog:

Why would Obama bother to meet with the leader of Russia’s Communist Party?

Cuba’s Granma reports:

MOSCOW, July 8.— Former Russian presidential candidate Guennadi Ziuganov has demanded an end to the US blockade on Cuba at a meeting with American President, Barack Obama, advisors of this political leader announced today.

“If the new administration is really for change, you should turn this embarrassing page of the history of the United States, which has been open for over half a century,” said the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation at the meeting.

Sources close to the president of the second most voted for political party in Russia, told Prensa Latina news agency that Ziuganov also asked for the release of the five antiterrorist fighters who are currently serving sentences in US prisons for trying to avert violent actions against Cuba.

Ziuganov, who is also the head of the Communist Bloc the Duma (the Parliament’s Lower Chamber) urged Obama to suspend NATO expansion and give up the unnecessary antimissile defense shield in Eastern Europe, the sources added.

The official organ of the Russian government, the Rossiskaya Gazeta, and the Interfax news agency reported Ziuganov’s statements advocating the end of the US blockade on Cuba on Wednesday. (PL)

RBO

While in Moscow, as Trevor reports, POTUS met July 7 with “leaders of opposition parties, including the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, and the radical oppositionist and former chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.”

The Moscow Times reported July 8 that POTUS had met in a “round-table discussion with eight handpicked opposition politicians that lasted almost 90 minutes in the Ritz Carlton hotel.”

Boris Nemtsov, co-head of the Solidarity movement, told Obama that “resetting” the opposition’s relations with the Kremlin was complicated.

“For America’s leadership, free speech and democracy are basic values, but for ours it is censorship and the total monopoly of power,” Nemtsov told Interfax after the meeting.

Ilya Ponomaryov, a State Duma deputy for the Just Russia party, said Obama reinforced his opinion that he was a socialist-leaning president.

“A lot of what he said was very people-orientated, and it was clear that he receives a lot of his ideas from grassroots. I and many of my comrades share his ideas,” he told The Moscow Times.

Ponomaryov, a former Communist youth activist who last year switched to the pro-Kremlin socialist A Just Russia, added that he used the meeting to criticize traditional U.S. policy toward the country’s opposition. “They limited themselves to right-wing liberals who compromised the concept of democracy and freedom,” he said.

Other round-table participants were Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, former Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov and Leonid Gozman, leaders of Right Cause, another Kremlin-sponsored opposition party.

From an interview with Kasparov, United Civil Front chairman, The Other Russia writes:

Kasparov, when asked “What was Obama’s message to the opposition members at your meeting this afternoon?”, replied:

In my statement I quoted the American civil rights leader John Lewis about not being patient when waiting for freedom. Obama told a story about his time in the state senate of Illinois, how the Republicans were in charge for six years. He felt irrelevant in the opposition, like he couldn’t change anything meaningful. Things change, he said. Then [Communist Party leader Gennady] Zyuganov said that was exactly the way things are now in the Russian Duma! Zyuganov also told Obama he’d done a good job nationalizing the banks and auto companies. It was all he could do not to say, “You’re on the right track, comrade Obama!”

Kasparov was also asked “Several members at the meeting broached the topic of the US improving relations with Cuba. What was Obama’s reaction?”, and responded:

That came from Ilya Ponomariov and Zyuganov. Obama said his administration was open to contacts with the Cuban government and the opposition. He pointed out, however, that unlike in Russia, it was unlikely the Cuban opposition to Castro in the United States would be eager for the US to have closer relations with Cuba. He also frankly admitted there are political restraints on establishing such contacts.

See more coverage on the meeting from The Other Russia here.

Joshua Keating reported July 9 at Foreign Affairs:

Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov says he enjoyed getting to meet Barack Obama along with other members of the Russian opposition this week and even saw eye-to-eye with the U.S. president on a few things. Interfax reports via Johnson’s Russia List:
“I said that I had thoroughly studied the U.S. president’s anti-crisis program, that I liked it, as well as that it is socially oriented and primarily aimed at supporting poor people and enhancing the state’s role. I said all this to President Obama,” he said.

Somehow I don’t think you’ll be seeing that endorsement on Whitehouse.gov.