Fred Hiatt’s column in today’s Washington Post is titled “Dangerous Work in Moscow” – providing an interesting profile of Tanya Lokshina, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Moscow.  Lokshina talks about the mixed record over the past year, and urges the United States and other governments to discuss human rights issues with Russia, rather than just attack with criticism:

As then-president Putin choked off more and more freedoms, the Bush administration was first oblivious, then impotent. Because of Guantanamo and associated abuses, Lokshina says, “no one asked what the United States could do. The high ground was lost, and so was influence.”

Obama’s new course at home, she says, has changed that equation. The beating of Ponomarev took place on the day of Obama’s meeting with Medvedev in London, and “it was immensely important” that Obama put the event on their agenda. The Russian regime cares about its image abroad, and so if Obama wants he can have an impact on human rights and its protectors, she says. “The best way to do it is not to lecture Medvedev, but to raise it — raise it as one partner would with another.”