When it comes to Russian diplomacy, tit-for-tat is a natural reflex.  We’ve seen it repeatedly from the expulsion of diplomats, awards given to Cold War spies, and peculiar analogies.  While it’s all sadly childish, the measures usually don’t amount to anything meaningful or lasting.

However, the latest attempt at “asymmetric response,” as the Foreign Ministry likes to call it, is altogether more troubling.  After a presidential declaration from Barack Obama that would put visa sanctions against certain Russian officials who had committed human rights abuses (ie, involvement in the Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky cases), as well as Sen. Cardin’s Magnitsky Act and other bills (S.1039), Russia is reportedly drawing up its own retaliatory list of U.S. citizens that would be forbidden from entering Russia.

According to a much discussed article in Kommersant, the Ministry has already cast a list of names for a visa blacklist which included U.S. officials linked to the cases of an alleged Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, and an alleged Russian drug smuggler, Konstantin Yaroshenko.  Supposedly, in the minds of these officials, Bout and Yaroshenko are victims of injustice perpetrated by U.S. officials, serving as crass parables for figures such as Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky.