David J. Kramer of the German Marshall Fund has published a scathing op/ed in the Washington Post blaming U.S. officials of complicity in Russia’s repression of protesters.  Kramer has a laundry list of suggestions for Washington to create incentives to encourage positive change in the Russian political environment.

For starters, the administration should repudiate its policy of publicly rejecting linkage. Instead, officials should state that a deteriorating internal situation in Russia will affect the bilateral relationship and affect Russian elites’ ability to pursue their interests in the West. Using clear language, they should condemn human rights abuses.

Second, the U.S. government should refuse to help Russian leaders with economic modernization in the absence of any political liberalization. Doing so simply plays into their agenda and runs the risk that we will be seen as complicit in the elites’ phony, top-down drive for modernization.