Putin's 'skewed vision' threatens freedom: US lawmaker

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin's "skewed vision of crime and punishment" threatens to stifle post-Soviet freedoms, a senior US lawmaker and foreign policy expert warned Thursday.

Tom Lantos, chairman of the House of Representatives committee on Foreign Affairs, warned that Russian politics was approaching an "ominous autumn" and condemned crackdowns on peaceful protests and media freedom.

"We are not in a new Cold War. We don't see the descending of a new Iron Curtain," said Lantos, who fled to the United States from Soviet occupation in his native Hungary.

"But we have moved back very, very sharply in the wrong direction," he said, issuing a stinging warning about Putin's conduct during a committee hearing on political conditions in...