Secretary of State Mike Pompeo should summon Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov and issue him a warning: unless Paul Whelan is immediately provided with better treatment, and regular consular access to U.S. diplomats, President Trump will cancel his planned meeting with Vladimir Putin at next month’s G-20 summit in Japan.
Currently detained in Moscow, Whelan is a former U.S. Marine who has been held for five months without any semblance of due process. And as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent recorded, Whelan says Russia’s FSB domestic security service is treating him terribly.
Paul Whelan statement in court – he calls this spy case a political kidnap, punishment for sanctions vs Russia pic.twitter.com/WszuagoPGf
— Sarah Rainsford (@sarahrainsford) May 24, 2019
Whelan added that the FSB interrogator governing his supervision has been threatening him in order to extract a confession.
So far, the Russian government doesn’t care. As Russia sees it, Whelan is a useful propaganda riposte to the prosecution of Maria Butina, recently sentenced in U.S. federal court for espionage-related activities. And Putin wants the U.S. to know that he can play hardball.
Pompeo should look Ambassador Antonov, a proud Putin hardliner, in the eye. And Pompeo should tell him that if the Russians want to play hardball, he’s confident the U.S. has a deeper bench. He should make clear that unless Whelan is afforded immediate, verified improvements to his care, Trump will cancel his meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit. This will grab Antonov’s attention. Putin is desperate for a Trump meeting because he remains convinced that a couple more meetings will break the U.S.-European Union sanctions regime on Moscow. Considering President Trump’s penchant for Putin, this is not an impossible reality.
The basic point here, however, is that the Russians are trying to break Whelan in typical FSB style. They are probably keeping him up all night, threatening his family, and humiliating him. This reflects both the FSB’s fanatical penchant for brutality and the dark anti-American humor of the Russian intelligence services. They just love to hurt Americans, full stop. When the Russians play these games, there can be only one American response: escalation.
