The heavy cloud cover hanging over the Kremlin as Angela Merkel arrived on Friday could serve as symbol for at least one of the themes the German chancellor was set to raise with her Russian hosts; that of human rights. The key question for the talks with President Vladimir Putin was what could a Christian Democrat chancellor wring from the president on the point of increased democratisation - especially as Putin's steely response to any direct criticism is well known.
Merkel tends to express herself directly, and has taken a clear position on the jailing of two women from the Pussy Riot punk band. While the protest they staged in one of Orthodox Christianity's major shrines would generate controversy in most countries, they would face a two-year work camp sentence in few others bar Russia. The urgency surrounding the issue of human rights in the world's largest country by area is shown not only by the Pussy Riot incident.
Directly before Merkel's arrival, the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, an organisation that has uncovered a series of scandals in the Russian military, announced that it would have to suspend operations. State funding had been cut some time ago, chair Valentina Melnikova said, adding that accepting funding from abroad would cause problems as a result of the recent law requiring non-governmental organisations receiving foreign funding to register as "foreign agents."
Putin signed the measure into law in July in the face of massive criticism. Opponents to the legislation say that it will be used to suppress Putin's opponents and that it is part of a string of repressive measures launched by the Kremlin over recent months. On Wednesday, Putin signed another law that stiffens provisions for treason, granting the authorities wider powers to charge citizens with spying and to impose lengthy sentences.
Merkel's expert on Russia, Andreas Schockenhoff, said the chancellor could raise with the president the aims of the modernising partnership agreed between the two countries, saying this went beyond purely economic issues. It also meant a "freely moving and developing civil society," sources close to the German government said.
Merkel has made clear own concern on the issue. Schockenhoff himself is a recent example. Moscow rejected him as Merkel's Russia expert after he made explicit criticisms of how the Russian courts had handled the Pussy Riot affair, as well as the treatment of other opponents of the Kremlin. Members of the German delegation accompanying Merkel say that a comment by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov continues to reverberate. Following private talks between Merkel and Putin in the summer he publicly dismissed as a "joke" a German suggestion that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could go into exile in Russia.
Moscow's Kommersant newspaper reported that Russia's relations with Germany, its most important ally in the European Union, were "worsening without a doubt." By contrast Russia's human rights activists have praised the Germany's increasingly critical attitude to Moscow in comments made on the sidelines of a parallel discussion forum between the two countries, the St Petersburg Dialogue, held annually to coincide with the summit. A recent critical resolution passed by the Bundestag in Berlin drew praise from Lyudmila Alexeyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. "The fact that people abroad are monitoring events in Russia is important for our work," she said.