Great news, but horrific that it came this close. Russia should not be in Interpol, nor should any dictatorship without an independent judiciary. They only follow the rules when it suits them and otherwise abuse the system.
Btw, Russia's economy is the size of South Korea's, with oil, gas, 170x the territory and nearly 3x the population. But Putin dedicates it to aggression, repression, and corruption, so Russia's people are much poorer and unfree.
South Korea's GDP per capita is 3 times higher than Russia, and even that is distorted because Russian income inequality is vastly higher. More billionaires then Japan or UK, over 13% in poverty. Corruption and stagnation.
After Litvinenko was murdered with polonium in London in 2006, his suspected killer fled home to Russia, which of course denied all requests for his questioning or extradition. He joined parliament.
Meanwhile, Putin's puppet courts concoct a stream of convictions against targets of the regime, then tells Interpol to track them down, often leading to detention & harassment, even arrest and extradition to a dictatorship that has murdered such political prisoners.
As in so many cases, this Putin model has been imitated. They join Interpol & other international institutions, hailed as a step toward liberalization & integration, and then weaken & abuse them without conceding much or anything.
Btw, unless I'm mistaken, when China's Meng was elected Interpol chief in Nov 2016 (to much consternation in the human rights community), they didn't release even the count of the secret ballot. Change in policy, it seems.
To the "America is just as bad as Russia and China!" crowd, this could never happen in any dictatorship. (Meng Hongwei was likely snatched up by China because he wasn't doing enough to round up regime targets. (Their 'Operation Skynet.' Really.)) washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-lin…
Of course China and Russia do have massive corruption problems, but when someone gets arrested for it it's only because they were on the the wrong team at the wrong time and lost the battle. As @Kasparov63 says, "The system isn't corrupt. Corruption IS the system."
