Author 'honoured' to be blacklisted by Vladimir Putin
An American author has been placed on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “blacklist” a day after the former’s new book was published.
Casey Michel’s book, Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, was published yesterday by Icon Books in the UK and by Macmillan in the US.
The book explores the threat posed by US lobbyists working on behalf of foreign dictatorships and how they might strengthen regimes around the world, including Russia’s.
Yesterday Michel was sanctioned by Russia and placed on Putin’s “blacklist” along with 91 other US citizens, including journalists, academics and industry leaders.
Michel described it as an “an honour and a privilege to be sanctioned by the Kremlin” adding that it was a testament to the work he does at the Human Rights Foundation "to expose the corruption and crimes of authoritarian regimes around the world".
He added: “I’m especially impressed that Russian officials read through my new book so quickly and realised that it revealed so many of their networks of influence and infiltration abroad—including in the United States— and that they decided to sanction me in response.”
Casey’s and 90 other names are now among a list of more than 2,000 US citizens barred from entering Russia. Michel is the author of three further books: The Age of Cryptocurrency, The Unfair Trade, and Che’s Afterlife. He spent much of his two-decade career as a journalist as a reporter, editor, and columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
