Just last week, Mr. Putin, at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, lashed out at Mr. Browder, accusing him of being involved in "crime, deception and theft". Russian officials have repeatedly tried to prosecute Mr. Browder on various trumped-up pretexts, including recently the outrageous charge that he, and not the prison officials, caused Magnitsky's death.
"Two undercover policemen claimed that women had called out to them, but that is just a trumped-up pretext," said one of the protesters, all of whom declined to be named.
One year after his 2010 return to office, the Media Authority, which he heads, suspended Klubradio — our only independent radio station, with hundreds of thousands of listeners — on a trumped-up pretext.
As the White House struggled to impose pressure on Putin, Kerry accused the Russian leader of acting "in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext".
Admittedly, that might be tricky for John Kerry, given his Senate vote in 2002 giving George W Bush the authority to use military force against Saddam Hussein – a record that should have given him pause before denouncing Vladimir Putin for acting "in a 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext".
"You just don't in the 21st Century behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext," Mr Kerry told the CBS program Face the Nation.
Putin has dismissed Navalny, who was barred from running in the presidential election on what he said was a trumped-up pretext, as a troublemaker bent on sowing chaos on behalf of Washington.
"You just don't, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext," Kerry told the CBS programme "Face the Nation".
This leads to a lot of hypocrisy, of course, such as John Kerry castigating Russia yesterday, by saying: "You just don't in the 21st century behave in nineteenth century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext". Except when that country is named Iraq, of course.
Russia joined in condemning the U.S. strike, with President Vladimir Putin calling the attack on Moscow's ally "an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law" executed "under a trumped-up pretext," according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
These interests -- to the extent that they are legitimate and not trumped-up Russian pretexts -- should be considered, and, as Secretary Kerry proposed, Russia has other means and forums for raising these issues besides a military invasion of Ukraine.
