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Tag: Vladimir Putin

  • Ex CIA director assumes Trump ‘afraid’ of Putin amid Russia meddling probe

    Ex CIA director assumes Trump ‘afraid’ of Putin amid Russia meddling probe

    Former CIA Director John Brennan suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump might be “afraid” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid Russia meddling probe.

    On Saturday, Trump said after a brief on-the-go meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit with Putin that he believed the Russian leader when he said “he absolutely did not meddle in our election.”

    Trump said that the Russian president was insulted by the ongoing investigation, which is not good for the United States.

    Read also: Trump requests additional $4bn for missile defence programmes

    “I think Mr Trump is, for whatever reason, either intimidated by Mr Putin, afraid of what he could do, or what might come out as a result of these investigations,” Brennan told CNN.

    The U.S. Congress is currently investigating Russia’s alleged meddling in 2016last year’s US presidential election.

    The FBI has been carrying out a similar investigation under Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

    A number of hearings regarding the issue have been held in Congress, but intelligence service officials did not provide any evidence, claiming that the information was confidential.

    Russia denies meddling in the 2016 US election, calling the accusations absurd and groundless.

    NAN

  • Blatter joins Russia World Cup train

    Blatter joins Russia World Cup train

     

    Disgraced former FIFA President Sepp Blatter said declared he will be in Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in spite of a six-year ban from football-related activities, the AFP news agency reported on Friday.

    “I will go to the World Cup in Russia,” Blatter told AFP. “I received an invitation from President Putin.”

    Blatter was at the head of the world’s football governing body for 17 years, including in 2010 when Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup, and Qatar was controversially picked to host the 2022 tournament.

    He was ousted in 2015 following a corruption scandal. The FIFA ethics committee subsequently banned him from the sport for eight years, but the term was reduced to six years after an appeal.

    The ban, however, has not deterred Blatter from planning a trip to Russia when the country hosts the World Cup next summer.

    “I don’t know how long I will go for, whether I will be there for the opening match or the final,”

    Blatter said. “Because I can’t work in football and I don’t have an assignment to do, maybe I will only make a short visit.”

    Africa first hosted the World Cup in 2010 under Blatter when the world converged on South Africa to celebrate the biggest soccer fiesta. By virtue of his ban, the 81 year old Swiss will have to wait till 2021 just a year before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to engage in anything involving patterning to the round leather game.

  • Jehovah’s Witnesses vow to appeal Russia ban in European court

    Jehovah’s Witnesses vow to appeal Russia ban in European court

    Jehovah’s Witnesses said on Tuesday it would appeal a ban on its activities in Russia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, saying it had exhausted all other legal channels.

    It was speaking a day after Russia’s Supreme Court rejected the religious group’s appeal and upheld an April ruling which declared the organisation “extremist” and ordered it to disband in Russia.

    “We plan to appeal this at the European Court of Human Rights as soon as we can,” Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a member of the European Association of Jehovah’s Christian Witnesses, said by phone.

    “All legal avenues inside Russia have been exhausted.”

    Sivulskiy said the Jehovah’s Witnesses strongly disagreed with the court’s ruling against it, but had no option but to comply.

    Religious life in Russia is dominated by the Orthodox Church, which exerts considerable political influence and enjoys the support of President Vladimir Putin.

    Some Orthodox scholars view Jehovah’s Witnesses as a ‘totalitarian sect’.

    Prior to the ban, Russian authorities put several of the group’s publications on a list of banned extremist literature and prosecutors have long cast it as an organization that destroys families, fosters hatred and threatens lives.

    The group, a U.S.-based Christian denomination known for its door-to-door preaching and rejection of military service and blood transfusions, says this description is false.

    It says it has 175,000 followers in Russia.

  • U.S. Senators warn Trump against returning seized Russian diplomatic compounds

    U.S. Senators warn Trump against returning seized Russian diplomatic compounds

    Three U.S. senators warned President Donald Trump against making any deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to return two seized Russian diplomatic compounds, a letter from the lawmakers showed.

    Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Marco Rubio and Johnny Iakson gave the warning in their letter to Trump.

    “The return of these two facilities to Russia while the Kremlin refuses to address its influence campaign against the U.S. would embolden President Vladimir Putin and invite a dangerous escalation in the Kremlin’s destabilising actions against democracies worldwide,” they said.

    The senators wrote their letter ahead of a scheduled face-to-face meeting between Putin and Trump on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg.

    Senior Trump administration officials have said that the two leaders could discuss the return of the two diplomatic compounds in the U.S. states of New York and Maryland.

    But the three senators urged Trump to “remove the return of these facilities from any negotiation or consideration in your discussions with President Putin during your upcoming trip.”

    Former President Barack Obama shut down the two compounds in December 2016, amid allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    Russia denies meddling in the vote, insisting that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

  • Trump team lack positive shifts- Russia

    Trump team lack positive shifts- Russia

    Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov on Tuesday said that Moscow was concerned that contacts with the Donald Trump administration had not yet led to positive shifts in the relations between the two nations.

    Russian news agencies quoted Ryabkov as saying that as nuclear powers Russia and the United States cannot afford to keep their relations at such a low level.

    NAN reports that tensions between the two countries have soared over the conflict in Syria, with Russian President Vladimir Putin backing Syria’s government and the U.S. opposing it.

    On April 12, Trump also said that relations with Russia “may be at an all-time low” following Syria’s use of chemical weapons on April 4, and the U.S. airstrike that followed.

    Stopping just short of accusing Russia of complicity with the sarin gas attack against civilians April 4, Trump said it’s “certainly possible” that Russia had advance knowledge of the use of chemical weapons by its ally.

    “I like to think they didn’t know. But they could have. They were there,” he said.

    Trump said he had no regrets about the decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base two days later, saying Syrian leader Bashar Assad left him no choice by gassing innocent children.

     

  • Putin condemns U.S. attack on Syrian airbase

    Putin condemns U.S. attack on Syrian airbase

    Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria on Friday, warning the move would further damage already battered U.S.-Russia relations which Moscow had hoped President Donald Trump would revive.

    U.S. officials said they had informed Russian forces ahead of the strikes, intended to punish the Syrian government for what they say was a chemical weapons attack on Wednesday, and had avoided hitting Russian personnel.

    Satellite imagery suggests the Shayrat air base that was struck in western Syria is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin’s effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups.

    Russia’s main air base and a naval facility were not hit.

    Moscow had been hoping to cooperate with Trump to jointly fight Islamic State in Syria, a move it was banking on to boost U.S.-Russia ties which are at a post-Cold War low.

    After the U.S. strikes, that task now looks harder.

    “President Putin views the U.S. strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext,” said a Kremlin statement.

    “This step by Washington will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties.”

    Putin, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was holding a meeting of Russia’s Security Council to discuss the strike on Friday afternoon and the Russian Foreign Ministry called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

    A foreign ministry statement said Moscow was suspending a Syrian air safety agreement with the U. S. originally drawn up to ensure that the two countries’ planes did not collide.

    “It’s clear to any specialist that the decision to launch a strike was taken in Washington before the events in Idlib (the province where the gas poisoning took place) which were simply used as a pretext for a show of force,” the ministry said.

    The Russian Defence Ministry meanwhile mocked the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes, saying only 23 missiles had found their targets.

    It was unclear where another 36 had landed, it said, promising Syrian air defenses would now be beefed up.

    A Russian frigate armed with Kalibr cruise missiles sailed through the Bosphorus en route to the eastern Mediterranean in the early hours of Friday morning, according to pictures taken by Turkish bloggers for their online Bosphorus Naval News project.

    It was unclear if that was related to the U.S. strikes.

    Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there were no reports of any Russians being hurt in the attack.

    He said he hoped U.S.-Russia ties would not be irreparably hurt as a result.

    Rex Tillerson is due to make his first visit to Moscow next week as U.S. secretary of state, an eagerly awaited event in Russia where politicians have been anxious to try to use the change of administration to reboot relations.

     

  • Russian air strike kills Turkish soldiers

    President Vladimir Putin has sent condolences after a Russian air strike accidentally killed three Turkish soldiers in northern Syria.

    The strike hit a building near the town of al-Bab, believing it to contain Islamic State (IS) fighters rather than Turkish troops, Turkey’s military said.

    At least 11 others were wounded in the so-called friendly fire incident, the BBC reports.

    They were supporting Syrian rebels who are locked in a fierce battle to try to capture al-Bab from IS fighters.

    Russia and Turkey, who back opposing sides in the Syrian war, have been jointly conducting air strikes on IS in the town in recent weeks.

    The Russian aircraft had been planning to hit IS targets but “by accident three of our soldiers were martyred when a building was bombed where our units were,” Turkey’s military said.

    The Kremlin has issued a statement (in Russian) saying President Putin had, in a telephone call with his Turkish counterpart, “expressed condolences over a tragic incident which resulted in the deaths of several Turkish troops in the al-Bab area”.

    President Putin told Recep Tayyip Erdogan that poor co-ordination between Moscow and Ankara was to blame for the accident, RIA news agency reports.

    The two leaders agreed to “increase military co-operation during operations in Syria against IS militants and other extremist organisations.”

     

  • Russia will not expel U.S diplomats – Putin

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has declined to engage in a tit-for-tat after the United States expelled 35 Russian diplomats over the hacking scandal.

    He said Russia would not “stoop” to the level of “irresponsible diplomacy,” and would work to restore ties with America under President-elect Donald Trump.

    The Russian foreign ministry had formally asked him to expel 35 U.S diplomats in retaliation.

    Russia denied involvement in hacking, calling U.S sanctions “ungrounded.”

    Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, accused the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama of ending in “anti-Russian death throes.”

    Mr. Obama, who will be replaced by Mr. Trump on 20 January, had vowed action against Russia amid US accusations that it directed cyber-attacks on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

    Mr. Trump has dismissed the hacking claims as “ridiculous” and said Americans should “get on with our lives” when asked previously about the possibility of sanctions.

    However, he said late on Thursday he would meet U. S intelligence chiefs next week to be “updated on the facts of this situation.”

     

  • Russia vows response to U.S expulsions

    Russia has promised to respond to the expulsion of 35 of its diplomats from Washington, amid a bitter dispute over alleged Russian interference in the recent United States presidential election.

    A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin’s reaction would cause the U.S “significant discomfort.”

    The foreign ministry said Russia’s response would be announced on Friday.

    The BBC reports that Russia has denied any hacking involvement and called the U. S action “ungrounded.”

    Under the U.S action taken on Thursday:

    35 diplomats from Russia’s Washington embassy and its consulate in San Francisco were declared “persona non grata” and given 72 hours to leave the U.S with their families

    Two compounds said to have been used by Russian intelligence services in New York and Maryland will be closed.

    Sanctions were announced against nine entities and individuals including two Russian intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB

    President Barack Obama had vowed action against Russia amid U.S accusations that it directed cyber-attacks on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

    Emails stolen from her campaign manager and from the servers of the Democratic National Committee – some containing embarrassing information for Democrats – were released during the election campaign through the Wikileaks website.

    Moscow has made it clear it will hit back.

    The Kremlin has promised an “appropriate response” to the U.S sanctions; the Russian foreign ministry said there will be Russian “counter-measures.”

    In the tradition of the Cold War, tit-for-tat is the likely reaction. That would mean Russia expelling a similar number of American diplomats.

     

     

  • Putin announces Syrian ceasefire deal

    Putin announces Syrian ceasefire deal

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that the Syrian Government and rebels had agreed to a ceasefire and that Russia and Turkey would act as guarantors.

    The Syrian ceasefire involves more than 60,000 rebels, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu says.

    The Syrian government confirmed the deal, with the army saying that a nationwide ceasefire would take effect at midnight local time (2200 GMT).

    The truce excludes the Islamic State extremist militia, the formerly al-Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Sham Front and their affiliates, the Syrian army said in a statement.

    Russia also intends to reduce its military presence in Syria, Putin said.

    “The decision to halt combat actions is aimed at providing favourable conditions to back the political course of the crisis in Syria,’’ the army command said in a statement carried by Syria’s state news agency SANA

    Russia and Turkey have supported opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, but in recent months, amid a rapprochement in their relations, have ramped up efforts to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

    The latest ceasefire comes a week after Syrian forces regained full control of Aleppo after a Russia-backed campaign forced rebel fighters to leave their last enclave in the northern city.

    The conflict in Syria started in March 2011 with a crackdown on mostly peaceful anti-government protests.

    World powers have since made numerous attempts to end the war. Past truces have largely held only for brief periods, allowing in some humanitarian aid or letting people flee. Some local ceasefire has been more successful.

    The Minister expressed hope that the United States under Donald Trump, who would be inaugurated as president in January, would join the Russian-backed initiative in Syria.