Russia
Includes Ukraine and Eastern/Central Europe and NATO and the use of anti-Russian hysteria (eg Russiagate, Ukrainegate) as a US domestic political weapon
2020
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AUGUST 2020
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Serbia has no plans to join NATO — top diplomat
Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic is in Moscow in connection with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s official visit to Russia
MOSCOW, December 20. /TASS/. Serbia has no plans to join NATO, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic told reporters on Wednesday.
Top diplomat says Serbia doesn’t share NATO’s criticism of Russian policy in Balkans
Prime minister says Serbia refrains from joining NATO to avoid rift in society
Serbia expects Russia to act as mediator to resolve Kosovo issue
Serbia sets sight on enhancing overall relations with Russia
"No, we do not plan [to do so]," the diplomat said answering a question on the matter.
Dacic is in Moscow in connection with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s official visit to Russia. The Serbian leader earlier held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier in the day, the Serbian president met with Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Valentina Matviyenko.
[Serbia] [NATO] [Russia]
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JULY 2020
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Mutiny on the Bounties
July 3, 2020
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Has there been another mutiny in Trump’s White House, as Obama’s former ambassador to Russia piles on the nonsense about Trump being in Putin’s pocket?
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
Corporate media are binging on leaked Kool Aid not unlike the WMD concoction they offered 18 years ago to “justify” the U.S.-UK war of aggression on Iraq.
Now Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia under President Obama, has been enlisted by The Washington Post’s editorial page honcho, Fred Hiatt, to draw on his expertise (read, incurable Russophobia) to help stick President Donald Trump back into “Putin’s pocket.” (This has become increasingly urgent as the canard of “Russiagate” — including the linchpin claim that Russia hacked the DNC — lies gasping for air.)
In an oped on Thursday McFaul presented a long list of Vladimir Putin’s alleged crimes, offering a more ostensibly sophisticated version of amateur Russian specialist, Rep. Jason Crow’s (D-CO) claim that: “Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure out how to destroy American democracy.”
[Russia confrontation] [Bounty] [Afghanistan]
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JUNE 2020
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How an Internet ‘Persona’ Helped Birth Russiagate
June 15, 2020
Guccifer 2.0 turns four years old today and the great diversion he took part in becomes clearer by the day, writes Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
Four years ago today, on June 15, 2016, a shadowy Internet persona calling itself “Guccifer 2.0” appeared out of nowhere to claim credit for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee on behalf of WikiLeaks and implicate Russia by dropping “telltale” but synthetically produced Russian “breadcrumbs” in his metadata.
Thanks largely to the corporate media, the highly damaging story actually found in those DNC emails — namely, that the DNC had stacked the cards against Bernie Sanders in the party’s 2016 primary— was successfully obscured.
The media was the message; and the message was that Russia had used G-2.0 to hack into the DNC, interfering in the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump win.
Almost everybody still “knows” that — from the man or woman in the street to the forlorn super sleuth, Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, who actually based indictments of Russian intelligence officers on Guccifer 2.0.
Blaming Russia was a magnificent distraction from the start and quickly became the vogue.
[Russiagate] [Guccifer]
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Putting a Spoke in the Wheel: Russian Efforts to Weaken U.S. Alliances in Northeast Asia
Date & Time:
Thu, 06/18/2020 - 9:00am - 10:00am
Location:
Livestreamed via Zoom
Featuring:
James D.J. Brown
Associate Professor of Political Science
Temple University, Japan Campus
Moderated by:
Kyle Ferrier
Fellow and Director of Academic Affairs
Korea Economic Institute of America
Thursday, June 18, 2020
9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. (U.S. EDT)
10:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. (KST)
Livestreamed via Zoom
Russia is widely accused of employing a range of instruments—both overt and covert—to undermine Western unity. Though it has received less attention, Russia is also engaged in comparable activities to weaken U.S. alliances with South Korea and Japan. Overall, Moscow has achieved several tactical victories, but has yet to seriously damage U.S.-led alliance structures within the region. All the same, Seoul and Tokyo must remain watchful of Moscow’s activities, especially since there are signs of increased cooperation between Russia and China in exploiting wedge issues between the United States and its allies, thereby potentially combining China’s economic weight with Russia’s skills in influence operations.
Please join us for a discussion with Russian foreign policy expert James D.J. Brown on how Moscow is attempting to divide Washington from its allies in Northeast Asia and the implications for these key relationships.
This event will be livestreamed on Zoom with an interactive Q&A session.
[Russia confrontation] [SK US alliance] [US japan alliance] [Imperialism]
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Biden Should Be Named in Criminal Probe in Ukraine, Judge Rules
May 24, 2020
Former U.S. vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden should be named as an alleged perpetrator in a criminal investigation in Ukraine over the firing of the country’s prosecutor general, a judge has ruled, reports Joe Lauria.
Vice President Joe Biden, flanked by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Toria Nuland, sits with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on February 7, 2015, at Munich Security Conference. (State Department)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Joe Biden should be named as an alleged perpetrator in a criminal investigation in Ukraine over the firing of former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, a Ukrainian judge has ruled.
Shokin has alleged that Biden was illegally behind his dismissal in 2016 by threatening to withhold a $1 billion IMF loan to Ukraine if Shokin wasn’t dismissed.
Last month District Court Judge S. V. Vovk in Kiev ruled that police must list Biden as an alleged perpetrator of a crime against Shokin, according to a report on the website Just the News. The possible crime cited is “unlawful interference in Shokin’s work as Ukraine’s chief prosecutor,” the website said, according to an English translation of the investigative judge’s order obtained by the site.
The district court had earlier ruled that there was sufficient evidence in Shokin’s criminal complaint to investigate Biden, but the police had withheld Biden’s name, listing him only as an unnamed American.
[Ukraine] [Biden] [Shokin] [Imperialism]
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MAY 2020
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Turn Out the Lights, Russiagate is Over
May 19, 2020
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The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.
Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.
The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton’s snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an “aggressive” Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven, “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails an “act of war.”)
But that was then. This is now.
Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.
All that’s left is to discover how this all happened.
[Russiagate]
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How Russia is Botching Its Relationship With Syria
by M. K. Bhadrakumar
May 20, 2020
Russia’s relationships with its client states have never been easy. Of course, managing client states is always a complicated exercise. The Kremlin’s cupboard is full of skeletons—Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Cuba (1962), Afghanistan (1980), Ukraine (2014) and so on.
What complicates Russia’s relationship with Syria, which has sometimes been referred to as a Russian client state, is that two strong-willed, highly self-opinionated leaders are also involved here—Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of Syria Bashar al-Assad. Both enjoy unshakeable clan support and can hold their ground. Assad is by no means a Russian protege, and the interests of the two countries do not always overlap, either.
The Syrian government is fighting an existential battle, and it sees no reason to barter away its hard-earned victories in order to accommodate implacable enemies who refuse to reconcile with defeat and seek to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In sum, Assad is hell-bent on regaining Syria’s sovereignty and restoring its territorial integrity, no matter what it takes or the timeline involved—preferably with Russia’s help and cooperation. Assad is clear-headed that unless he achieves this objective, the predatory powers will not leave him in peace.
The Kremlin, on the contrary, has multiple goals, including objectives that are unrelated to the Syrian situation. These range from vanquishing the terrorist groups that include extremist elements from Russia’s restive Muslim population to Russia’s resurgence as a military power with the capability to fight expeditionary wars.
The intervention in Syria has signified post-Soviet Russia’s “return” to the eastern Mediterranean, while the establishment of permanent Russian military bases in Syria has assertively proclaimed Moscow’s intention to play the role of arbiter in Middle Eastern affairs. And all this while hoping to achieve a level of engagement with the U.S., which would give gravitas to the rocky Russian-American relations and reduce Russia’s tensions with Europe.
[Russia Syria]
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APRIL 2020
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Russian-made Superjet wins U.N. contract for air travel services
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s main home-grown passenger plane, the Sukhoi Superjet 100, will be used by the United Nations for its peacekeeping missions after a contract was signed last month, according to Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s federal air transport agency.
The aircraft, which entered service in 2011 and was the first passenger jet built in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, has had a troubled history despite the state pouring billions of dollars into its development. Last year, a Superjet crash-landed in Moscow, killing 41 people.
U.N. peacekeeping spokesman Nick Birnback said: “We are currently finalising several contracts for stand-by, short term air transport services that could be used in support of our field operations –including peacekeeping.”
Earlier this year, two sources told Reuters that there had been no confirmed orders for the Sukhoi Superjet 100 beyond a long-standing deal with state carrier Aeroflot.
“In March 2020, the first U.N. contract was received for using Sukhoi Superjet 100 planes to provide services for U.N. peacekeeping missions,” Rosaviatsiya said in a statement.
The deal was closed by Russian regional carrier Yakutia Airlines, a Rosaviatsiya representative told Reuters.
[UNUS] [Aerospace] [Resurgence]
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MARCH 2020
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Putin Says ‘the Rich Must Pay’ for the Coronavirus
By Mike Whitney
Global Research, March 30, 2020
80 9 24
117
Vladimir Putin has decided how Russia is going to pay for the corona-virus.
He’s going to tax the rich.
It’s a remedy that most Americans would support if they were given the choice, but they weren’t asked. Instead, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package for which the American taxpayer will be held entirely responsible. Even worse, the new legislation contains a $500 billion allocation (another corporate giveaway) that the Federal Reserve will use as a capital base for borrowing $4.5 trillion. That massive sum of money will be used to buy toxic bonds in the corporate bond market. Just as Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) were used to fleece millions of investors out of their hard-earned savings in the run-up to the 2008 Financial Crisis, so too, “toxic” corporate bonds were the weapon of choice that was used to pilfer trillions of dollars from investors in the run-up to today’s crisis. (Same scam, different instrument) The virus was merely the proximate cause that tipped the sector into meltdown. The problem had been festering for years and everyone in the financial community (Including the Fed, the BIS and the IMF) knew that it was only a matter of time before the market would blow sky-high. Which it did.
[Coronavirus] [Russia]
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FEBRUARY 2020
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The FBI Has Been Lying About Seth Rich
By Craig Murray
Global Research, January 30, 2020
Craig Murray 28 January 2020
A persistent American lawyer has uncovered the undeniable fact that the FBI has been continuously lying, including giving false testimony in court, in response to Freedom of Information requests for its records on Seth Rich. The FBI has previously given affidavits that it has no records regarding Seth Rich.
A Freedom of Information request to the FBI which did not mention Seth Rich, but asked for all email correspondence between FBI Head of Counterterrorism Peter Strzok, who headed the investigation into the DNC leaks and Wikileaks, and FBI attorney Lisa Page, has revealed two pages of emails which do not merely mention Seth Rich but have “Seth Rich” as their heading. The emails were provided in, to say the least, heavily redacted form.
Before I analyse these particular emails, I should make plain that they are not the major point. The major point is that the FBI claimed it had no records mentioning Seth Rich, and these have come to light in response to a different FOIA request that was not about him. What other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich, that were not fortuitously picked up by a search for correspondence between two named individuals?
[Seth Rich] [FBI] [DNC] [Russiagate] [WikiLeaks]
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JANUARY 2020
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Putin Proposes Changes to Constitution, Medvedev Resigns: What’s Going On?
January 19, 2020 • 32 Comments
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Natylie Baldwin analyzes last week’s major shakeup in domestic Russian politics.
natyliesbaldwin.com
There’s been a major shakeup this week in domestic Russian politics. It kicked off with President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly earlier this week, which usually happens in the spring, not in January. Among other topics, Putin announced changes he wanted made to the Russian constitution, which he had telegraphed during his December Q&A. This was followed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s resignation (along with his cabinet) and the appointment of Mikhail Mishustin as his replacement.
However, before we delve into the details of this turn of events, it’s important to review what Putin’s priorities have been for Russia since he came to power, which will help to place these latest events into a larger context.
Russian President Vladimir Putin Preparing to Address the Federal Assembly, January 2020. (Kremlin)
As I’ve discussed many times before, Russia was on the verge of being a failed state in 2000 when Putin took the helm. There were crises in every major area of state governance: the military was in shambles, the economy had collapsed, crime was rampant, massive poverty pervaded the country, and Russians were experiencing the worst mortality crisis since World War II.
Putin’s Three Priorities
Having studied Putin’s governance and how Russia has fared over the two decades in which he has ruled, it’s clear that he’s had three main priorities for Russia in the following order:
Ensuring Russia’s national security and sovereignty as an independent nation. In previous writings, I’ve explained the importance of national security to Russians as a result of their history and geography;
Improving the economy and living standards for Russians; and,
The gradual democratization of the country.
[Putin] [Mishustin]
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The IG Report: Malfeasance, Lies, Threats and Denials
Renée Parsons
Left: John Durham, Right: William Barr
It is no surprise that when the Inspector General’s Report was released in early December, the corporate media, which itself has been knee-deep and complicit in spreading the false Russiagate narrative, chose to focus on one narrow conclusion: that, given DOJ’s ‘lax guidelines,’ the IG found no bias related to opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Ergo, once the Media labels the IG Report, all dutiful subscribers and readers fall in line with its dictates, nodding in concurrence, as those who refuse to do their own homework get on board and accept the hogwash they are being fed. Once the Media hypes the repetitive drone that there was ‘no bias,’ the phrase becomes embedded into the collective unconscious and the disinformation becomes gospel.
The question has yet to be asked what role the FISA Court played in its own debasement by blindly accepting the majority of surveillance requests and by lax procedures that allow its own credibility to be violated.
What remains uncertain is exactly how Crossfire Hurricane was born. While it is known that the Clinton campaign (via the DNC) hired GP Fusion (which hired DOJ deputy AG Bruce Ohr’s wife) to dig dirt on a Republican candidate for President and we know that former MI6 asset Christopher Steele became involved with creating a salacious Dossier – but the specific links tying those diverse parts to the FBI remains enigmatic.
An almost immediate response to the ‘no bias’ allegation came from AG William Barr stating that…
The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
…with Special Investigator US Attorney John Durham adding that he:
advised the IG that he did not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
Both responses were highly unusual and may be interpreted as affirmation of a deeper level of complicity than the IG discovered although his investigation was limited to DOJ employees and to the FISA Court process.
It was not until IG Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the true scathing impact of the full Report was understood; thus revealing the true depth of the FBI’s embedded systemic problems.
Horowitz told the Senate panel:
We found and are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate handpicked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an on-going Presidential campaign and even though those involved with the investigations knew that their actions would likely be subjected to close scrutiny. The circumstances reflect the failure not just by those who prepared the applications but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed”
In dialogue with Sen. Crapo about FBI misconduct as ‘mind-numbing’, Horowitz responded “there is such a range of conduct here that is inexplicable and the answers we got were not satisfactory that we’re left trying to understand how could all these errors occur over a nine month period or so…”
[Russiagate] [FBI]
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