The Jim Bakker Show

Russia tells White House it will not return Crimea to Ukraine

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Wednesday it would not hand back Crimea to Ukraine or discuss the matter with foreign partners after the White House said U.S. President Donald Trump expected the annexed Black Sea peninsula to be returned.

Moscow says an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to become part of Russia in a 2014 referendum wanting protection from what the Kremlin cast as an illegal coup in Kiev.

Ukraine says the referendum was a sham held at gunpoint after Russian troops illegally annexed the peninsula, that Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by people power, and that Moscow should return Crimea.

“We don’t give back our own territory. Crimea is territory belonging to the Russian Federation,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, told a news briefing on Wednesday.

The 2014 annexation prompted the United States and the European Union to impose sanctions on Russia, plunging Western relations with the Kremlin to their worst level since the Cold War.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that Trump expected and wanted to get along with Russia, but was expecting Moscow to hand Crimea back.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about Spicer’s comments, said President Vladimir Putin had already explained why Crimeans had turned to Russia.

“The theme of returning Crimea will not be discussed … Russia does not discuss its territorial integrity with foreign partners,” Peskov told a conference call with reporters.

Trump had not raised the Crimean issue in a Jan. 28 phone call with Putin, Peskov noted, saying the Kremlin would try to make contacts with the Trump administration to try to improve ties which he said were in “a lamentable state.”

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, told MPs any talk of Crimea’s status amounted to a challenge to Russia’s territorial integrity.

Volodin, a close Putin ally, told the Interfax news agency Trump had promised in his election campaign to work to improve relations with Russia.

“Let’s wait for some first-hand words from the U.S. president,” said Volodin. “When people get elected by voters it’s not merely for warm words and the ability to speak, but for concrete promises … that will be fulfilled.”

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova/ Alessandra Prentice; editing by John Stonestreet)

Russian jets in ‘unsafe’ encounters with destroyer: U.S. official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Multiple Russian military aircraft came close to a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Black Sea on Feb. 10, incidents considered “unsafe and unprofessional,” a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said no such incidents had occurred.

“There were no incidents of any kind on Feb. 10, related to flights by Russian military jets in the Black Sea near the U.S. Navy destroyer Porter,” Russian news agencies cited a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, as saying.

But Captain Danny Hernandez, a spokesman for U.S. European Command, cited three separate incidents involving Russian aircraft and the USS Porter. One involved two Russian Su-24 jets, another a separate Su-24, and the third a larger IL-38.

“USS Porter queried all aircraft and received no response,” Hernandez said. “Such incidents are concerning because they can result in accident or miscalculation,” he added.

The incidents involving the Su-24 were considered to be unsafe and unprofessional by the commanding officer of the Porter because of their high speed and low altitude, while the IL-38 flew at an unusually low altitude, Hernandez said.

Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the lone Su-24 came within 200 yards (meters) of the Porter at an altitude of 300 feet (90 meters).

In April 2016 two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea so close that they created wake in the water.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Russia finds main black box from Black Sea crash jet

Flowers in memory of passengers and crew members of Russian military Tu-154, which crashed into the Black Sea on its way to Syria on Sunday, are placed at an embankment in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Russia

By Andrew Osborn and Peter Hobson

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has found the main flight recorder from a military plane that crashed into the Black Sea killing all 92 on board, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday, amid unconfirmed reports that authorities had grounded all aircraft of the same type.

The recorder, one of several reported to be on board, contains information that could help investigators identify the cause of Sunday’s crash, which killed dozens of Red Army Choir singers and dancers en route to Syria to entertain Russian troops in the run-up to the New Year.

Investigators have so far said that pilot error or a technical fault, rather than terrorism, are most likely to have caused the Defence Ministry’s Tupolev-154 to crash into the sea.

The black box, which was found by a remote-controlled underwater vehicle at a depth of around 55ft (17 metres) and 1 mile (1,600 metres) from the resort of Sochi, has been sent to a Defence Ministry facility in Moscow for analysis.

“The casing holding the flight recorder is in a satisfactory condition,” the ministry said in a statement.

“After it is technically cleaned in distilled water we will start transcribing it.”

The ministry said numerous fragments of the plane had been found, including the engine, the landing gear and pieces of the fuselage.

The Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source as saying Russia had grounded all TU-154 planes until the cause of Sunday’s crash became clear. There was no official confirmation of that.

The Defence Ministry says the downed jet, a Soviet-era plane built in 1983, had last been serviced in September and underwent more major repairs in December 2014.

Russian pilots say the TU-154 is still flight worthy, though major Russian commercial airlines have long since replaced it with Western-built planes. Experts say only two are registered with Russian passenger airlines with the rest registered to various government ministries.

The last big TU-154 crash was in 2010 when a Polish jet carrying then-president Lech Kaczynski and much of Poland’s political elite went down in western Russia killing everyone on board.

The Interfax news agency, citing a law enforcement source, said a second flight recorder had also been found in the wreckage of Sunday’s crash, but not yet raised to the surface.

The Defence Ministry said that search and rescue teams have so far recovered 12 bodies and 156 body fragments.

(Editing by John Stonestreet and Raissa Kasolowsky)

All 92 on Syria-bound Russian military jet killed in crash

A woman lays flowers in memory of passengers and crew members of Russian military Tu-154 plane, which crashed into the Black Sea, at the Russian embassy in Minsk

By Polina Devitt and Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian military plane carrying 92 people, including dozens of Red Army Choir singers, dancers and orchestra members, crashed into the Black Sea on its way to Syria on Sunday, killing everyone on board, Russian authorities said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said one of its TU-154 Tupolev planes had disappeared from radar screens at 0525 MSK (9.25 p.m. ET), two minutes after taking off from Sochi in southern Russia, where it had stopped to refuel from Moscow, on its way to Syria.

Major-General Igor Konashenkov, a ministry spokesman, told reporters that nobody had survived.

“The area of the crash site has been established. No survivors have been spotted,” he said. An unnamed ministry source told Russian news agencies no life rafts had been found, while another source told the Interfax agency that the plane had not sent an SOS signal.

In televised comments, President Vladimir Putin, speaking in St Petersburg, declared Dec. 26 a national day of mourning.

The jet, a Soviet-era Tupolev plane built in 1983, had been carrying 84 passengers and eight crew members.

At least 60 were members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, better known internationally as the Red Army Choir, and were being flown out to Russia’s Hmeymim air base in Syria to entertain troops in the run-up to the New Year.

Nine Russian reporters were also on board as well as military servicemen.

Konashenkov said fragments of the plane had been found at a depth of about 70 meters (yards) in the Black Sea about 1.5 km (1 mile) off the coast near the city of Sochi.

“The search operation is continuing,” said Konashenkov. “Four ships, four helicopters, and a plane and a drone are working in the area,” he said, saying a military commission had flown to Sochi to look into what happened.

Six ships from Russia’s Black Sea fleet were on their way to the crash site, and more than 100 divers were being drafted in to search the area along with a mini-submarine.

Konashenkov said four bodies had been recovered from the sea. Russian news agencies cited a higher figure.

Russia’s RIA news agency, citing an unidentified security source, said preliminary information indicated that the plane had crashed because of a technical malfunction or a pilot error. Another source told Russian agencies that the possibility of a militant act had been ruled out. The weather had been good.

Konashenkov said the plane had last been serviced in September and undergone more major repairs in December 2014. He said the pilot was experienced and that the plane had about 7,000 flying hours on its clock.

According to the defense ministry’s passenger manifest, Elizaveta Glinka, a member of Putin’s advisory human rights council, was on the plane.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters it was too early to say what had caused the crash. Putin was being kept constantly informed of the latest developments, Peskov said.

Russian military investigators said in a statement they had opened a criminal investigation into the crash.

The Kremlin said Putin expressed his deepest condolences to those who had lost loved ones in the crash and ordered Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to head a government investigatory commission.

Russia’s Defence Ministry regularly flies musicians into Syria to put on concerts for military personnel. The base they were heading for, Hmeymim, is in Latakia province. It is from there that Russia launches air strikes against Syrian rebels.

The last big TU-154 crash was in 2010 when a Polish jet carrying then-president Lech Kaczynski and much of Poland’s political elite crashed in western Russia killing everyone on board.

Russian news agencies cited Denis Manturov, the Russian Transport Minister, as saying on Sunday it was premature to talk about withdrawing the TU-154 from service.

On Dec. 19, a Russian military jet crashed in Siberia with 39 people on board as it tried to make an emergency landing near a Soviet-era military base. Nobody was killed in that incident, though 32 people were airlifted to hospital.

(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk and Svetlana Reiter; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Russia announces war games after accusing Ukraine of terrorist plot

Russian President Putin chairs meeting with members of Security Council to discuss additional security measures for Crimea after clashes on

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin summoned his security council and the Russian Navy announced war games in the Black Sea, a day after the Russian president accused Ukraine of trying to provoke a conflict over Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

The belligerent posture heightened worries in Ukraine that Russia may plan to ramp up fighting in a war between Kiev and pro-Russian eastern separatists that had been de-escalated by a shaky peace process.

Using some of his most aggressive rhetoric against Kiev since the height of the war two years ago, Putin has pledged to take counter-measures against Ukraine, which he accused of sending saboteurs into Crimea to carry out terrorist acts.

Ukraine has called the accusations false and says they look like a pretext for Russia to escalate hostilities. Such an escalation could be used by Putin to demand better terms in the Ukraine peace process, or to inflame nationalist passions at home ahead of Russian parliamentary elections next month.

The Russian leader met his top military and intelligence service brass on Thursday and reviewed “scenarios for counter-terrorism security measures along the land border, offshore and in Crimean air space,” the Kremlin said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he had ordered all Ukrainian units near Crimea and in eastern Ukraine onto the highest state of combat readiness. He was seeking to urgently speak to Putin, the leaders of France and Germany, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and European Council President Donald Tusk.

Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border guards, said Russia had massed troops on Ukraine’s border with Crimea in recent days following an uptick in Russian military activity in northern Crimea and heavier fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“These troops are coming with more modern equipment and there are air assault units,” he told a news briefing in Kiev.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its navy – whose Black Sea Fleet is based in Crimea – would start to hold exercises in the area to practice repelling underwater attacks by saboteurs.

PUTIN’S PLAY

Russia says it caught the infiltrators after at least two armed clashes on the border between Crimea and Ukraine over the weekend, and one of its soldiers and an FSB security service employee were killed. Kiev denies the events ever happened.

Whatever the truth, the allegations have already scuppered planned talks about eastern Ukraine slated for the sidelines of a G20 summit in China next month. Putin said such talks would now be “pointless.”

In an editorial, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti said escalation was a proven Kremlin tactic ahead of negotiations. Putin was trying either to alter or to tear up the Minsk peace process, named for the Belarus capital where truces were hammered out for the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.

“Events in Donbass in 2014-15 showed that the Kremlin tactic is to raise the stakes before negotiations. The main political question now is what will happen to the Minsk process. Will Russia break away from it or will it demand new concessions?” the newspaper wrote.

“Putin in his rhetoric has returned to the start of 2014. Once again, he does not deem the Ukrainian authorities legitimate.”

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst in Ukraine, said he thought the Kremlin had its own revised peace plan for eastern Ukraine up its sleeve.

“Putin will scare the West with the prospect of full-scale conflict with Ukraine,” he said. “He is trying to increase pressure on Kiev to force Ukraine to accept a Russian plan to resolve the conflict in the east.

“Putin won’t go all out for a big war. But there might be pinpoint military operations against radicals whose bases are located near the border with Crimea.”

PUTIN’S AIMS

The European Union and the United States have tied the success of talks under the Minsk process to any possible decision to lift financial sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

But Moscow has grown increasingly frustrated by the talks and by what it says is Ukraine’s refusal to fulfill the terms of the truce. Kiev for its part says Moscow is the one that is still stirring tensions among pro-Russian separatists.

Escalating tension over Crimea could give Putin a pretext to abandon talks altogether, or demand changes to their format and terms, while holding out the prospect of a full-scale renewal of hostilities if he doesn’t get what he wants.

It could also help rally Russians ahead of the parliamentary vote, in which the main pro-Kremlin United Russia Party might struggle to win as many votes as usual because of an economic slump caused by low oil prices as well as the sanctions.

“While polls show United Russia doing okay (60 percent support), Putin never likes to take chances with domestic politics,” Timothy Ash, a strategist at Nomura Bank, wrote in a note. “(He) will want to impress on the Russian electorate his own strength and how lucky they are to be Russian citizens as perhaps compared to their Ukrainian counterparts.”

The imbroglio also gives Crimea’s pro-Russian authorities an excuse for their failure to raise living standards since Russia took over. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed prime minister, told state TV he blamed the Ukrainian incursions on the U.S. State Department.

Putin may also hope instability in Ukraine can feed into the U.S. presidential election campaign, where Republican Donald Trump accuses President Barack Obama’s administration of incompetence and has called for better ties with Moscow. Putin may yet hope to cut a deal on both Ukraine and Syria, the two big issues of contention with Washington, before Obama exits.

What actually happened in and around Crimea at the weekend remains disputed. U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt said Washington had so far seen nothing to corroborate Russia’s version. A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini also said there had been no independent confirmation.

Russia’s Kommersant newspaper on Thursday cited unnamed security sources as saying a group of men Russia had arrested for planning attacks had confessed to seeking to destroy Crimea’s tourist industry by bombing resorts.

The sources told Kommersant two of seven saboteurs in one group had been killed and five captured. Most were Crimea residents and some had Russian passports, they said.

In Ukraine, the brother of one of the detained men said he thought his brother had been kidnapped as part of “a big game.”

(Additonal reporting by Matthias Williams, Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets and Alexei Kalmykov in Kiev, by Maria Tsvetkova and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow and by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Peter Graff)

U.S. says it will stay in Black Sea despite Russian warning

By Steve Scherer

ABOARD THE USS MASON (Reuters) – The United States will maintain its presence in the Black Sea despite a Russian warning that a U.S. destroyer patrolling there undermined regional security, the U.S. Navy Secretary said.

The USS Porter entered the Black Sea this month, drawing heavy criticism from Moscow. Turkey and Romania are expected to push for a bigger NATO presence in the Black Sea at the NATO summit in Warsaw next month.

Aboard the USS Mason, another U.S. destroyer, in the Mediterranean on Thursday, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told Reuters that it was the U.S. Navy’s job to deter aggression and keep sea lanes open.

“We’re going to be there,” Mabus said of the Black Sea. “We’re going to deter. That’s the main reason we’re there — to deter potential aggression.”

Mabus spoke days after Russia criticized NATO discussions about a creating a permanent force in the Black Sea.

“If a decision is made to create a permanent force, of course, it would be destabilizing, because this is not a NATO sea,” Russian news agencies quoted senior Foreign Ministry official Andrei Kelin as saying.

Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, has its own Black Sea Fleet based at Sevastopol.

The NATO summit takes place as relations between Russia and the alliance are severely strained over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis and in Syria. While Russia says it poses no threat to alliance, NATO is considering what to do to counter what it sees as growing Russian aggression.

Mabus said the United States follows the rules of the Montreux Convention, which states that countries without a Black Sea coastline cannot keep their warships there for more than 21 days. NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria are all Black Sea Basin countries.

Bulgaria appeared to buckle to Russian pressure on Thursday. Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said he would not join a proposed NATO fleet in the Black Sea because it should be a place for holidays and tourists, not war.

Also increasing tensions with Moscow is the U.S. Navy’s deployment of two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean ahead the NATO summit as Washington seeks to balance an increase in Russian military activities in the Mediterranean.

“We’ve been in the Mediterranean continuously for 70 years now, since World War Two,” Mabus said. “We’ve been keeping the sea lanes open…It’s what we do.”

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Russia: We will respond to U.S. Naval vessel in Black Sea

U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter sets sail in the Bosphorus, on its way to the Black Sea in Istanbul

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian Foreign ministry said Moscow would respond to a U.S. naval ship’s entry into the Black Sea with unspecified measures, saying it and other deployments were designed to ratchet up tensions ahead of a NATO summit, the RIA news agency reported.

Russian state media reported that the USS Porter, a U.S. naval destroyer, entered the Black Sea a few days ago on a routine deployment, a move it said raised hackles in Moscow because it had recently been fitted with a new missile system.

U.S. Navy officials told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. military would also have two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean this month ahead of a July NATO summit in Warsaw as Washington sought to balance Russian military activities.

“Of course, this does not meet with our approval and will undoubtedly lead to response measures,” RIA cited Andrei Kelin, a senior Foreign Ministry official, as saying about the USS Porter’s movements.

He also said the deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean was a show of force which in his view deepened a chill in ties between Moscow and Washington caused by Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Syria.

“As regards the overall situation of course there is a definite increase and stoking of tensions in our relations,” he was quoted as saying.

“It is all being done on the eve of the Warsaw NATO summit. It is a show of force.”

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Alexander Winning)

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