Tag Archives: Russia

Turkey’s Erdogan calls Syria’s Assad a terrorist, says impossible to continue with him

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference with Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi (not pictured) at Carthage Palace in Tunis, Tunisia, December 27, 2017.

TUNIS (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a terrorist and said it was impossible for Syrian peace efforts to continue with him.

Syria’s foreign ministry quickly responded by accusing Erdogan of himself supporting terrorist groups fighting Assad in Syria’s civil war.

Turkey has demanded the removal of Assad from power and backed rebels fighting to overthrow him, but it has toned down its demands since it started working with Assad’s allies Russia and Iran for a political resolution.

“Assad is definitely a terrorist who has carried out state terrorism,” Erdogan told a televised news conference with his Tunisian counterpart Beji Caid Essebsi in Tunis.

“It is impossible to continue with Assad. How can we embrace the future with a Syrian president who has killed close to a million of his citizens?” he said, in some of his harshest comments for weeks.

Though Turkey has long demanded Assad’s removal, it is now more focused in Syria on the threat from Islamist militants and Kurdish fighters it considers allies of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who it says have formed a “terror corridor” on its southern border.

Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara views as an extension of the outlawed PKK which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since the 1980s, cannot be invited to Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana.

The YPG is the main element in a force that Washington has assisted with training, weapons, air support and help from ground advisers in the battle against Islamic State. That U.S. support has angered Ankara, a NATO ally of Washington.

Despite its differences with Russia and Iran, Turkey has worked with the two powers in the search for a political solution in Syria.

Ankara, Moscow and Tehran also brokered a deal to set up and monitor a “de-escalation zone” to reduce fighting between insurgents and Syrian government forces in Syria’s rebel-held northwestern Idlib province.

“We can’t say (Assad) will handle this. It is impossible for Turkey to accept this. Northern Syria has been handed over as a terror corridor. There is no peace in Syria and this peace won’t come with Assad,” Erdogan said.

Syria’s state news agency SANA quoted a foreign ministry source as saying Erdogan “continues to misdirect Turkish public opinion with his usual froth in an attempt to absolve himself of the crimes which he has committed against the Syrian people through advancing support to the various terrorist groups in Syria”.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ece Toksabay in Ankara; Editing by Dominic Evans and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

China halts oil product exports to North Korea in November as sanctions bite

A North Korean iron ore mine, near the North Korean town of Musan is seen in this general view taken May 11, 2013.

By Ryan Woo and Muyu Xu

BEIJING (Reuters) – China exported no oil products to North Korea in November, Chinese customs data showed, apparently going above and beyond sanctions imposed earlier this year by the United Nations in a bid to limit petroleum shipments to the isolated country.

Tensions have flared anew over North Korea’s ongoing nuclear and missile programmes, pursued in defiance of years of U.N. resolutions. Last week, the U.N. Security Council imposed new caps on trade with North Korea, including limiting oil product shipments to just 500,000 barrels a year.

Beijing also imported no iron ore, coal or lead from North Korea in November, the second full month of the latest trade sanctions imposed by U.N.

China, the main source of North Korea’s fuel, did not export any gasoline, jet fuel, diesel or fuel oil to its isolated neighbour last month, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Tuesday.

November was the second straight month China exported no diesel or gasoline to North Korea. The last time China’s jet fuel shipments to Pyongyang were at zero was in February 2015.

“This is a natural outcome of the tightening of the various sanctions against North Korea,” said Cai Jian, an expert on North Korea at Fudan University in Shanghai.

The tightening “reflects China’s stance”, he said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she didn’t know any details about the oil products export situation.

“As a principle, China has consistently fully, correctly, conscientiously and strictly enforced relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea. We have already established a set of effective operating mechanisms and methods,” she said at a regular briefing on Tuesday, without elaborating.

Since June, state-run China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) [CNPET.UL] has suspended sales of gasoline and diesel to North Korea, concerned that it would not get paid for its goods, Reuters previously reported.

Beijing’s move to turn off the taps completely is rare.

In March 2003, China suspended oil supplies to North Korea for three days after Pyongyang fired a missile into waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

It is unknown if China still sells crude oil to Pyongyang. Beijing has not disclosed its crude exports to North Korea for several years.

Industry sources say China still supplies about 520,000 tonnes, or 3.8 million barrels, of crude a year to North Korea via an aging pipeline. That is a little more than 10,000 barrels a day, and worth about $200 million a year at current prices.

North Korea also sources some of its oil from Russia.

TOTAL TRADE LESS THAN $400 MILLION

Chinese exports of corn to North Korean in November also slumped, down 82 percent from a year earlier to 100 tonnes, the lowest since January. Exports of rice plunged 64 percent to 672 tonnes, the lowest since March.

Trade between North Korea and China has slowed through the year, particularly after China banned coal purchases in February. In November, China’s trade with North Korea totalled $388 million, one of the lowest monthly volumes this year.

China has renewed its call on all countries to make constructive efforts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, urging the use of peaceful means to resolve issues.

But tensions flared again after North Korea on Nov. 29 said it had tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile Chinese exports of liquefied petroleum gas to North Korea, used for cooking, rose 58 percent in November from a year earlier to 99 tonnes. Exports of ethanol, which can be turned into a biofuel, gained 82 percent to 3,428 cubic metres.

 

(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Meng Meng, Hallie Gu, Christian Shepherd and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Tom Hogue)

North Korea likely to pursue talks, South says in rosy New Year forecast

South Korean soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the militarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, South Korea, December 21, 2017

By Haejin Choi

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea predicted on Tuesday that North Korea would look to open negotiations with the United States next year in an optimistic outlook for 2018, even as Seoul set up a specialized military team to confront nuclear threats from the North.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new, tougher sanctions on reclusive North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, a move the North branded an economic blockade and act of war.

“North Korea will seek negotiation with United States, while continuing to pursue its effort to be recognized as a de facto nuclear-possessing country,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a report, without offering any reasons for its conclusion.

The Ministry of Defence said it would assign four units to operate under a new official overseeing North Korea policy, aimed to “deter and respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat”.

Tensions have risen over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House.

U.S. diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplomatic solution but President Donald Trump has derided talks as useless and said Pyongyang must commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before any talks can begin.

In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting “more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country”.

China, the North’s lone major ally, and Russia both supported the latest U.N. sanctions, which seek to limit the North’s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad, while on Monday Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called for all countries to ease tension.

On Tuesday, Beijing released customs data indicating China exported no oil products to North Korea in November, apparently going over and beyond U.N. sanctions.

China, the main source of North Korea’s fuel, did not export any gasoline, jet fuel, diesel or fuel oil to its neighbor last month, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.

China also imported no iron ore, coal or lead from North Korea in November.

In its 2018 forecast, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it believed the North would eventually find ways to blunt the effects of the sanctions.

“Countermeasures will be orchestrated to deal with the effects, including cuts in trade volume and foreign currency inflow, lack of supplies, and reduced production in each part of the economy,” the report said.

The latest round of sanctions was prompted by the Nov. 29 test of what North Korea said was an intercontinental ballistic missile that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons.

The Joongang Ilbo Daily newspaper, citing an unnamed South Korean government official, reported on Tuesday that North Korea could also be preparing to launch a satellite into space.

Experts have said such launches are likely aimed at further developing the North’s ballistic missile technology, and as such would be prohibited under U.N. resolutions.

The North Korean Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on Monday saying that “peaceful space development is a legitimate right of a sovereign state”.

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan, and says its weapons are necessary to counter U.S. aggression.

The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and regularly carries out military exercises with the South, which the North sees as preparations for invasion.

(Additional reporting by Muyu Xu and Ryan Woo in Beijing; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Stop meddling in foreign elections, UK’s Johnson tells Russian hosts

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson attend a news conference following their talks in Moscow, Russia December 22,

By Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – British foreign minister Boris Johnson told his Russian counterpart on Friday there was “abundant evidence” of Moscow meddling in foreign elections, but said any Russian efforts to interfere in last year’s Brexit referendum had fallen flat.

On the first visit to Russia by a British foreign minister in five years, Johnson said he wanted to normalize UK-Russia relations, which were going through “a very difficult patch”.

But that didn’t mean pretending that Britain did not have serious concerns about Russia’s behavior, he said.

” … We can’t pretend that they (the problems) do not exist, and that we share a common perspective on the events in Ukraine, or in the Western Balkans or … on Russian activities in cyberspace,” said Johnson.

He also said Britain had a duty to speak up for the LGBT community in Chechnya. Two men from Chechnya told Reuters in June they had been tortured because they were gay. Chechen authorities deny the allegations.

Johnson’s visit comes at a time when relations between London and Moscow are strained by differences over Ukraine and Syria as well as by allegations, which Russia flatly denies, that Moscow has meddled in the politics of various European countries by backing cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns.

BREXIT

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov challenged that narrative, however, saying Johnson himself had recently said he had no proof that Moscow had meddled in last year’s British referendum on leaving the European Union.

“Not successfully, not successfully, I think is the word,” Johnson — a leading advocate of Brexit — shot back, to which Lavrov replied: “He’s scared that if he doesn’t disagree with me, his reputation will be ruined at home.”

Johnson, who said there was abundant evidence of Russian election meddling in Germany, the United States and other countries, said it was Lavrov’s reputation he was worried about.

“I think it is very important … to recognize that Russian attempts to interfere in our elections or in our referendum, whatever they may have been, they’ve not been successful,” said Johnson.

Lavrov said he blamed Britain for the poor state of relations, complaining about “insulting and aggressive statements” from London. He also complained about Britain airing its differences with Moscow publicly rather than in private.

But although the two men spent much of their joint news conference exchanging barbs, both sounded upbeat when it came to trying to cooperate in narrow areas, such as in the U.N. Security Council, and on security arrangements for next year’s soccer World Cup in Russia.

Lavrov complained, however, that Britain was still not fully cooperating with Russia’s FSB security service.

Johnson had riled Russian officials before his visit by telling Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper that Moscow was “closed, nasty, militaristic and anti-democratic”.

But when asked about the comment on Friday, he rowed back, saying he had been referring to the Soviet Union, not modern Russia.

Russian media has portrayed Johnson as anti-Russian. Johnson told reporters on Friday however that he was “a committed Russophile”.

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

Ukraine, allies fear escalation after Russia exits ceasefire group

A member of the Ukrainian armed forces patrols area in the government-held village of Travneve, Ukraine, November 23, 2017. Picture taken November 23, 2017. REUTERS/Oleksandr Klymenko

By Alessandra Prentice

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev’s foreign backers warned on Wednesday that Moscow’s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, the Russian foreign ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak and security chief Olekshandr Turchynov said the decision, coupled with a recent surge in fighting in the eastern Donbass region, suggested Russia had switched to a more offensive strategy.

“We cannot rule out that they withdrew their officers in order to start stepping up not only military provocations but also military operations,” Turchynov said. “We will strengthen our positions at the front.”

“The Ukrainian armed forces are currently prepared for a change in the situation,” Poltorak told journalists.

A Russia-backed separatist insurgency erupted in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a ceasefire that was meant to end the conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis.

A spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which works with the JCCC to monitor the much-violated Minsk peace agreement, said:

“We are concerned about any step that might lead to a further deterioration of the security situation in the region, affecting both the SMM (OSCE special monitoring mission) and the civilian population.”

Fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatists has climbed to the worst level in months, the OSCE said this week, after the shelling of a frontline village wounded civilians and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes.

Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO it supports the rebels with troops and weapons, but the U.S. envoy to peace talks, Kurt Volker, said Moscow was answerable for the violence.

“Russia withdrew its officers from JCCC – a ceasefire implementation tool – right before a massive escalation in ceasefire violations. Ukraine just suffered some of the worst fighting since February, 2017. Decision for peace lies with Russia,” Volker tweeted on Tuesday.

Germany and France, which have spearheaded international efforts to resolve the conflict, expressed concern. A Germany foreign ministry spokesman said “it could have severe consequences for civilians in the conflict zones.”

“We call on the Russian authorities to reconsider this decision and hope that the Ukrainian authorities will guarantee access to Ukrainian territory to Russian representatives of the joint center (JCCC),” said Alexandre Giorgini, deputy spokesman for the French foreign ministry.

Created in 2014, the JCCC is made up of Ukrainian and Russian officers, who are meant to work together to ensure the safety of OSCE monitors and help implement the Minsk ceasefire.

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice, Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets in Kiev, additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna, Michael Nienaber in Berlin and John Irish in Paris, editing by Matthias Williams, Larry King)

South Korea says delay in military drills aimed only at ensuring peaceful Olympics

South Korean and U.S. Marines take part in a winter military drill in Pyeongchang, South Korea, December 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

By Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean officials said on Wednesday a proposed delay in military drills with the United States was aimed at ensuring a peaceful 2018 Winter Olympics, not ending the North Korean missile crisis, as relations with China suffered new setbacks.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is seeking to soothe relations with North Korea, which is pursuing nuclear and missile programmes in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and with China, the North’s lone major ally, before the Games begin in South Korea in February.

China, which hosted years of on-again-off-again six-party talks to try to end the North Korea standoff, resumed some blocks on group tours to South Korea, industry sources said, and rebuked Seoul for firing warning shots at Chinese fishing boats

On Tuesday, Moon, who visited China last week, said he had proposed postponing major military drills with the United States until after the Games, a move his office said was designed to reassure athletes and spectators.

“This is confined to our efforts to host a peaceful Olympics,” an official from the presidential Blue House said. “We are only talking about the exercises which are supposed to take place during the Olympics and Paralympics.”

North Korea sees the regular joint exercises as preparation for war, while China is still angry about the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system, commonly known as THAAD, by South Korea, whose powerful radar it fears could see deep inside its territory.

The South argues it needs THAAD to guard against the threat posed by North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, Japan and the United States.

For a graphic on North Korea’s missile launches, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2j2S5T3

The proposed delay in drills was discussed during a summit last week between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping, after the proposal had already been submitted to the Americans, the Blue House official said.

China and Russia have proposed a “freeze for freeze” arrangement under which North Korea would stop its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a halt to the exercises. However, the official denied the proposed delay had anything to do with the freeze idea.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Ottawa on Tuesday he was unaware of any plans to “alter longstanding and scheduled and regular military exercises”.

North Korea has stepped up its missile and nuclear tests at an unprecedented rate this year, and any new provocation from the North would “inevitably have an impact” on the exercises, the Blue House official said.

“It is a display of the president’s strong message that North Korea must not conduct any provocation (during the Olympics),” the official told reporters.

South Korean and U.S. Marines take part in a winter military drill in Pyeongchang, South Korea, December 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

South Korean and U.S. Marines take part in a winter military drill in Pyeongchang, South Korea, December 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

“BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS”

Japan’s Asahi newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified person connected to South Korean intelligence, that North Korea was conducting biological experiments to test the possibility of loading anthrax-laden warheads on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Asahi report said the U.S. government was aware of the tests, which were meant to ascertain whether the anthrax bacteria could survive the high temperatures that occur during warheads’ re-entry from space.

Reuters was unable to verify the report independently.

In a statement released by state media, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called reports it was developing biological weapons “nonsense” designed to provoke nuclear war.

The United States has given China a draft resolution for tougher U.N. sanctions on North Korea and is hoping for a quick vote on it by the U.N. Security Council, a Western diplomat said on Tuesday, however Beijing has yet to sign on.

When asked about the U.S. resolution at a press briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying would only say that China always takes a responsible and constructive attitude towards Security Council talks on North Korea.

The United States has also called on the Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea. Hua said China had received the proposal from the United States.

WARNING SHOTS

China has resumed at least some restrictions on group tours into the South, South Korea’s inbound travel agency said. The restrictions were first in place last year as part of China’s retaliation over THAAD deployment.

“I was told from my boss this morning that our Chinese partners (based in Beijing and Shandong) said they won’t send group tourists to South Korea as of January,” the official from Naeil Tour Agency told Reuters by phone.

One source in China said the reason for reinstating the ban was to rein in overly aggressive tour operators who had been rolling out package deals to South Korea too quickly in the eyes of authorities.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua told reporters she had not heard of a tourism ban, but she reiterated that Moon’s visit to Beijing was successful and that China has an open attitude towards exchanges and cooperation in all areas.

Beijing has never officially confirmed restrictions on tourism.

Three representatives at Beijing travel agencies told Reuters that they were not currently organising group tours to South Korea. One confirmed that the tourism administration had issued the notice, while a third said: “At the moment we have no group trips to South Korea.”

A travel agency in the northern province of Shandong also said it could not organise group trips. Three others said they could, but with restrictions such as on the number of people.

South Korea’s coast guard said on Wednesday it had fired around 250 warning shots on Tuesday to chase away a fleet of 44 Chinese boats fortified with iron bars and steel mesh that were fishing illegally in South Korean waters.

“The Chinese fishing boats sought to swarm around and collide with our patrol ship, ignoring the broadcast warnings,” the coast guard said in a statement.

China, which has in the past lodged diplomatic protests to South Korea over the use of force by its coast guard, expressed “serious concern” about the latest clash.

(For a graphic on rocket science, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2t6WEPL)

(Reporting by Dahee Kim, Hyonhee Shin, Heekyong Yang and Yuna Park in SEOUL, Tim Kelly in TOKYO, Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI, and Pei Li, Gao Liangping and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

Kremlin says U.S. tip-off about planned attack ‘saved many lives’

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov arrives for the meeting with officials of Rostec high-technology state corporation at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia December 7, 2017.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A U.S. tip-off about a planned attack in St. Petersburg helped save many lives and Russia and the United States should try to cooperate in the same way in future, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Washington provided intelligence to Russia that helped thwart a potentially deadly bombing, U.S. and Russian officials said on Sunday, in a rare public show of cooperation despite deep strains between the two countries.

“It cannot be called anything but an ideal example of cooperation in fighting terrorism,” Peskov told reporters at a conference call. “We should aim for such standards.”

The tip-off resulted in the detention of seven alleged supporters of the Islamic State militant group in St. Petersburg last week, Peskov said.

Russia’s Federal Security Service said on Friday that IS had planned attacks in public places on Dec. 16 and weapons and explosives were found when the suspects were searched.

Peskov said Russian and American security services have contacts but this was the first time when their cooperation was so efficient. “This was very meaningful information that helped to save many lives,” the spokesman told reporters.

Asked if President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin had discussed a possible meeting, Peskov replied that the issue “had not been brought up yet”.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Backed by Putin, Russian military pushes into foreign policy

Backed by Putin, Russian military pushes into foreign policy

By Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – From Damascus to Doha, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has been showing up in unexpected places, a sign of the military’s growing influence under Vladimir Putin.

In the past few months, at times wearing his desert military uniform, Shoigu has held talks with Syria’s president in Damascus, met Israel’s prime minister in Jerusalem and been received by the Emir of Qatar in Doha.

The defense ministry’s forays into areas long regarded as the preserve of the foreign ministry are raising eyebrows in Russia, where strict protocol means ministers usually hold talks only with their direct foreign counterparts.

The military is reaping political dividends from what the Kremlin saw as its big successes in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine after Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms seized control of the peninsula in 2014, and Syria, where Russian forces helped turn the tide of war in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor.

“That has translated into more top-table influence,” said a long-serving Russian official who interacts with the defense ministry but declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The Kremlin and the defense ministry did not respond to detailed requests for comment for this article, but three sources who know both ministries well confirmed the trend.

The foreign ministry, in a Dec.15 statement to Reuters, said it was baffled by what it called assumptions it likened to “rumors and gossip.”

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the leading but not the sole government department involved in foreign policy making,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman, said in the statement.

“Foreign policy making has long become a multi-faceted complex process involving many parts of government. One part of government seizing some kind of monopoly in international relations will not be beneficial and is hardly possible.”

The military’s increased influence has, however, caused discontent among some Russian diplomats and unease among Western officials about the harder edge it is giving Russia’s foreign policy.

Foreign policy-making has become more bellicose and more opaque, and this makes new Russian military adventures more likely, some Western officials say.

“If you allow the defense ministry a bigger say in foreign policy it’s going to be looking for trouble,” said one, who declined to be named because of the subject’s sensitivity.

Shoigu’s high profile has also revived talk of the long-time Putin loyalist as a possible presidential stand-in if Putin, who is seeking a fourth term in an election in March, had to step down suddenly and was unable to serve out a full six-year term.

Shoigu, 62, is not involved in party politics but opinion polls often put him among the top five most popular presidential possibles. His trust rating is also often second only to Putin, with whom he was pictured on a fishing trip this summer.

SYRIA ROLE

The military’s influence has ebbed and flowed in Russia and, before that, the Soviet Union.

It had huge clout at the end of World War Two and in the 1950s after the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin when Georgy Zhukov, a commander credited with a crucial role in defeating Nazi Germany, was defense minister.

But the ignominious Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed in 1989, two wars Russia fought in Chechnya after the Soviet Union’s collapse, and the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine with the loss of all 118 people on board in 2000 left the military’s prestige in tatters.

Under Putin, a former KGB agent who as president is the armed forces’ commander-in-chief, its stock has risen. Defence spending has soared, the military has been deployed in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria and its actions are used to foster patriotism.

The military’s growing political and foreign policy muscle is most noticeable when it comes to Syria.

After going to Damascus twice earlier this year for talks with Assad, Shoigu was at Putin’s side this week when the president flew in to meet the Syrian leader. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has not visited Syria at all in 2017.

Unusually for a defense minister, Shoigu has been involved in diplomatic efforts to bring peace to Syria. In this role he has spoken about the importance of a new draft constitution for the country, met the U.N. special envoy on Syria and had talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

A Western official who has direct contact with the foreign and defense ministries said the Russian military had real heft in Damascus of a kind the foreign ministry did not.

There was “strong mutual trust” between the Russian military and senior people in Damascus, the official said, because “the Russians saved their asses and the Syrians respect that.”

The foreign ministry retains strong Middle East experts and continues to play an important Syria role, helping run peace talks taking place in Kazakhstan. But Lavrov’s own efforts to secure a U.S.-Russia deal on cooperating in Syria have shown how differently the foreign and defense ministries sometimes think.

Lavrov is still seen as a formidable diplomat whom Putin trusts and respects. But Western officials say he is not summoned to all important meetings and is not informed about major military operations in Syria.

POLICY INTERVENTIONS

The military’s other foreign policy interventions include a role in Russia’s alleged interference in last year’s U.S. presidential election, U.S. intelligence agencies say.

They say the GRU, Russia’s military foreign intelligence agency, hacked email accounts belonging to Democratic Party officials and politicians, and organized their leaking to the media to try to sway public opinion against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s main rival.

The Kremlin denies the allegations.

Other policy interventions included a news briefing in December 2015 at which the defense ministry said it had proof that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefiting from illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq.

Erdogan said the allegations, made at a briefing held a week after a Turkish air force jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish border, amounted to slander.

The defense ministry’s response to the incident was much sharper than that of Russian diplomats, part of a wide-ranging communications policy that has included frequent criticism of the U.S. State Department and Washington’s foreign policy.

Other areas of interest for the defense ministry have included Egypt, Sudan and Libya.

Shoigu was involved in talks between Putin and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Moscow last month and the ministry hosted Khalifa Haftar, Eastern Libya’s dominant military figure, aboard its sole aircraft carrier in January. During the visit, Haftar spoke to Shoigu via video link about fighting terrorism in the Middle East.

One Western official told Reuters such incidents were fuelling fears that Russia plans to expand its footprint beyond Syria, where it has an air base and a naval facility, to centers such as Yemen, Sudan or Afghanistan.

The military’s influence in domestic policy-making has expanded too, Russian analysts and Western officials say, with Putin seeking its views on everything from the digital economy to food security.

That is in part because Putin, since the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, has altered the way he takes decisions and widened the scope of what the Security Council, which he chairs, discusses to include many domestic policy questions.

“At a time when there’s a feeling that Russia is increasingly surrounded by enemies, Putin is consulting the intelligence services and the military more when he takes all decisions. He’s meeting them all the time,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the analytical department at the Center for Political Technologies think tank.

Stanovaya said that did not mean the military was initiating ideas, but that its opinions were taken into account far more by Putin now than in the past and that it now had an important voice on domestic policy areas.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

NATO sounds alarm on banned Russian missile system

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO allies on Friday publicly raised concern about a Russian cruise missile system that the alliance says may break a Cold War-era pact banning such weapons, in a show of support for Washington.

The United States believes Russia is developing a ground-launched cruise missile system with a range that is prohibited by a 1987 treaty, which could give Russia the ability to launch a nuclear strike on Europe on short notice.

“Allies have identified a Russian missile system that raises serious concerns,” the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said in a statement. “NATO urges Russia to address these concerns in a substantial and transparent way, and actively engage in a technical dialogue with the United States.”

In a separate statement, the U.S. envoy to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, said: “Russia’s behavior raises serious concerns.”

Russia has denied it is violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

U.S.-led NATO’s concerns are likely to further strain relations between Moscow and the West that are already at a low over Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, Western sanctions on the Russian economy and U.S. accusations that Moscow used computer hackers to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Moscow denies that it interfered in the election.

The NATO statement follows a meeting between Russia and the United States in Geneva this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

According to an April U.S. State Department report, Washington determined in 2016 that Russia was in violation of its treaty obligations “not to possess, produce, or flight-test” a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km (310-3,417 miles), “or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.”

Last week, the State Department said it is reviewing military options, including new intermediate-range cruise missile systems, the first response by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to the U.S. charges.

The Russian foreign ministry said last week it was ready for talks with the United States to try to preserve the treaty and would comply with its obligations if the United States did.

In a statement marking the 30th anniversary of the IMF treaty last week, the Russian foreign ministry said Moscow considered “the language of ultimatums” and sanctions unacceptable.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott, Editing by William Maclean)

Putin says U.S. gripped by fabricated spymania, praises Trump

Putin says U.S. gripped by fabricated spymania, praises Trump

By Vladimir Soldatkin and Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the United States was in the grip of a fabricated spymania whipped up by President Donald Trump’s opponents but he thought battered U.S.-Russia relations would recover one day.

Putin also praised the U.S. president for what he said were his achievements.

“I’m not the one to evaluate the (U.S.) president’s work. That needs to be done by the voters, the American people,” Putin told his annual news conference in Moscow, in answer to a question.

“(But) we are objectively seeing that there have been some major accomplishments, even in the short time he has been working. Look at how the markets have grown. This speaks to investors’ trust in the American economy.”

Trump took office in January, saying he was keen to mend ties which had fallen to a post-Cold War low. But since then, ties have soured further after U.S. officials said Russia meddled in the presidential election, something Moscow denies.

Congress is also investigating alleged contacts between the Trump election campaign and Russian officials amid fears that Moscow may have tried to exercise improper influence.

Putin dismissed those allegations and the idea of a Russia connection as “fabricated”.

“This is all invented by people who oppose Trump to give his work an illegitimate character. The people who do this are dealing a blow to the state of (U.S.) domestic politics,” he added, saying the accusations were disrespectful to U.S. voters.

Moscow understood that Trump’s scope to improve ties with Russia was limited by the scandal, said Putin, but remained keen to try to improve relations.

“COMMON THREATS”

Washington and Moscow had many common interests, he said, citing the Middle East, North Korea, international terrorism, environmental problems and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

“You have to ask him (Trump) if he has such a desire (to improve ties) … or whether it has disappeared. I hope that he has such a desire,” said Putin.

“We are normalizing our relations and will develop (them) and overcome common threats.”

Putin, who is running for re-election in March, agreed with a questioner who said he faced no credible high-profile political opponents, but pledged to work to try to create a more balanced political system.

The promise drew mockery from his critics, who accuse him of using state TV, the courts and the police to demonize and marginalize the liberal opposition.

He seems sure to win comfortably in March and extend his grip on power into a third decade.

He said he planned to run as an independent candidate and garner support from more than one party, in a sign the former KGB officer may be keen to strengthen his image as a “father of the nation” rather than as a party political figure.

Putin said it was too early to set out his electoral program, but named priority issues as helping forge what he called a flexible political system, nurturing a high-tech economy, improving infrastructure, healthcare, education and productivity and increasing people’s real incomes.

Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since the end of 1999.

(Reporting by Moscow bureau; writing by Andrew Osborn; editing by Andrew Roche)