Tag Archives: Russia

U.S. says progress with China on N.Korea U.N. sanctions, true test is Russia

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley directs comments to the Russian delegation at the conclusion of a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the recent ballistic missile launch by North Korea at U.N. headquarters in New York.

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States is making progress in talks with North Korean ally China on imposing new United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang over its latest missile test, but Russia’s engagement will be the “true test,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said on Tuesday.

The United States gave China a draft resolution nearly three weeks ago to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea over the July 4 missile launch. Haley had been aiming for a vote by the 15-member Security Council within weeks, senior diplomats said.

“We’re constantly in touch with China … Things are moving but it’s still too early to tell how far they’ll move,” Haley told reporters, adding that she was pleased with China’s initial response to the U.S. proposal because it showed “seriousness.”

“We know that China’s been sharing and negotiating with Russia, so as long as they are doing that, we’re going to continue to watch this closely to make sure it is a strong resolution,” she said.

China’s U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told reporters: “We are making progress, it requires time, but we’re working very hard.”

Traditionally, the United States and China have negotiated sanctions on North Korea before formally involving other council members, though diplomats said Washington informally keeps Britain and France in the loop. Along with Russia, those five countries are veto-wielding Security Council members.

“The true test will be what (the Chinese) have worked out with Russia (and whether) Russia comes and tries to pull out of that,” said Haley.

The United States and Russia have waged rival campaigns at the Security Council over the type of ballistic missile fired by North Korea. Western powers have said it was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), while Russia said the missile fired was only medium-range.

Diplomats say China and Russia only view a long-range missile test or nuclear weapon test as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions.

“Everyone that we have dealt with acknowledges that it’s an ICBM. Whether they are willing to put it in writing or not is going to be the real question,” Haley said.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and two long-range missile launches.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been frustrated that China has not done more to rein in North Korea and senior officials have said Washington could impose new sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang.

When asked how long Washington was willing to negotiate with China at the United Nations before deciding to impose its own secondary sanctions, Haley said: “We’re making progress … We’re going to see what the situation is.”

“We want China and every other country to see it as serious and we’re going to keep moving forward that way,” she said.

China’s Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai said on Tuesday that Beijing objected to secondary sanctions. In June, the United States blacklisted two Chinese citizens and a shipping company for helping North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

“Such actions are unacceptable. They have severely impaired China-U.S. cooperation on the Korean nuclear issue, and give rise to more questions about the true intention of the U.S.,” he told the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington.

(Additional reporting by David Brunstrom in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)

House expected to approve Russia sanctions bill limiting Trump’s influence

U.S. President Donald Trump calls on Republican Senators to move forward and vote on a healthcare bill to replace the Affordable Care Act in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Amanda Becker and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote overwhelmingly on Tuesday for a bill that would slap new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, potentially complicating President Donald Trump’s hopes of pursuing improved relations with Moscow.

The bipartisan measure aims to punish Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and for alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The measure’s fate in the Senate is uncertain after a key senator said the deal announced over the weekend may not be final.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that deal negotiators had a “very good weekend” but the announcement “seemed somewhat premature.”

“We’re about there, there’s still some procedural issues we’re discussing but, you know, I think it worked out very, very well, we still got a couple of things to talk about on North Korea,” Corker said.

If the Republican-led Senate passes the measure, Trump will need to decide whether to sign the bill or veto it. Rejecting it would carry a risk that his veto could be overridden by lawmakers if they can muster enough support.

The Trump administration has objected to a provision in the sanctions bill that the president obtain congressional approval before easing any sanctions on Moscow.

“He’s going to study that legislation and see what the final product looks like,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Monday when asked whether Trump would support it.

Trump’s relationship with Russia has been a focus of the first six months of his presidency as investigations continue into whether his associates colluded with Russian hackers to influence the election on his behalf.

Russia denies interfering in the U.S. election and Trump denies his campaign colluded with Moscow.

As the Republican-controlled House takes up the sanctions bill, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will visit Capitol Hill for a second straight day to be interviewed about his contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign and the presidential transition.

An earlier version of the bill, including sanctions on Russia and Iran, passed the Senate 98-2 on June 15. A North Korea sanctions bill passed the House by 419-1 in May and House lawmakers were becoming increasingly impatient with the Senate’s failure to take up that legislation.

House members saw the Iran and Russia sanctions bill as a chance finally to get the North Korea measure through the Senate.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Why Ukrainian forces gave up Crimea without a fight – and NATO is alert

Vice Admiral Sergei Yeliseyev, First Deputy Commander of the Ukrainian fleet, attends joint maritime exercises with Russian Navy forces in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Ukraine, June 22, 2013.

By Pavel Polityuk and Anton Zverev

KIEV/SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (Reuters) – The career of Sergei Yeliseyev helps to explain why Ukraine’s armed forces gave up Crimea almost without a fight – and why NATO now says it is alert to Russian attempts to undermine military loyalty in its eastern European members.

His rise to become number two in the Ukrainian navy long before Russia seized Crimea illustrates the divided loyalties that some personnel in countries that once belonged to the Soviet Union might still face.

Yeliseyev’s roots were in Russia but he ended up serving Ukraine, a different ex-Soviet republic, only to defect when put to the test. NATO military planners now believe Moscow regards people with similarly ambiguous personal links as potentially valuable, should a new confrontation break out with the West.

In 2014, Yeliseyev was first deputy commander of the Ukrainian fleet, then largely based in Crimea, when Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms took control of Kiev’s ships and military bases on the peninsula.

Instead of resisting, Yeliseyev quit and subsequently got a new job: deputy chief of Russia’s Baltic Fleet.

Yeliseyev, now aged 55, did not respond to Reuters questions sent to him via the Russian defense ministry.

In Kiev, however, there is no doubt where his loyalties lay. “When he took an oath to Ukraine, these were empty words for him. He has always been pro-Russian,” said Ihor Voronchenko, now commander of the Ukrainian navy, who once served with Yeliseyev.

In fact, the Russian soldiers were pushing at an open door in late February 2014 – Yeliseyev was just one of many to defect and almost all Ukrainian forces in Crimea failed to resist.

Russia annexed Crimea the following month, prompting a major row with the West which deepened over Moscow’s role in a rebellion in eastern Ukraine that lasts to this day.

At the time, Moscow and its allies in Crimea exploited weaknesses within Kiev’s military to undermine its ability to put up a fight, according to interviews conducted by Reuters with about a dozen people on both sides of the conflict.

The Russian defense ministry did not respond to questions on their accounts of the events in 2014 submitted by Reuters.

One NATO commander told Reuters that, in a re-run of the tactics it deployed in Crimea, Russian intelligence was trying to recruit ethnic Russians serving in the militaries of countries on its borders.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the commander said the alliance was particularly sensitive to the risk in countries with high concentrations of ethnic Russians, notably the Baltic states.

NATO had to guard against this, said the commander, though the risk should not be overstated because having Russian roots did not necessarily mean that a person’s loyalty is to Moscow.

Officials in the Baltic states, former Soviet republics which unlike Ukraine are NATO members, play down the danger.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg likewise said he trusted the armies of the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Still, he told Reuters: “We always have to be vigilant. We always have to develop our intelligence tools and to be able to see any attempts to try to undermine the loyalty of our forces.”

 

DROPPING THE GUARD

Years before the Crimean annexation, a Ukrainian appointment panel appeared to drop its guard when it interviewed Yeliseyev for the deputy naval commander’s post.

Yeliseyev was born near Moscow, graduated from a Soviet naval school in the Russian city of Kaliningrad in 1983 and served with the Russian Pacific fleet.

So the panel asked Yeliseyev what he would do if Russia and Ukraine went to war. He replied that he would file for early retirement, according to Myroslav Mamchak, a former Ukrainian naval captain who served with Yeliseyev. Despite this response, Yeliseyev got the job in 2006.

Mamchak did not disclose to Reuters how he knew what was said in the interview room but subsequent events bear out his account.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine dived as Kiev moved closer to NATO and eight years after his appointment, with the countries on the brink of conflict over Crimea, Yeliseyev stayed true to his word by quitting.

Russia’s actions were not the only factor in the Crimean events. Ukraine’s military had suffered years of neglect, there was a power vacuum in Kiev after the government was overthrown, and many Crimean residents felt more affinity with Moscow.

Still, Ukrainian service personnel with Russian ties switched sides when the annexation began and some officers pretended to put up resistance only to avoid court-martial. Moscow also intercepted orders from Kiev so they never reached the Crimean garrison.

“There was nothing spontaneous. Everything was organized and each fiddler played his role,” said Mykhailo Koval, who at the time was deputy head of the Ukrainian border guard and is now deputy head of the Security Council in Kiev.

 

INVITATION TO DEFECT

Voronchenko, who was another deputy commander of the navy at the time of the annexation, said he had received invitations to defect to Moscow’s side soon after the Russian operation began.

These, he told Reuters, came from Sergei Aksyonov, who was then head of Crimea’s self-proclaimed pro-Russian government, as well as from the commander of Russia’s southern military district and a deputy Russian defense minister.

Asked what they offered in exchange, Voronchenko said: “Posts, an apartment … Aksyonov offered to make me defense minister of Crimea.” Neither Aksyonov nor the Russian defense ministry responded to Reuters questions about the contacts.

Voronchenko, in common with many other senior Ukrainian officers, had been in the Soviet military alongside people now serving in the Russian armed forces. He had spent years in Crimea, where Russia leased bases from Ukraine for its Black Sea fleet after the 1991 break up of the Soviet Union.

“Those generals who came to persuade me … said that we belong to the same circle, we came from the Soviet army,” he said. “But I told them I am different … I am not yours.”

Naval chief Denis Berezovsky did defect, along with several of his commanders, and was later made deputy chief of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Many in the ranks followed suit. At one Ukrainian signals unit, service personnel were watching Russian television when President Vladimir Putin appeared on the screen.

“To my surprise, they all stood up,” said Svyatoslav Veltynsky, an engineer at the unit. “They had been waiting for this.” The majority of the unit defected to the Russian side.

 

JUST A SHOW

Even those willing to resist found themselves in a hopeless position. One member of the Ukrainian border guards told Reuters how his commander had despatched their unit’s ships to stop them falling into Russian hands, and ordered his men to train their rifles on anyone trying to enter their base.

However, the base’s military communications were not working, having been either jammed or cut by the Russians. Isolated from his own side, and outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops outside, the commander struck a deal with the head of a Russian special forces unit.

Pro-Russian civilians were allowed to force the base’s gate without reprisals. The Ukrainians “supposedly could not do anything; you cannot shoot civilians”, the member of the unit said on condition of anonymity because he is still living in Crimea and feared repercussions.

Russian troops then followed the civilians in, taking over the base and offering the unit a chance to switch allegiance to Russia. About half agreed, although the base’s chief refused and was allowed to leave Crimea.

“The commander did not resist,” said the unit member. “On the other hand, he did what he could under the circumstances.”

Two other people involved in the annexation – a former Ukrainian serviceman now on a Russian base in Crimea, and a source close to the Russian military who was there at the time – also described witnessing similar faked confrontations.

“You have to understand that the seizure of Ukrainian military units in Crimea was just a show,” said the source close to the Russian military.

 

LESSONS LEARNED

NATO’s Baltic members differ significantly from Ukraine. Soviet-era commanders, for instance, largely left their armed forces after the countries joined the Western alliance in 2004.

Officials also point out that Russian speakers were among the seven members of Latvia’s forces to die during international deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nevertheless, lessons have been learned from Crimea. “We learned, of course, that there was not only the issue of loyalty, but also false orders were submitted and there was a blockage of communication during the Crimea operation,” said Janis Garisons, State Secretary in the Latvian defense ministry.

Latvia has changed the law so that unit commanders are obliged to resist by default. But Garisons said the simplest step was taken long before the annexation, with the introduction in 2008 of vetting by the security services for “everybody who joins the armed forces, from private to general”.

 

(Additional reporting by Margaryta Chornokondratenko in KIEV, Andrius Sytas in VILNIUS, Gederts Gelzis in RIGA, David Mardiste in TALLINN, and Robin Emmott in BRUSSELS; editing by David Stamp)

 

Exclusive: Moscow lawyer who met Trump Jr. had Russian spy agency as client

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks during an interview in Moscow, Russia November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kommersant Photo/Yury Martyanov

By Maria Tsvetkova and Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr. after his father won the Republican nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election counted Russia’s FSB security service among her clients for years, Russian court documents seen by Reuters show.

The documents show that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, successfully represented the FSB’s interests in a legal wrangle over ownership of an upscale property in northwest Moscow between 2005 and 2013.

The FSB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB service, was headed by Vladimir Putin before he became Russian president.

There is no suggestion that Veselnitskaya is an employee of the Russian government or intelligence services, and she has denied having anything to do with the Kremlin.

But the fact she represented the FSB in a court case may raise questions among some U.S. politicians.

The Obama administration last year sanctioned the FSB for what it said was its role in hacking the election, something Russia flatly denies.

Charles Grassley, Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has raised concerns about why Veselnitskaya gained entry into the United States. Veselnitskaya represented a Russian client accused by U.S. prosecutors of money laundering in a case that was settled in May this year after four years.

Veselnitskaya did not reply to emailed Reuters questions about her work for the FSB. But she later posted a link to it on her Facebook page on Friday.

“Is it all your proof? You disappointed me,” she wrote in a post.

“Dig in court databases again! You’ll be surprised to find among my clients Russian businessmen… as well as citizens and companies that had to defend themselves from accusations from the state…”

Veselnitskaya added that she also had U.S. citizens as clients.

The FSB did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuters could not find a record of when and by whom the lawsuit – which dates back to at least 2003 – was first lodged. But appeal documents show that Rosimushchestvo, Russia’s federal government property agency, was involved. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Veselnitskaya and her firm Kamerton Consulting represented “military unit 55002” in the property dispute, the documents show.

A public list of Russian legal entities shows the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, founded the military unit whose legal address is behind the FSB’s own headquarters.

Reuters was unable to establish if Veselnitskaya did any other work for the FSB or confirm who now occupies the building at the center of the case.

‘MASS HYSTERIA’ OVER MEETING

President Donald Trump’s eldest son eagerly agreed in June 2016 to meet Veselnitskaya, a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic White House rival Hillary Clinton, according to emails released by Trump Jr.

Veselnitskaya has said she is a private lawyer and has never obtained damaging information about Clinton. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, has said she had “nothing whatsoever to do with us.”

Veselnitskaya has also said she is ready to testify to the U.S. Congress to dispel what she called “mass hysteria” about the meeting with Trump Jr.

The case in which Veselnitskaya represented the FSB was complex; appeals courts at least twice ruled in favor of private companies which the FSB wanted to evict.

The FSB took over the disputed office building in mid-2008, a person who worked for Atos-Component, a firm that was evicted as a result, told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

The building was privatized after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but the Russian government said in the lawsuit in which Veselnitskaya represented the FSB that the building had been illegally sold to private firms.

The businesses were listed in the court documents, but many of them no longer exist and those that do are little-known firms in the electric components business.

Elektronintorg, an electronic components supplier, said on its website that it now occupied the building. Elektronintorg is owned by state conglomerate Rostec, run by Sergei Chemezov, who, like Putin, worked for the KGB and served with him in East Germany.

When contacted by phone, an unnamed Elektronintorg employee said he was not obliged to speak to Reuters. Rostec, responding to a request for comment, said that Elektronintorg only had a legal address in the building but that its staff were based elsewhere.

When asked which organization was located there, an unidentified man who answered a speakerphone at the main entrance laughed and said: “Congratulations. Ask the city administration.”

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Jack Stubbs; additional reporting by Polina Nikolskaya, Gleb Stolyarov and Darya Korsunskaya in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Osborn, Mike Collett-White and Grant McCool)

U.S. investigators seek to turn Manafort in Russia probe: sources

FILE PHOTO: Paul Manafort of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's staff listens during a round table discussion on security at Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., August 17, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

By Julia Edwards Ainsley and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. investigators examining money laundering accusations against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort hope to push him to cooperate with their probe into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team is examining Manafort’s financial and real estate records in New York as well as his involvement in Ukrainian politics, the officials said.

Between 2006 and 2013, Manafort bought three New York properties, including one in Trump Tower in Manhattan. He paid for them in full and later took out mortgages against them. A former senior U.S. law enforcement official said that tactic is often used as a means to hide the origin of funds gained illegally. Reuters has no independent evidence that Manafort did this.

The sources also did not say whether Mueller has uncovered any evidence to charge Manafort with money laundering, but they said doing so is seen by investigators as critical in getting his full cooperation in their investigation.

“If Mueller’s team can threaten criminal charges against Manafort, they could use that as leverage to convince him to cooperate,” said one of the sources.

Manafort’s spokesman, Jason Maloni, said, “Paul Manafort is not a cooperating witness. Once again there is no truth to the disinformation put forth by anonymous sources and leakers.”

Manafort is seen as a key figure in the investigation because of his senior role in the campaign and his participation in a June 2016 meeting that included the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., close adviser Jared Kushner and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The meeting was called after the lawyer offered damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Mueller’s team asked the White House on Friday to preserve all of its communications about that meeting. Mueller is examining contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates during and after the Nov. 8 presidential election as part of a broader investigation into whether Russia tried to sway the election in favor of Trump.

Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager in June 2016 but was forced to resign two months later amid reports of his business relationship with the Kremlin-backed former Ukrainian leader, Viktor Yanukovich.

Manafort previously worked as a consultant to a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and helped support Yanukovich. According to a financial audit reported by the New York Times, he also once owed $17 million to Russian shell companies.

Former Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was investigating Manafort’s real estate dealings before he was fired by Trump in March, and Mueller has now assumed control of that investigation, one of the sources said.

Bharara was not available for comment on his investigation on Friday.

(Writing by Julia Ainsley; Editing by Yara Bayoumy, Kieran Murray and Ross Colvin)

U.S. general says allies worry Russian war game may be ‘Trojan horse’

U.S Army Europe Commanding General Ben Hodges speaks during the inauguration ceremony of bilateral military training between U.S. and Polish troops in Zagan, Poland, January 30, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. allies in eastern Europe and Ukraine are worried that Russia’s planned war games in September could be a “Trojan horse” aimed at leaving behind military equipment brought into Belarus, the U.S. Army’s top general in Europe said on Thursday.

Russia has sought to reassure NATO that the military exercises will respect international limits on size, but NATO and U.S. official remain wary about their scale and scope.

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who heads U.S. Army forces in Europe, told Reuters in an interview that allied officials would keep a close eye on military equipment brought in to Belarus for the Zapad 2017 exercise, and whether it was removed later.

“People are worried, this is a Trojan horse. They say, ‘We’re just doing an exercise,’ and then all of a sudden they’ve moved all these people and capabilities somewhere,” he said.

Hodges said he had no indications that Russia had any such plans, but said greater openness by Moscow about the extent of its war games would help reassure countries in eastern Europe.

A senior Russian diplomat strongly rejected allegations that Moscow could leave military equipment in Belarus.

“This artificial buffoonery over the routine Zapad-2017 exercises is aimed at justifying the sharp intensification of the NATO bloc (activities) along the perimeter of Russian territory,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told the Interfax news agency on Friday.

NATO allies are nervous because previous large-scale Russian exercises employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Such tactics were later used in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, NATO diplomats say.

Hodges said the United States and its allies had been very open about a number of military exercises taking place across eastern Europe this summer involving up to 40,000 troops, but it remained unclear if Moscow would adhere to a Cold War-era treaty known as the Vienna document, which requires observers for large-scale exercises involving more than 13,000 troops.

Some NATO allies believe the Russian exercise could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013.

Russia has said it would invite observers if the exercise exceeded 13,000 forces.

Hodges said NATO would maintain normal rotations during the Russian war game, while carrying out previously scheduled exercises in Sweden, Poland and Ukraine.

The only additional action planned during that period was a six-week deployment of three companies of 120 paratroopers each to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for “low-level” exercises, Hodges said.

“We want to avoid anything that looks like a provocation. This is not going to be the ‘Sharks’ and the ‘Jets’ out on the streets,” Hodges said in a reference to the gang fights shown in the 1961 film “West Side Story” set in New York City.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Trump’s son, close associates to appear before Senate

FILE PHOTO - A combination photo of Donald Trump Jr. from July 11, 2017, Jared Kushner from June 6, 2017 and Paul Manafort from August 17, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder, Carlo Allegri (R)/File Photo

By Patricia Zengerle and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort have been asked to appear before U.S. Senate committees next week to answer questions about the campaign’s alleged connections to Russia, officials said on Wednesday.

The three men are the closest associates of the president to be called to speak to lawmakers involved in probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Trump, who came into office in January, has been dogged by allegations that his campaign officials were connected to Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of interfering in last year’s election.

Trump has denied any collusion.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said on Wednesday that it had called Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Manafort to testify on July 26 at a hearing.

The president’s son released emails earlier this month that showed him eagerly agreeing to meet last year with a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The meeting was also attended by Manafort and Kushner, who is now a senior adviser at the White House.

Kushner is scheduled to be interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, July 24, behind closed doors.

“Working with and being responsive to the schedules of the committees, we have arranged Mr. Kushner’s interview with the Senate for July 24,” Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “He will continue to cooperate and appreciates the opportunity to assist in putting this matter to rest.”

A special counsel, Robert Mueller, is also conducting an investigation of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and any collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign.

The issue has overshadowed Trump’s tenure in office and irritated the president, who told the New York Times on Wednesday that he would not have appointed ally and former Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he had known Sessions would recuse himself from oversight of the Russia probe.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said in the interview.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, said the committee’s hearing would enable the panel to begin to get testimony under oath.

“There has been an enormous amount that has been said publicly but it’s not under oath, which means that people are free to omit matters or lie with relative impunity,” Whitehouse told CNN.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting one of the main investigations of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion by Trump associates, but the Judiciary committee has been looking into related issues.

The public Judiciary hearing on Wednesday will look into rules governing the registration of agents working for foreign governments in the United States and foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections.

Chuck Grassley, the committee’s Republican chairman, has said he wanted to question the Trump associates, but has also raised concerns about why the Obama administration allowed Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the Trump Tower meeting in June, into the United States.

He also has called before the committee and threatened to subpoena Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, a firm that commissioned former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to dig up opposition research on Trump, when he was a presidential candidate.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Eric Beech, David Alexander and Julia Ainsley; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

Russia, U.S. duel at U.N. over whether North Korea fired long-range missile

The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 is seen during its test in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang, July 5 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States and Russia are waging rival campaigns at the United Nations Security Council over the type of ballistic missile fired by North Korea earlier this month as the U.S. pushes to impose stronger sanctions on Pyongyang over the test.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley held an intelligence briefing for her council colleagues on Monday to argue that Pyongyang fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), diplomats said, which was attended by Russia and North Korean ally China.

U.N. diplomats said Russia had suggested that Russian and U.S. military experts exchange information on the launch.

The U.S. briefing came after Russia sent a brief letter and diagram on July 8 to the 15-member Security Council, seen by Reuters, asserting that its radars determined that the missile launched by Pyongyang on July 4 was medium-range.

Russia’s contention that North Korea did not fire an ICBM hinders Washington’s push for the Security Council to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea. The United States, Russia, China, Britain and France are veto-wielding council members.

Typically the council has condemned medium-range ballistic missiles launches by North Korea with a statement. Diplomats say China and Russia only view a long-range missile test or nuclear weapon test as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has described the missile launch as an ICBM test, which completes his country’s strategic weapons capability that includes atomic and hydrogen bombs, the state KCNA news agency said.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council had ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and two long-range missile launches.

The United States gave China a draft resolution two weeks ago to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea over the July 4 missile launch. Haley had been aiming for a vote within weeks, but a senior U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the U.S. negotiations with China as “slow-going.”

Traditionally, the United States and China have negotiated sanctions on North Korea before formally involving other council members. Diplomats said Washington informally keeps Britain and France in the loop, while China was likely talking to Russia.

Haley said on July 5 that some options to strengthen U.N. sanctions were to restrict the flow of oil to North Korea’s military and weapons programs, increasing air and maritime restrictions and imposing sanctions on senior officials.

Following a nuclear weapons test by North Korea in September, while U.S. President Barack Obama was still in office, it took the U.N. Security Council three months to agree to strengthened sanctions.

Shortly after North Korea’s July 4 missile launch Russia objected to a Security Council condemnation because a U.S.-drafted press statement labeled it an ICBM. Diplomats said negotiations on the statement stalled.

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Michael Perry)

Russian lawyer who met Trump Jr. says ready to testify to Congress

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks during an interview in Moscow, Russia November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kommersant Photo/Yury Martyanov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr after his father won the 2016 U.S. Republican presidential nomination has said she is ready to testify to Congress to dispel what she called “mass hysteria” about the encounter.

President Donald Trump’s eldest son eagerly agreed last year to meet Natalia Veselnitskaya, a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic White House rival Hillary Clinton, according to emails released by Donald Trump Jr.

Veselnitskaya has previously said she is a private lawyer, that she never obtained damaging information about Clinton, and that she has no ties with the Kremlin.

“I’m ready to clarify the situation behind this mass hysteria – but only through lawyers or testifying in the Senate,” Veselnitskaya said in an interview with Russia’s Kremlin-backed RT TV channel released late on Tuesday.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied U.S. allegations that Moscow interfered in the presidential campaign to help Trump win the White House.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Trump, Putin had previously undisclosed visit at G20 dinner

FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

By Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a previously undisclosed conversation during a dinner for G20 leaders at a summit earlier this month in Germany, a White House official said on Tuesday.

The two leaders held a formal two-hour bilateral meeting on July 7 in which Trump later said Putin denied allegations that he directed efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump’s interactions with the Russian leader were scrutinized closely because of those allegations, which have dominated his first six months in the White House, and Trump’s comments as a presidential candidate praising the former KGB spy.

Trump and Putin first met at the G20 during a gathering of other leaders, which was shown in a video. They later held the bilateral meeting, which was attended briefly by a pool of reporters.

In the evening, both men attended a dinner with G20 leaders. Putin was seated next to U.S. first lady Melania Trump. The U.S. president went over to them at the conclusion of the dinner and visited with Putin, the official said. That conversation had not been previously disclosed.

“There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd,” the official said.

In a tweet late on Tuesday, Trump said: “Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is “sick.” All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!”

News of the conversation, first reported by Ian Bremmer, the president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, could raise renewed concern as Congress and a special counsel investigate allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to help Trump, a Republican, win the presidency.

Trump says there was no collusion and Russia denies interference in the election.

Bremmer said Trump got up from his seat halfway through dinner and spent about an hour talking “privately and animatedly” with Putin, “joined only by Putin’s own translator.”

The lack of a U.S. translator raised eyebrows among other leaders at the dinner, said Bremmer, who called it a “breach of national security protocol.”

The White House official said the leaders and their spouses were only permitted to have one translator attend the dinner. Trump sat next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife. His translator spoke Japanese.

“When President Trump spoke to President Putin, the two leaders used the Russian translator, since the American translator did not speak Russian,” the official said.

A U.S. official who was briefed by some of his counterparts about the encounter said some of the leaders who attended the dinner were surprised to see Trump leave his seat and engage Putin in an extended private conversation with no one else from the U.S. side present.

“No one is sure what their discussion was about, and whether it was purely social or touched on bilateral or international issues,” the official said.

FOCUS ON DONALD JR.

As part of the investigations into allegations of Moscow’s meddling, a congressional panel said on Tuesday it wanted to interview Trump’s eldest son, his former campaign chairman and all others who were at a June 2016 meeting with Russian nationals.

The meeting in Trump Tower in New York has grabbed the spotlight in the saga of possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign as media reports of more participants than originally known have emerged.

Donald Trump Jr., who runs the Trump Organization family business, released emails last week in which he eagerly agreed to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s campaign.

“Any intelligence out there that suggests that somebody is of interest to us, we have to pursue it,” the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican Senator Richard Burr, told reporters.

Trump Jr.’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager from March to August, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On July 10, Trump Jr. posted on Twitter: “Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know.”

MOSCOW-BASED DEVELOPER

A man who works for a Moscow-based developer with ties to Trump was identified on Tuesday as the eighth person to attend the Trump Tower meeting.

Lawyer Scott Balber confirmed Ike Kaveladze’s name to Reuters after CNN reported that his client had been identified by special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors and was cooperating in their investigation.

Balber represented Trump in the New York businessman’s 2013 lawsuit against comedian and television host Bill Maher, demanding the $5 million Maher offered to give to charity if Trump could prove his father was not an orangutan.

Kaveladze’s LinkedIn profile identifies him as vice president of Crocus Group, a company run by Moscow-based developers Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, an Azerbaijani-Russian pop star. The two have ties to the Trump family and helped set up last year’s meeting between Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Kaveladze was asked to go to the meeting with the understanding he would be a translator for Veselnitskaya, only to find she had brought her own translator with her, Balber told CNN. Balber said he also represented the Agalarovs. Balber said Mueller’s investigators had not interviewed his client or made contact about the Agalarovs.

In addition to Trump Jr., lawyer Veselnitskaya, her translator, and Kaveladze, the meeting was attended by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Manafort, publicist Rob Goldstone and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin.

Separately, the White House said on Tuesday that Trump had nominated Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor and envoy to China under former Democratic President Barack Obama, as U.S. ambassador to Russia.

(Additional reporting by John Walcott, David Alexander, Julia Ainsley, Jonathan Landay, Doina Chiacu, Roberta Rampton, Eric Beech and Jeff Mason; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Jeff Mason; Editing by Peter Cooney)