Tag Archives: Russia

Trump’s offer to Russia: an end to sanctions for nuclear arms cut – London Times

Donald Trump speaking at news conference on Russia foreign policy

By Guy Faulconbridge and William James

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will propose offering to end sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal with Moscow, he told The Times of London.

Criticizing previous U.S. foreign policy in an interview published on Monday, he described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as possibly the gravest error in the history of the United States and akin to “throwing rocks into a beehive”.

But Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday as the 45th U.S. president, raised the prospect of the first big nuclear arms control agreement with Moscow since the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by President Barack Obama in 2010.

“They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia,” the Republican president-elect was quoted as saying by The Times.

“For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”

The United States and Russia are by far the world’s biggest nuclear powers. The United States has 1,367 nuclear warheads on deployed strategic missiles and bombers, and Russia has 1,796 such deployed warheads, according to the latest published assessment by the U.S. State Department.

Under the 2010 New START treaty, Russia and the United States agreed to limit the number of long-range, strategic nuclear weapons they can deploy.

Trump has said he will seek to improve relations with Moscow despite criticism that he is too eager to make an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Asked whether he would trust German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Putin more, Trump said: “Well, I start off trusting both –but let’s see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all.”

His relations with Moscow have faced renewed scrutiny after an unsubstantiated report that Russia had collected compromising information about Trump.

The information was summarized in a U.S. intelligence report which was presented to Trump and Obama this month.

The report concluded Russia tried to sway the outcome of the Nov. 8 election in Trump’s favor by hacking and other means. It did not make an assessment on whether Russia’s attempts affected the election’s outcome.

Trump accused U.S. intelligence agencies of leaking the information from the unverified dossier, which he called “fake news” and phony stuff.” Intelligence leaders denied the charge and Moscow has dismissed the accusations against it.

RUSSIAN RELATIONS

In the interview with The Times, Trump was also critical of Russia’s intervention in Syria’s civil war which, along with the help of Iran, has tilted the conflict in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor.

“I think it’s a very rough thing,” Trump said of Russian intervention in Syria. “Aleppo has been such a terrible humanitarian situation.”

The war has killed more than 300,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and aided the rise of the Islamic State militant group.

On NATO, Trump repeated his view that the military alliance was obsolete but said it was still very important for him.

“I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump told The Times, referring to comments he made during his presidential election campaign. “It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right.”

Trump said many NATO member states were not paying their fair share for U.S. protection.

“A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump said. “With that being said, NATO is very important to me. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”

Trump said he would appoint his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to try to broker a Middle East peace deal, urged Britain to veto any new U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel and criticized Obama’s handling of the deal between Iran and six world powers including the United States which curbed Tehran’s nuclear program.

On Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, Trump said: “Brexit is going to end up being a great thing” and said he was eager to get a trade deal done with the United Kingdom.

(Editing by Peter Cooney and Timothy Heritage)

Russia says facing increased cyber attacks from abroad

graphic representing hacking or cyber attacks

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia is facing increased cyber attacks from abroad, a senior security official was quoted on Sunday as saying, responding to Western accusations that Moscow is aggressively targeting information networks in the United States and Europe.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyber campaign aimed at boosting Donald Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Russia has dismissed the accusations as a “witch-hunt”.

“Recently we have noted a significant increase in attempts to inflict harm on Russia’s informational systems from external forces,” Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily, according to excerpts of an interview to be published in full on Monday.

“The global (Internet) operators and providers are widely used, while the methods they use constantly evolve,” said Patrushev, a former head of the FSB secret service and a close ally of Putin.

Patrushev accused the outgoing U.S. administration of President Barack Obama of “deliberately ignoring the fact that the main Internet servers are based on the territory of the United States and are used by Washington for intelligence and other purposes aimed at retaining its global domination”.

But he added that Moscow hoped to establish “constructive contacts” with the Trump administration. Trump, who praised Putin during the election campaign and has called for better ties with Moscow, will be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Gareth Jones)

China, Russia agree on more ‘countermeasures’ against U.S. anti-missile system: Xinhua

THAAD Missile Defense System in South Korea

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China and Russia have agreed to take further unspecified “countermeasures” in response to a U.S. plan to deploy an anti-missile system in South Korea, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The countermeasures “will be aimed at safeguarding interests of China and Russia and the strategic balance in the region”, Xinhua said, citing a statement released after a China-Russia security meeting.

China and Russia held a joint anti-missile drill last May after Washington and Seoul began discussions over installing the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to counter any North Korean threats.

THAAD is now due to be deployed on a South Korean golf course, unsettling Moscow and Beijing, which worry that the system’s powerful radar will compromise their security and do nothing to lower tensions on the Korean peninsula.

China and Russia said in October they would hold a second drill this year.

“China and Russia urged the United States and South Korea to address their security concerns and stop the deployment of THAAD on the Korean Peninsula,” Xinhua quoted the statement as saying.

North Korea’s drive to develop nuclear weapons capability has angered China, Pyongyang’s sole major diplomatic and economic supporter. However, Beijing fears THAAD and its radar have a range that would extend into China.

On Thursday, South Korea’s trade minister said the South might complain to China about actions perceived to have been taken in retaliation for its decision to deploy the U.S. anti-missile system.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Paul Tait)

Syrian ceasefire largely holding, aid not going in – UN

UN medator for Syria

GENEVA (Reuters) – The ceasefire in the Syria war is holding for the most part but humanitarian aid is still not getting through to besieged areas where food is running out, the U.N. envoy said on Thursday.

Envoy Staffan de Mistura voiced concern that 23 buses and Syrian drivers used in recent evacuations were being stopped from leaving the villages of Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province by armed groups. He called for them to be allowed to leave.

“These are not U.N. officials, these are Syrian buses with Syrian drivers. And that is not to happen because this complicates then tit-for-tat approaches,” de Mistura told reporters in Geneva after the weekly meeting of the humanitarian task force.

The ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey last month was largely holding, he said But fighting was still going on in two villages in the Wadi Barada valley, the site of water pumping facilities serving more than 5 million people in Damascus. Five other villages in the area had reached an agreement with the government, he said.

Water engineers are ready to repair the damaged facility, security permitting, he said, although two attempts to do so had been blocked by armed groups.

“Military activities in that area means also the potential of further damaging water pumps and water supplies,” he said.

De Mistura said he understood that the United Nations would be invited for talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, being organised by Russia and Turkey.

That meeting was aimed at deepening the cessation of hostilities and forming “some type of political broad lines,” which could contribute to Geneva peace talks he has convened around Feb. 8, de Mistura said. But there had been no formal invitations or confirmed dates for Astana.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Trump’s CIA nominee includes Russia in list of global challenges

guy to be head of CIA under Trump

By David Alexander and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CIA portrayed multiple challenges facing the United States on Thursday, from an aggressive Russia to a “disruptive” Iran to a China that he said is creating “real tensions.”

Diverging from Trump’s stated aim of seeking closer ties with Russia, Pompeo said that Russia is “asserting itself aggressively” by invading and occupying Ukraine, threatening Europe, and “doing nearly nothing” to destroy Islamic State.

Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of the House of Representatives and a former U.S. Army officer, was speaking at the start of his confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate.

In his prepared opening statement, Pompeo noted that the CIA does not make policy on any country, adding, “it is a policy decision as to what to do with Russia, but it will be essential that the Agency provide policymakers with accurate intelligence and clear-eyed analysis of Russian activities.”

His testimony came at a time when Trump, a Republican who takes office on Jan. 20, has openly feuded with U.S. intelligence agencies.

For weeks, the president-elect questioned the intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia used hacking and other tactics to try to tilt the 2016 presidential election in his favor. Trump said on Wednesday that Russia was behind the hacking but that other countries were hacking the United States as well.

This week, Trump furiously denounced intelligence officials for what he said were leaks to the media by intelligence agencies of a dossier that makes unverified, salacious allegations about his contacts in Russia.

Pompeo, a conservative lawmaker from Kansas who is on the House Intelligence Committee, listed challenges facing the United States, saying “this is the most complicated threat environment the United States has faced in recent memory.”

This included what he called a “resilient” Islamic State and the fallout from Syria’s long civil war.

Pompeo also included North Korea, which he said had “dangerously accelerated its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.” He said China was creating “real tensions” with its activities in the South China Sea and in cyberspace as it flexed its muscles and expanded its military and economic reach.

He called Iran an “emboldened, disruptive player in the Middle East, fueling tensions” with Sunni Muslim allies of the United States.

(Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Howard Goller)

EU eyes new Libya approach to block feared migrant wave

raft overcrowded with migrants/refugees in the Mediterranean Sea

By Alastair Macdonald

VALLETTA (Reuters) – The European Union plans new measures to deter migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, officials said, as Malta urged the bloc to act on Thursday to head off a surge in arrivals from a country where Russia is taking a new interest.

With options limited by the weakness of the U.N.-recognized government and by divisions among EU states, it is unclear just what the EU may agree. But officials believe a consensus can be found within weeks in support of national steps taken by Italy.

Rome once effectively paid Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to block migrants. Since he was overthrown with Western backing in 2011, it has struggled to cope with large numbers of new arrivals. Italy is now working with U.N.-backed Prime Minister Fayez Seraj on a new agreement under which Rome will help guard Libya’s southern desert borders against smugglers.

Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who hosted the executive European Commission in Valletta on Wednesday and will host an EU summit discussing migration on Feb. 3, said new Russian contacts with a Libyan rebel commander and intelligence indicating a sharp increase in crossings once the weather improves made urgent EU action imperative.

“Come next spring, we will have a crisis,” he told a news conference, forecasting “unprecedented” numbers following the record 180,000 sea arrivals in Italy last year.

“The choice is trying to do something now … or meeting urgently in April, May, saying there are tens of thousands of people crossing the Mediterranean, drowning … and then trying to do a deal then.”

“I would beg that we try … to do a deal now,” added Muscat, whose government will chair EU councils until June.

The Commission visit to Malta included senior Libya experts, said officials who foresee new EU policy proposals within weeks.

TURKEY MODEL

After all but halting migrant flows to Greece through a deal last year with Turkey to hold back Syrian refugees, the EU wants to cut flows from Libya. It wants to step up deportations of failed asylum seekers and is using aid budgets to pressure African states to cooperate in taking back their citizens.

Some EU states are looking at greater military involvement to disrupt migrant smuggling gangs which have thrived in the absence of effective authority in Libya.

The EU is training the Libyan coastguard in international waters but has not been able to agree for many months on whether to move into Libya’s territorial waters.

But Muscat said he saw an emerging consensus on a new approach, including from a hitherto skeptical Germany, adding Italy’s deal with Libya should be emulated by the EU.

Muscat said the EU should seek Libyan agreement to expand the bloc’s mission – currently involved in search and rescue operations, trying to obstruct traffickers and uphold a U.N. arms embargo – into Libyan waters.

He said the EU should revive an agreement drafted with Gaddafi, which offered funding to Libya in exchange for more checks on migration.

Asked whether he foresaw EU forces patrolling Libyan borders or the EU setting up camps in Libya to process asylum claims, Muscat did not go into detail on how an EU plan would work beyond saying that, as with the Turkey deal, the key element was “scuttling the business model” of smuggling gangs.

After talks on Thursday, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti and EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said in a joint statement that the EU backed engagement with Libya. They said: “The Commission is ready to further support Italy in this engagement politically, financially and operationally.”

(Additional reporting by Isla Binnie in Rome and Gabriela Baczynska and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

New U.N. chief urges Security Council to do more to prevent war

United Nations Secretary General

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – New United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council on Tuesday to take more action to prevent conflicts instead of just responding to them as he pledged to strengthen the world body’s mediation capacity.

“The United Nations was established to prevent war by binding us in a rules-based international order. Today, that order is under grave threat,” Guterres said in his first address to the 15-member council since taking office on Jan. 1.

Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal and former U.N. refugee chief, said too many opportunities to prevent conflicts had been lost due to mistrust among states and concerns over national sovereignty.

“Such concerns are understandable, in a world where power is unequal and principles have sometimes been applied selectively. Indeed, prevention should never be used to serve other political goals,” he told the council.

“On the contrary, prevention is best served by strong sovereign states, acting for the good of their people,” he said.

The council has been largely deadlocked on the six-year war in Syria, with Russia and China pitted against the United States, Britain and France. The body has also been split on its approach to other conflicts and crises such as South Sudan and Burundi, with some members citing sovereignty concerns.

“Russia has suggested … that failure to respect state sovereignty is the main driver of conflict,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said.

“Even as Russia has used its veto to insulate itself from consequences in this council for trampling on Ukraine’s sovereignty,” she said, referring to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin shot back at Power.

“It is a violation of sovereignty by the United States that led to the very dire situation in a number regions of the world, which we now have to tackle,” he said, citing countries including Iraq and Libya.

Guterres asked the council to make greater use of Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the body to investigate and recommend procedures to resolve disputes that could eventually endanger international peace and security.

He outlined steps he was taking to bolster the United Nations’ prevention capabilities, which he described as “fragmented.” He has created an executive committee to integrate all U.N. arms and appointed a senior official merge U.N. prevention capacities for better action.

“We will launch an initiative to enhance our mediation capacity,” he said. “We spend far more time and resources responding to crises rather than preventing them … We need a whole new approach.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Tom Brown)

Democrats want 9/11-style special commission to probe Russia

rainy day at Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic members of the U.S. Congress called on Monday for the creation of an independent commission to investigate Russia’s attempts to intervene in the 2016 election, similar to the Sept. 11 panel that probed the 2001 attacks on the United States.

Their “Protecting our Democracy Act” would create a 12-member, bipartisan independent panel to interview witnesses, obtain documents, issue subpoenas and receive public testimony to examine attempts by Moscow and any other entities to influence the election.

The panel members would not be members of Congress.

The legislation is one of many calls by lawmakers to look into Russian involvement in the contest, in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the White House race, confounding opinion polls. Republicans also kept control of the Senate and House of Representatives by larger-than-expected margins.

U.S. intelligence agencies on Friday released a report saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Clinton.

Russia has denied the hacking allegations. A Kremlin spokesman said Monday they were “reminiscent of a witch-hunt.”

“There is no question that Russia attacked us,” Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a news conference.

Versions of the bill were introduced in both the Senate and House. In the Senate it has 10 sponsors. In the House it is backed by every member of the Democratic caucus, said Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

However, no Republicans currently back the bill, so its prospects are dim, given Republican control of both houses of Congress.

While a few Republicans, notably Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, have supported calls for an independent probe, party leaders have resisted the idea, saying that investigations by Republican-led congressional committees are sufficient.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, who just returned from a trip to the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia with Graham and McCain, said Russia’s actions justified a probe by an independent panel of national experts.

“This is not just about one political party. It’s not even about one election. It’s not even about one country, our country. It is a repeated attempt… around the world, to influence elections,” Klobuchar said.

After Sept 11, 2001, Congress established an independent commission to look into the attacks and make recommendations about how to prevent similar actions in the future. Many of the recommendations were adopted into law.

“The American people felt good about what they did,” Cummings said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Grant McCool)

Syrian Kurdish groups say not invited to peace talks

Kurdish fighter in Syria

PARIS (Reuters) – The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its political arm the PYD will not be invited to planned peace talks in Kazakhstan, a PYD official said on Tuesday, an outcome that would leave a key player in the conflict off the negotiating table.

Syria’s government and rebel forces started a ceasefire on Dec. 31 as a first step toward face-to face negotiations backed by Turkey and Russia, but the date and its participants remain unclear.

The truce is also under growing strain as rebels have vowed to respond to government violations and President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday the army would retake an important rebel-held area near Damascus.

“We are not invited. That’s for sure,” Khaled Eissa, a PYD member told Reuters in France. “It seems there were some vetoes. Neither the PYD or our military formation will be present,” he said.

Assad’s ally Russia had previously sought the PYD’s presence at other negotiations in Switzerland.

But Turkey, which opposes Assad, regards both the YPG and PYD as extensions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists in its own territory and has said two groups should not be represented in Astana.

The Syrian Kurds aim to cement the autonomy of areas of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have already carved out self-governing regions since the start of the war in 2011, though Kurdish leaders say an independent state is not the goal.

“What we have been told is that there will only be a limited number of armed groups and not political groups,” Eissa said, adding that for a comprehensive peace deal in Syria the Kurds would at one point have to be invited to the negotiating table.

The main Syrian political opposition umbrella group that includes about half a dozen armed groups, the Riyadh-backed High Negotiations Committee, is meeting in the Saudi capital later this week to discuss the Astana talks, although it is also unclear whether Moscow intends to invite them, diplomats and opposition officials said.

Ankara intervened in Syria last year in support of rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner sought to drive Islamic State from positions it had used to shell Turkish towns, and also to stop YPG expansion.

The YPG and its allies backed by a U.S.-led coalition is fighting against IS militants around the group’s Syrian bastion Raqqa, while Turkish-backed rebels are fighting the jihadist group further northwest near areas under Kurdish control.

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Philippines says finalizing deal to observe Russian military drills

Philippines President with Russian Ambassador

MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines is finalizing a security deal with Russia allowing the two countries’ leaders to exchange visits and observe military drills, a minister said on Monday, at the same time assuring the United States that ties with Moscow will not affect its alliance with its traditional ally.

Two Russian warships made port calls in Manila last week with President Rodrigo Duterte touring an anti-submarine vessel, saying he hoped Moscow would become his country’s ally and protector.

Duterte has thrown the future of Philippine-U.S. relations into question with angry outbursts against the United States, a former colonial power, and some scaling back of military ties while taking steps to improve relationships with China and Russia.

In October, Duterte told U.S. President Barack Obama to “go to hell” and said the United States had refused to sell some weapons to his country but he did not care because Russia and China were willing suppliers.

He is due to go to Moscow in April. The visit by the Russian warships was the first official navy-to-navy contact between the two countries.

“We will observe their exercises,” Philippine Defence Minister Delfin Lorenzana told reporters during the military’s traditional New Year’s call at the main army base in Manila.

“If we need their expertise, then we will join the exercises. That’s the framework of the memorandum of understanding that is going to be signed. It could be a joint exercises but, initially, its going to be exchange of visits.”

Lorenzana assured Washington the military agreement with Moscow would not allow rotational deployment of Russian troops, planes and ships in Manila for mutual defense.

“It’s not similar to the U.S. which is a treaty, Mutual Defence Treaty, which mandates them to help us in case we’re attacked,” he said. “We wont have that with Russia. The MOU is about exchange of military personnel, visits and observation of exercises.”

He said the Philippines also expected a team of Russian security experts to visit to discuss the sale of new weapons systems.

Last month, Duterte sent his foreign and defense ministers to Moscow to discuss arms deals after a U.S. senator said he would block the sale of 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines due to concern about a rising death toll in a war on drugs launched by Duterte.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Nick Macfie)