Tag Archives: Russia

Rescuers say toxic gas dropped on Syrian town where Russian helicopter shot down

Video of people affected by chemical attack

By Lisa Barrington

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Syrian rescue service operating in rebel-held territory said on Tuesday a helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a town close to where a Russian military helicopter had been shot down hours earlier.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC) accused President Bashar al-Assad of being behind the attack. Assad has denied previous accusations of using chemical weapons.

A spokesman for the Syria Civil Defence said 33 people, mostly women and children, were affected by the gas, which they suspect was chlorine, in Saraqeb, in rebel-held Idlib province.

The group, which describes itself as a neutral band of search and rescue volunteers, posted a video on YouTube apparently showing a number of men struggling to breathe and being given oxygen masks by people in civil defense uniforms.

“Medium-sized barrels fell containing toxic gases. The Syrian Civil Defence was not able to determine the type of the gas,” said the spokesman.

The Syrian government and its Russian allies were not immediately available for comment.

Later, state news agency SANA said rebels had fired rockets armed with toxic gas on the government-held old quarter of Aleppo city, killing five people and causing eight breathing difficulties. It gave no further details. Rebels have denied previous accusations of using chemical weapons.

The SNC said of the reported use of poison gas in Saraqeb: “After shelling, besieging and killing civilians and perpetrating war crimes on them, the Assad regime has resorted once again, and in breach of UN resolutions 2118 and 2235, to using chemical substances and toxic gases.

“The daily reality confirms that all the international agreements and previous security council decisions, be they about chemical weapons or otherwise, are meaningless for the Assad regime.”

The Civil Defence spokesman said it was the second time Saraqeb had been hit by toxic gas. The group was aware of around nine suspected chlorine gas incidents across Idlib province since the conflict began, he said.

The U.S. State Department said it was looking into the reported use of chemical weapons in Saraqeb.

“I’m not in a position to confirm the veracity of (the reports),” said spokesman John Kirby. “Certainly, if it’s true, it would be extremely serious.”

Monitors at the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence on all sides in the civil war, said barrel bombs fell on Saraqeb late on Monday, wounding a large number of citizens.

Russia’s defense ministry said a Russian helicopter was shot down near Saraqeb during the day on Monday, killing all five people on board, in the biggest officially acknowledged loss of life for Russian forces since they started operations in Syria.

DENIALS

The helicopter came down roughly mid-way between Aleppo and Russia’s main air base at Hmeimim in the western province of Latakia, near the Mediterranean coast.

Russian air power began supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad late last year, an intervention which tipped the balance of the war in Assad’s favor, eroding gains the rebels had made that year.

No group has claimed responsibility for downing the Mi-8 military transport helicopter.

Government and opposition forces have both denied using chemical weapons during the five-year-old civil war. Western powers say the government has been responsible for chlorine and other chemical attacks. The government and Russia have accused rebels of using poison gas.

U.N. investigators established that sarin gas was used in Eastern Ghouta in 2013. The United States accused Damascus of that attack, which it estimates killed 1,429 people, including at least 426 children. Damascus denied responsibility, and blamed rebels.

Later that year the United Nations and the Syrian government agreed to destroy the state’s declared stockpile of chemical weapons, a process completed in January 2016.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed in late 2015 that sulfur mustard, commonly known as mustard gas, had been used for the first time in the conflict, without saying which party in the many sided conflict it thought had used it.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Samia Nakhoul and Robin Pomeroy)

U.S. weighs dangers, benefits of naming Russia in cyber hack

Hand in front of computer

By Warren Strobel and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wary of a global confrontation with Russia, U.S. President Barack Obama must carefully weigh how to respond to what security experts believe was Moscow’s involvement in the hacking of Democratic Party organizations, U.S. officials said.

Publicly blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services would bring instant pressure on Washington to divulge its evidence, which relies on highly classified sources and methods, U.S. intelligence officials said.

One option for Washington is to retaliate against Russia in cyberspace. But the intelligence officials said they fear a rapid escalation in which, under a worst-case scenario, Moscow’s sophisticated cyber warriors could attack power grids, financial systems and other critical infrastructure.

Washington also has diplomacy to manage with Russia in Secretary of State John Kerry’s long-shot attempt to enlist Moscow’s help in ending the Syrian civil war and sustaining the Iran nuclear deal, as well as Russia-NATO tensions over Ukraine and Eastern Europe to manage.

“Despite how outrageous it is to interfere with a democratic election, the costs of coming out and saying the Russians did it would far outweigh the benefits, if there would be any benefits,” said one intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Russia has denied responsibility for hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee. Also attacked were a computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the party’s fundraising committee for House of Representative candidates in the Nov. 8 election.

Other current and former officials are arguing for a firm response, however. They said the hack was the latest in a series of aggressive moves by Putin, including Russia’s annexation of Crimea, military intervention to rescue Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and funding of right-wing and anti-European Union groups in Europe.

Columbia University cyber security expert Jason Healey said at an annual security forum in Aspen, Colorado, on Saturday that the Russians had been very aggressive in cyberspace too.

“I think the president needs to start looking at brush-back pitches,” Healey said, referring to a baseball thrown near the batter as a warning.

NAME AND SHAME?

Intelligence officials and cyber experts said the intrusions themselves were not that unusual. American spy agencies conduct similar electronic espionage outside U.S. borders.

What made this hack a game-changer, they said, was the public release of the DNC emails, via the pro-transparency group WikiLeaks, in an apparent attempt to affect the election.

Government and party officials said they were unaware of any evidence that WikiLeaks had received the hacked materials directly from Russians or that WikiLeaks’ release of the materials was in any way directed by Russians.

The Justice Department’s National Security Division, which is overseeing the investigation, has publicly charged U.S. adversaries – known as “naming and shaming” – before.

The U.S. government blamed North Korea for a damaging attack on Sony Pictures, and in 2014 indicted five members of the Chinese military for computer hacking and economic espionage.

Among adversary nations with significant cyber capabilities, a list that also includes Iran, the Russian government is the only one the Justice Department has not yet charged.

Obama’s homeland security and counter-terrorism advisor Lisa Monaco said the government has developed “best practices” to investigate cyber attacks and decide when to make the results public.

Monaco, also speaking at the Aspen forum, said that in the Sony case, FBI investigators had high confidence North Korea was responsible. The attack was deemed destructive, as well as coercive, because it was retaliation for a movie parodying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“Those two things, along with our confidence in the attribution and the ability to talk about it in a way that would not disclose sources and methods and hinder our ability to make such attribution in the future all combined to say, ‘We’re going to call this out’,” she said.

Elissa Slotkin, an acting assistant secretary of defense, said that for the next decade, the U.S. government faced a fundamental question in dealing with Russia: “How do you get the balance right?”

“Are we being too charitable and giving them too many opportunities to come back to the table, or are we providing such a high level of deterrence that we’re potentially provoking them?” Slotkin asked.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed; editing by Grant McCool)

Islamic State calls on members to carry out jihad in Russia

An Islamic State flag is seen in this picture illustration taken February 18, 2016. Picture taken February 18, 2016. REUTERS/Dado

CAIRO (Reuters) – Islamic State called on its group members to carry out jihad in Russia in a nine-minute YouTube video on Sunday.

“Listen Putin, we will come to Russia and will kill you at your homes … Oh Brothers, carry out jihad and kill and fight them,” a masked man driving a car in the desert yelled while wagging his finger in the last couple of minutes of the video.

The video with subtitles showed footage of armed men attacking armored vehicles and tents and collecting arms in the desert. “Breaking into a barrack of the Rejectionist military on the international road south Akashat,” read one subtitle.

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the video but the link to the footage was published on a Telegram messaging account used by the militant group.

It was not immediately clear why Russia would be a target, but Russia and the U.S. are talking about boosting military and intelligence cooperation against Islamic State and al Qaeda in Syria.

Islamic State has called on its supporters to take action with any available weapons targeting countries it has been fighting.

There has been a string of deadly attacks claimed by Islamic state in Europe over the past weeks. Last week, assailants loyal to Islamic State forced an elderly Catholic priest in France to his knees before slitting his throat. Since the mass killing in Nice, southern France on July 14, there have been four incidents in Germany, including the most recent suicide bombing at a concert in Ansbach.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelatti writing by Amina Ismail; Writing by Amina Ismail; Editing by Alison Williams and Marguerita Choy)

Attempt at U.S.-Russia cooperation in Syria suffers major setbacks

john kerry and sergei lavrov

By Tom Miles and John Walcott

GENEVA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to elicit Russian military cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in Syria suffered two potentially crippling blows on Thursday.

First, the Syrian army said it had cut off all supply routes into the eastern part of the city of Aleppo – Syria’s most important opposition stronghold – and President Bashar al-Assad’s government asked residents to leave the city.

That move, U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity said on Thursday, appeared to be an effort to pre-empt a U.S. demand that Russia and Syria reopen a major road into the divided northern city before talks could begin on creating a joint intelligence center to coordinate air attacks against Islamic State.

Then al Qaeda’s Syrian branch announced on Thursday it was terminating its relationship with the global network created by Osama bin Laden and changing its name to remove what it called a pretext by the United States and other countries to attack Syrians.

Although one U.S. official called it “a change in name only,” the move complicates the American proposal to limit the Russians and Syrians to targeting only Nusra and IS, not other rebel groups supported by Washington and its allies in the coalition against Islamic State.

“By disavowing its ties to al Qaeda – which, incidentally, it did with al Qaeda’s blessing – Nusra has made it harder to isolate it from more moderate groups, some of whose members may join it now because it’s more powerful than some of the groups they belong to now,” said the official.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington has been clear about its concerns over the announcement of the humanitarian corridor and that its view of the Nusra Front had not changed despite its name change.

“But we also remain committed to the proposals reached by the United States and Russia to better enforce the cessation of hostilities in Syria and provide the space needed for a resumption of political talks. If fully implemented in good faith, they can achieve a measure of success that has eluded us thus far,” Kirby told Reuters.

“As the secretary made clear, however, we are pragmatic about these efforts, and we will look to Russia to meet its commitments as we will meet ours. That will be the primary, determining factor of success here,” he added.

FALTERING PROPOSAL

The twin U.S. goals in Syria have been ending the violence that already has claimed some 400,000 lives, according to United Nations estimates, and seeking a political process to replace Assad, whom President Barack Obama has said “must go.”

But while Washington and Moscow have both expressed hope they can find a way to cooperate against IS, Kerry’s proposal was already in trouble due to the competing objectives of the Cold War-era foes as well as resistance from U.S. military and intelligence officials.

U.S. officials questioned Russian and Syrian claims that their aim in evacuating civilians from Aleppo was to clear the way for humanitarian assistance to reach the besieged city, where 200,000-300,000 civilians remain with only two to three weeks of food on hand.

“Why would you evacuate a city that you wanted to send humanitarian aid to?” asked one official. “At first glance, that would appear to be a unilateral effort by Moscow and Assad to pre-empt Kerry’s demand for ending the siege of Aleppo before starting negotiations on the larger issues. If the proposal isn’t dead, it seems to be pretty badly wounded.”

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura wants a deal as soon as possible so he can restart peace talks within a month and aid flows can resume.

(Reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and John Walcott in Washington, additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed; editing by G Crosse)

U.S. theory on Democratic Party breach: Hackers meant to leave Russia’s mark

secure URL picture

By John Walcott, Joseph Menn and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some U.S. intelligence officials suspect that Russian hackers who broke into Democratic Party computers may have deliberately left digital fingerprints to show Moscow is a “cyberpower” that Washington should respect.

Three officials, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said the breaches of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were less sophisticated than other cyber intrusions that have been traced to Russian intelligence agencies or criminals.

For example, said one official, the hackers used some Cyrillic characters, worked during Russian government business hours but not on Russian religious or political holidays.”Either these guys were incredibly sloppy, in which case it’s not clear that they could have gotten as far as they did without being detected, or they wanted us to know they were Russian,” said the official.

Private sector cyber security experts agreed that the evidence clearly points to Russian hackers but dismissed the idea that they intentionally left evidence of their identities.

These experts – who said they have examined the breach in detail – said the Cyrillic characters were buried in metadata and in an error message. Other giveaways, such as a tainted Internet protocol address, also were difficult to find.

Russian hacking campaigns have traditionally been harder to track than China’s but not impossible to decipher, private sector experts said. But the Russians have become more aggressive and easier to detect in the past two years, security experts said, especially when they are trying to move quickly.

False flags have grown more common, but the government and private experts do not believe that is involved in the DNC case.

The two groups of hackers involved are adept at concealing their intrusions, said Laura Galante, head of global threat intelligence at FireEye, whose Mandiant subsidiary conducted forensic analysis of the attack and corroborated the findings of another cyber company, CrowdStrike.

Russian officials have dismissed the allegations of Moscow’s involvement as absurd. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in his only response to reporters, said: “I don’t want to use four-letter words.”

EMBARRASSING EMAILS

While private cyber experts and the government were aware of the political party’s hacking months ago, embarrassing emails were leaked last weekend by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group just as the Democratic Party prepared to anoint Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate for the Nov. 8 election.

DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned after the leaked emails showed party leaders favoring Clinton over her rival in the campaign for the nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The committee is supposed to be neutral.

The U.S. intelligence officials conceded that they had based their views on deductive reasoning and not conclusive evidence, but suggested Russia’s aim probably was much broader than simply undermining Clinton’s campaign.

They said the hack fit a pattern of Russian President Vladimir Putin pushing back on what he sees as the United States and its European allies trying to weaken Russia.

“Call it the cyber equivalent of buzzing NATO ships and planes using fighters with Russian flags on their tails,” said one official.

Two sources familiar with Democratic Party investigations into the hacking said the private email accounts of Democratic Party officials were targeted as well as servers.

They said that the FBI had advised the DNC that it was looking into the hacking of the individual officials’ private accounts. They also said the FBI also requested additional information identifying the personal email accounts of certain party officials.

The DNC hired CrowdStrike to investigate the hack. It spent about six weeks, from late April to about June 11 or 12, monitoring the systems and watching while the hackers – who they believed were Russian – operated inside the systems, one of the sources said.

What actions, if any, the Obama administration will take are unclear and could depend on what diplomatic considerations may ultimately be involved, a former White House cyber security official said.

In past cases, administration officials have decided to publicly blame North Korea and indict members of China’s military for hacking because the administration decided that the net benefit of public shaming – and increased awareness brought to cyber security – outweighed potential risks, the former official said.

But “the Russia calculation is far more difficult and precarious,” the former official said. “Russia is a much more aggressive, capable foreign actor both in the traditional military sense and in the cyber realm” and that made public attribution or covert retaliation much less likely.

The former official, and a source familiar with the Democratic Party investigations, said that they also were unaware of any U.S. intelligence clearly demonstrating that WikiLeaks had received the hacked materials directly from Russians or that WikiLeaks’ release of the materials was in any way directed by Russians.

(Reporting By John Walcott, Joseph Menn and Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by David Rohde and Grant McCool)

China says to hold drills with Russia in South China Sea

Chinese and Russian naval vessels

BEIJING (Reuters) – China and Russia will hold “routine” naval exercises in the South China Sea in September, China’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday, adding that the drills were aimed at strengthening their cooperation and were not aimed at any other country.

The exercises come at a time of heightened tension in the contested waters after an arbitration court in the Hague ruled this month that China did not have historic rights to the South China Sea and criticized its environmental destruction there.

China rejected the ruling and refused to participate in the case.

“This is a routine exercise between the two armed forces, aimed at strengthening the developing China-Russia strategic cooperative partnership,” China’s defense ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told a regular monthly news conference.

“The exercise is not directed against third parties.”

China and Russia are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, and have held similar views on many major issues such as the crisis in Syria, putting them at odds with the United States and Western Europe.

Last year, they held joint military drills in the Sea of Japan and the Mediterranean.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have rival claims.

China has repeatedly blamed the United States for stoking tension in the region through its military patrols, and of taking sides in the dispute.

The United States has sought to assert its right to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea with its patrols and denies taking sides in the territorial disputes.

Russia has been a strong backer of China’s stance on the arbitration case, that was brought by the Philippines.

Yang said China and Russia were comprehensive strategic partners and had already held many exercises this year.

“These drills deepen mutual trust and expand cooperation, raise the ability to jointly deal with security threats, and benefit the maintenance of regional and global peace and stability,” he said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by John Ruwitch and Brenda Goh; Editing by Robert Birsel)

U.S. to sanction cyber attackers, cites Russia, China

US sanctioning cyber attackers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will use sanctions against those behind cyber attacks that target transportation systems or the power grid, the White House said on Tuesday, citing Russia and China as increasingly assertive and sophisticated cyber operators.

The sanctions will be used “when the conditions are right and when actions will further U.S. policy,” White House counter terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco said in prepared remarks to a cyber security conference.

Monaco cited an “increasingly diverse and dangerous” global landscape in which Iran has launched denial-of-service attacks on U.S. banks and North Korea has shown it would conduct destructive attacks.

“To put it bluntly, we are in the midst of a revolution of the cyber threat – one that is growing more persistent, more diverse, more frequent and more dangerous every day,” she said.

The United States is working with other countries to adopt voluntary norms of responsible cyber behavior and work to reduce malicious activity, she said. At the same time, it will use an executive order authorizing sanctions against those who attack U.S. critical infrastructure.

Monaco introduced a new directive from President Barack Obama that establishes a “clear framework” to coordinate the government’s response to cyber incidents.

“It will help answer a question heard too often from corporations and citizens alike – ‘In the wake of an attack, who do I call for help?'” she said.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Behind Democrats’ email leak, U.S. experts see a Russian subplot

By Mark Hosenball and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If the Russian government is behind the theft and release of embarrassing emails from the Democratic Party, as U.S. officials have suggested, it may reflect less a love of Donald Trump or enmity for Hillary Clinton than a desire to discredit the U.S. political system.

A U.S. official who is taking part in the investigation said that intelligence collected on the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday “indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia.”

The timing on the eve of Clinton’s formal nomination this week for the Nov. 8 presidential election has raised questions about whether Russia may have been trying to hurt her, to help Trump, her Republican rival, or to fan populist sentiment against establishment politicians as it has sought to do across Europe in recent years.

“Certainly Russia has become a master at manipulating information for their strategic goals: Witness the information bubble they have created for their threatening behavior in the Crimea, the Ukraine and elsewhere,” said former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden. “A step like this, however, would be really upping their game.”

The emails showed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign against Clinton and raised questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist.

The disclosures confirmed Sanders’ frequent charge that the party played favorites against him and clouded a party convention Clinton hoped would signal unity, not division.

PUTIN’S COUNTERPUNCH?

Two U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hack could be part of a broader campaign by Russian President Vladimir Putin to push back against what he thinks is an effort by the European Union and NATO, a military alliance of European and North American democracies, to encircle and weaken Russia.

One of the officials called the fear “a hangover” from Putin’s service in the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency.

“Time and again, we’re seeing Russia push back at what Putin considers Russia’s mortal enemies,” said the other official. “He’s been actively attacking the U.S.-backed rebels in Syria, buzzing ships and planes in the Black Sea and the Baltic, not to mention invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea. This fits the pattern.”

Despite Clinton’s short-lived attempt as secretary of state to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations after U.S. President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the leaked emails could damage a candidate the Kremlin may consider hostile and benefit her opponent, who has been friendlier.

Putin accused Clinton of stirring up protests against his rule after a December 2011 Russian parliamentary election that was marred by allegations of fraud, saying she had encouraged “mercenary” Kremlin foes by criticizing the vote.

“She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work,” Putin told supporters.

Asked about claims that Russian intelligence had hacked the DNC to obtain the emails, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told NBC News’ Richard Engel “there is no proof of that whatsoever” and said “this is a diversion” pushed by the Clinton campaign.

TRUMP’S WARMER TONEAnalysts said Russia’s goal may be much broader than simply meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

“It’s a gross oversimplification to suggest that the Russian government is all-in for Donald Trump,” said Andrew Weiss, a Russia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

“It’s in Russia’s interest … to portray the United States as riven with popular discontent, xenophobia and high-level political corruption,” Weiss said. “It fits nicely with the Kremlin’s standard narrative … that the White House rushes to criticize others without getting its own house in order.”

The Russian leader may well have been encouraged by Trump’s comments to The New York Times last week that with him in the White House, NATO might not automatically defend the Baltic states that were once a part of the Russian-led Soviet Union.

Despite public Trump-Putin exchanges of praise, Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, warned against reaching any quick conclusions about Putin’s view of Trump.

“We can say with some degree of confidence that they don’t like Hillary,” Rumer said. “It’s less clear that they like Trump, although over the years the Russians have said they prefer to deal with the Republicans – (that) they are kind of hard-line but they can do deals.”

A diplomat with experience working on Russia said the Kremlin also might be betting that Clinton will win and is sending a shot across her bow.

“Messing with her like this now puts her on notice that these are tough guys that she’s got to be really careful with,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A U.S. intelligence official who is reviewing the emails as part of the investigation into their origin said that those emails describing the privileges the Democratic National Committee showers on its wealthiest donors bolster the Russian narrative of an American political system rigged by the wealthy and riddled with corruption.

“In addition to countering the U.S. narrative that the Russian government is a corrupt oligarchy, leaking these emails fits rather conveniently with Trump’s charges about a rigged system and ‘crooked Hillary’,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss domestic politics.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball, Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott.; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by John Walcott and Howard Goller)

Iran receives the missile part of S-300 defense system from Russia

Russian military vehicles move along a central street during a rehearsal for a military parade in Moscow

DUBAI (Reuters) – Russia has delivered the missile part of S-300 surface-to-air defense system to Iran, Tasnim news agency reported on Monday, moving to finish the delivery of all divisions of the system to Tehran by the end of this year.

“The first shipment of missiles of S-300 missile system has recently entered Iran that shows Iran’s determination to equip its air defense circle with this system,” Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported.

Russia’s agreement to provide Iran with S-300 has sparked concern in Israel, whose government Iran has said it aims to destroy.

Russia says it canceled a contract to deliver S-300s to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West.

President Vladimir Putin lifted that self-imposed ban in April 2015, after an interim agreement that paved the way for July’s full nuclear deal.

Russia delivered the first parts of S-300, the missile tubes and radar equipment, to Iran in April.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

U.S. proposes military cooperation with Russia on Syria

People queue for bread in the rebel held al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo

PARIS (Reuters) – The United States will propose increasing military cooperation and sharing intelligence with Russia to identify and target Islamic State and al Qaeda headquarters, training camps and supply routes in Syria, the Washington Post reported.

The extent of coordination set out in the document would represent a major shift after years of rivalry between Washington and Moscow, who support opposing sides in Syria’s five-year-old civil war.

The proposal, set out in a document published by the newspaper, will be presented by Secretary of State John Kerry during a visit to Moscow on Thursday, it said.

Kerry declined to comment when asked about the report. “I’ll have comments, going to Moscow, meeting with President Putin tonight; we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it and I’ll give you all a sense of where we are,” he told reporters in Paris.

A senior State Department official told Reuters that Kerry would discuss how to deal with Islamic State and al Qaeda in Syria, as well as efforts to reduce the violence, allow humanitarian access and move towards political transition.

“At present we are not conducting or coordinating military operations with Russia, nor is it clear we will reach an agreement to do so,” the official said.

The document published by The Washington Post called for intelligence sharing to identify leadership targets, training camps, supply lines and headquarters of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Strikes against those targets could be carried out by U.S. or Russian jets.

It said that expanded coordination between the United States and Russia would be channeled through a Joint Implementation Group, based in the vicinity of the Jordanian capital Amman.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom in Paris,; Writing by Dominic Evans, Editing by Angus MacSwan)