Tag Archives: Russia

Russia-Turkey tensions continue to rise as neither side apologizes

A tense quarrel between Russia and Turkey continued on Friday, as Russia reportedly opted to suspend visa-free travel with the country that recently shot down one of its warplanes over Syria.

Meanwhile, the president of Turkey cautioned Russia not to mistreat Turkish citizens who had traveled to the country and accused the country of playing with fire during a televised speech.

The countries have been closely watched following the Tuesday incident in which a Turkish jet fired at a Russian plane that it said crossed into its airspace despite repeated warnings not to do so. Russian officials, including the surviving pilot of the warplane, dispute Turkey’s version of the events and say no warning was given and the plane never once violated Turkey’s airspace.

The BBC reported Friday that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is seeking a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in France, where the leaders are scheduled to attend a summit on climate change beginning Monday. But Putin wants Turkey to apologize before such a meeting.

According to CNN, that won’t happen.

“I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us,” Erdogan told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday. “Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize.”

Instead, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced Friday that the country would put visa-free travel to Turkey on hold beginning January 1, the BBC reported. That could have major impacts on the country’s tourism industry, which welcomed 3 million Russian visitors in 2014.

The countries are also trading partners, though some of those relationships now appear rocky.

Reuters reported that several Russian manufacturers have been advised to stop purchasing supplies from Turkey, a move it said could adversely affect multi-million dollar contracts.

The Reuters report also indicated Erdogan was angry about published reports that said Turkish businessmen had been detained while in Russia. There was reportedly an issue with their visas.

“We sincerely recommend Russia not to play with fire,” he said, according to a video on Reuters’ website.

Russian pilot: Turkey provided no warning before shots were fired

The pilot of the Russian warplane that was shot down on Tuesday is claiming that Turkey did not provide any sort of warning before opening fire on the aircraft, according to reports.

Captain Konstantin Murakhtin is also claiming that the plane never crossed into Turkey’s airspace, though this claim has been disputed by NATO and United States military officials.

Murakhtin spoke to reporters a Russian air base in northern Syria on Wednesday, a day after he and the aircraft’s other pilot ejected from the aircraft that was shot down near the Syrian border. He was rescued after a half-day operation that involved using special forces, the BBC reported.

The other Russian pilot was killed.

Murakhtin told RT, a Russian television network, that the pilots did not receive a verbal or visual warning before a Turkish plane opened fire and hit their aircraft with a missile. He also claimed he knew the area very well and it was “impossible that we violated their airspace.”

Turkish officials had said they warned the pilots 10 times in five minutes, the New York Times reported, and that the plane crossed a tiny piece of Turkish territory in about 17 seconds.

NATO, of which Turkey is a member, has backed Turkey’s version of the events. A senior United States military official, speaking to the New York Times, said the data indicated the Russian plane flew over Turkey. CNN reported Turkey released tapes of what it said were the warnings.

The back-and-forth nature of the claims were escalating tensions between the two nations.

Multiple countries have called for the situation to be de-escalated, according to reports, and officials from Turkey and Russia are both quoted as saying they want to avoid military conflict.

Yet the Russian defense minister announced the country will deploy missile defense systems to the air base in Syria. The missiles would be able to reach the Turkish border, CNN reported.

Turkey shoots down Russian warplane

The Pentagon urged Russia and Turkey to de-accelerate the mounting tensions between the two countries following the downing of a Russian Fighter plane on the Syrian, Turkish border Tuesday, according to Reuters.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a press statement made in Brussels, backs Turkey’s version stating that an allied assessment shows the Russian warplane did fly into Turkish airspace.

The circumstances that led to this are in dispute. Both Turkey and Russia claim to have proof of their account.  Turkish military has presented a map and the radar locations of the Russian fighter when the missiles were fired.

According to the BBC, the Turkish military said two F-16s on patrol had fired on an unidentified aircraft at 09:24 (07:24 GMT) after warning it 10 times over five minutes about violating Turkish airspace over the town of Yayladagi, in Hatay province.

In a report to Reuters, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plane had been attacked when it was 1 kilometer inside Syria and warned of “serious consequences” for what he termed a stab in the back administered by “the accomplices of terrorists”.

“We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today,” Putin said, as Russian and Turkish shares fell on fears of an escalation between the two countries.

Footage from Turkey’s Anadolu Agency showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before crashing.  A commander of the rebel Turkmen forces in Syria claimed to have shot both pilots dead as they came down. CNN reports that the body of one pilot has been found.

The BBC  reported that Russian aircraft have flown hundreds of sorties over northern Syria since September. Moscow says they have targeted only “terrorists”, but activists say its strikes have mainly hit Western-backed rebel groups.

Turkey, a vehement opponent of Syria’s president, has strongly cautioned against violations of its airspace by Russian and Syrian aircraft.

The Turkish foreign ministry warned the Russian ambassador last week that there would be “serious consequences” if the Russian air force did not immediately stop bombing “civilian Turkmen villages” in the Bayir Bucak area, near Tuesday’s crash site.

Russia-Ukraine tensions rise as Crimea is still without power

Russia is cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine this week and could also stop providing coal to the nation as a dispute over a blackout in Crimea escalates.

Crimea, the subject of an ongoing quarrel between the countries, has been relying on emergency power generators since its main supply was attacked over the weekend, Reuters reported. It’s not known who was responsible for attacking the power supply, and the New York Times reported that millions of residents of the peninsula are still without electricity.

The BBC reported there are also water shortages in Crimea, and the Ukraine has stopped delivering goods to the peninsula in the Black Sea.

Tensions between the two nations have been high since Russia annexed the peninsula last year. Russia doesn’t border the territory by land. Ukraine does.

Protesters are preventing repair work from being done. The New York Times report indicates the activists — Crimean Tatars and Ukranian nationalists — want Russia to release political prisoners and permit global organizations to review human rights in the territory.

According to Reuters, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak claimed that the Ukraine was not doing enough to help crews restore power to the territory. He called the inaction a crime and politically motivated.

Ukraine lawmakers, speaking to Reuters, called suggestions that the government was backing the protesters “absolutely groundless.”

Russia to aid Iran’s nuclear program

Russia will be able to export nuclear equipment and technology to Iran now that president Vladimir Putin has eased an export ban, multiple news agencies reported on Monday.

The announcement came as Putin was visiting Tehran, the Iranian capital, for an energy summit. He was to hold talks with President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei later in the day, the state-owned Russian television network RT reported.

Under the decree, Russia will be able to help Iran modify and modernize two of its nuclear facilities. That will help the Middle Eastern nation produce and export enriched uranium, and the RT report indicated that Russia will be importing some low-enriched material from Iran.

Iran agreed in July to a landmark deal with Russia and five other world powers — China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. The comprehensive agreement was designed to restrict Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which the nation insists is used solely for civilian purposes but some Western nations feared was developing an atomic bomb.

Under the July deal, the United Nations agreed to lift sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy — costing it more than $160 billion in oil revenue in the past three years, the BBC reported at the time. But the sanctions won’t be lifted until it’s clear Iran complies with its end of the bargain, and they can be reinstated and extended if the nation doesn’t hold up to the terms.

The July agreement also requires Iran to dispose of 98 percent of its enriched uranium, and the country cannot possess more than 300 kilograms of the material for 15 years.

The BBC reported that low-enriched uranium has a 3 to 4 percent of the radioactive isotope U-235, which can be used in the process of fueling nuclear power plants. It can, however, be further enriched to the 90-percent level needed to make nuclear weapons, the BBC also reported.

Crimea in State of Emergency after Explosion Knocks Out Power for 1.6 Million People

The Russian-annexed nation of Crimea is under a state of emergency after four electricity transmission towers located in Ukraine were damaged by bombs in two different attacks. Approximately 1.6 million people are without power.

At this time, officials are unclear on who attacked the pylons, but Russian authorities stated it was “an act of terrorism,” according to Voice of America News. And while Russian officials didn’t directly place blame, they implied Ukrainian nationalists may have been behind the attacks. The attacked pylons are located in Ukraine, where Crimea gets the majority of its electricity supplies.

The attacks were a couple days apart with two of the pylons being hit on Friday and the next two being hit Sunday. The Washington Post reports that more than a quarter of the population, mostly in major cities, had their power restored through the use of mobile gas turbine generators by Sunday afternoon. However, there are still many without power, and the Crimean government said it would come up with a schedule for supplying electricity and water to homes without power.

But repairs were delayed when Ukrainian activists took the roads on Saturday and attempted to block the trucks from getting to the damaged towers. However, they retreated after clashes with the police, according to Voice of America News.

Crimea was annexed in 2014 by Russia after pro-Western Ukrainian protests forced President Viktor Yanukovych from office. Weeks later, a rebel group that wanted to separate from Russia, launched a large enough rebellion that trade and travel sanctions were placed on key Russian officials. Voice of America News reports that the U.N. announced in September that nearly 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict.

Russia Promises Revenge on Bombing of Plane

The explosion of a Russian jetliner that took off from Sinai was the result of a terrorist attack according to Russia’s chief intelligence officer, Alexander Bortnikov.  The mid-air explosion of  the Russian jetliner over the Sinai desert last month  killed all 224 people on board .“Traces of foreign explosives” were found on debris from the Airbus plane, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin vowed to step up his country’s military campaign against Islamist militants in Syria

According to Reuters, Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.

During a Kremlin meeting broadcasted on Tuesday, Putin addressed the Russian people.  

“The murder of our people in Sinai is among the bloodiest crimes in terms of victims. We will not wipe away the tears from our soul and hearts. This will stay with us forever but will not stop us finding and punishing the criminals.”

Putin then promised, “We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

The FSB security service announced a bounty of $50 million to find those responsible and said that award would be paid out for information that helps detain persons who blew up the Russian plane in Egypt.

According to several news reports, Egyptian authorities have detained two employees of Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the downed plane originated, for questioning, two security officials and an airport employee said on Tuesday.

Most of the A321 passengers on the doomed plane were Russian tourists flying home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

France, Russia strike Islamic State in Syria, EU aid invoked

By Chine Labbé and Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) – France and Russia staged air strikes on Islamic State targets in northern Syria on Tuesday, punishing the group for attacks in Paris and against a Russian airliner that together killed 353 people.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a coordinated onslaught in Paris on Friday and the downing of a Russian charter jet over Sinai on Oct. 31, saying they were in retaliation for French and Russian air raids in Iraq and Syria.

Still reeling from the Paris carnage that killed 129, most of them young people, France formally requested European Union assistance in its fight against the militants and British Prime Minister David Cameron edged closer to extending military action against Islamic State in Syria.

Police investigating the worst atrocity in France since World War Two discovered two safe houses in Paris where they believe the militants launched their assault. Underlining the widening scope of the probe, police in Germany said they arrested five suspects, including two women.

In Moscow, the Kremlin acknowledged that a bomb had destroyed a Russian airliner last month, killing 224 people. President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria.

“Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued,” he said. “It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

Western officials said Russia launched a “significant number” of strikes in Syria on Tuesday hitting the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. In a separate action, apparently not coordinated, French warplanes targeted Raqqa for a second day.

French President Francois Hollande has said he will see Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama in the coming days to try to convince them to join a grand coalition against Islamic State which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Russia began air strikes in Syria at the end of September. It has always said its main target is Islamic State, but most of its bombs in the past have hit territory held by other groups opposed to its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 

MANHUNT

In Brussels, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked the EU’s mutual assistance clause for the first time since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty introduced the possibility, saying he expected help with French operations in Syria, Iraq and Africa.

“This is firstly a political act,” Le Drian told a news conference after a meeting of EU defense chiefs.

The 28 EU member states accepted the French request but it was not immediately clear what assistance would be forthcoming.

A manhunt was continuing in France and Belgium on Tuesday for one of the eight attackers in the Paris assault.

French police staged 128 raids overnight in the hunt for accomplices and Islamist militant networks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. Police found a third Belgian-licensed car believed to have been used by the attackers and sealed off the area around it in Paris’ 18th district.

Cazeneuve told France Info radio police were making rapid progress in their investigation but declined to give details.

One top suspect, Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, 26, remains at large after escaping back to Belgium early on Saturday and eluding a police dragnet in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where he lived with his two brothers.

One of the brothers blew himself up outside a Paris cafe on Friday, seriously injuring many bystanders.

Hollande, who has declared a state of emergency, met visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday to press his call for the U.S.-led and Russian-led coalitions to join forces.

Kerry told reporters afterwards that Islamic State was losing territory in Syria and Iraq, but said increased co-ordination with Moscow would require progress in a political drive to end the war. That process is complicated by a U.S. demand that Assad steps down as president.

 

“DON’T SCAPEGOAT REFUGEES”

The U.N. refugee agency and Germany’s police chief urged European countries not to demean or reject refugees because one of Friday’s Paris bombers was believed to have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.

“We are deeply disturbed by language that demonizes refugees as a group,” U.N. spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said after government officials in Poland, Slovakia and the German state of Bavaria cited the Paris attacks as a reason to refuse refugees.

The head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Office said there was no sign that Islamist militants had entered Germany posing as an asylum seeker to commit an attack.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Paris would spare no expense to reinforce and equip its security forces and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism, even though that was bound to involve breaching European budget deficit limits.

“We have to face up to this, and Europe ought to understand,” he told France Inter radio.

The European Commission said it would show understanding to France if additional security spending pushed up its deficit.

As France geared up for a long war, the British prime minister said he would present a “comprehensive strategy” for tackling Islamic State to parliament. British war planes have been bombing the militants in Iraq, but not Syria.

“It is in Syria, in Raqqa, that Isil has its headquarters and it is from Raqqa that some of the main threat against this country are planned and orchestrated,” Cameron said, referring to Islamic State by one of its many acronyms.

“Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake.”

French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday night — four Frenchmen and a foreigner fingerprinted in Greece among refugees last month.

In addition to the suspect on the run, police believe at least four other people helped organize the mayhem.

Investigators believe the attacks may have been ordered by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national now living in Syria where he has become an Internet propagandist for Islamic State under the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Belgiki — the Belgian.

Belgian media have reported that Salah Abdeslam spent time in jail for robbery five years ago alongside Abaaoud.

Police in France named two of the French attackers as Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy.

France believes Mostefai, a petty criminal who never served time in jail, visited Syria in 2013-2014. His radicalization underlined the trouble police face trying to capture an elusive enemy raised in its own cities.

 

(Additional reporting by Laurence Frost, Maya Nikolaeva, Julien Ponthus, Patrick Vignal and David Brunnstrom; Writing by Paul Taylor and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

ISIS Claims Twin Suicide Attacks in Lebanon and Threatens Russia in Latest Video

ISIS claimed to launch one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in Lebanon Thursday evening, when a double suicide bombing killed at least 43 people and wounded over 200 others in a southern Beirut suburb.

ABC News reports that the suburb is a stronghold for Hezbollah, a militant Shiite group. ISIS has mostly been targeting Syria and Iraq and has not recognized any affiliate in Lebanon thus far. However, Lebanon has seen deadly situations due to the civil war in the neighboring country.

The bombs were detonated only minutes apart during rush hour in the Hezbollah stronghold. Ambulances rushed to the scene and Lebanese military, paired with Hezbollah gunmen, would not allow anyone to enter the area. Hezbollah has asked for people to disperse and leave public areas as well as be on the lookout for suspicious actions.

“There’s a lot of shattered glass on the street, a lot of blood, and it’s really just a scene of chaos and carnage,” journalist Tamara Qiblawi told CNN shortly after the blasts.

After the attack, ISIS members posted on various social media outlets that they carried out the attacks.

Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Syrian government forces led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The suburb has been attacked in the past and Sunni militant groups continue to threaten the stronghold, according to ABC News.

Lebanese security officials told Fox News that the first attacker detonated the bomb inside a mosque then shortly after, the second attack was carried out in a bakery located nearby. A third attacker was found dead, close to the second explosion. His vest was still intact.

According to CNN, another would-be attacker who survived the bombing was found. Lebanese officials state that he was an ISIS recruit. He has been taken into custody and told authorities that he, and the other attackers arrived in Lebanon from Syria two days ago.

A national day of mourning was declared by Lebanon Prime Minister Tammam Salam. He called for Lebanon’s Parliament to stop their arguments and to begin functioning again. In fact, the government in Lebanon has been so disjointed that there is currently a trash crisis.

“I pray that this tragedy is enough to wake up politicians so that they can put their differences aside so we can protect the country,” Salam said in a statement, according to the Washington Post.

In addition to Thursday’s attacks, ISIS also released a new video on Thursday, threatening to attack Russia for revenge on the recent series of Russian airstrikes in Syria. The militant in the video stated in Russian: “Soon, very soon, the blood will spill like an ocean.”

Russian state security services are analyzing the video, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“I do not know the authenticity of this video, I do not know the authenticity of these sources, but in any case no doubt this will be material for review by our special (security) services,” Peskov told journalists on a conference call, according to Business Insider.

USA Today reports another suicide bombing took place Friday at a Baghdad memorial service for a Shiite fighter. At least 22 have been reported dead and at least 43 are wounded. At this time, ISIS has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but they are well known for targeting large Shiite gatherings. The radical Sunni group believes that Shiites are apostates who have strayed from Islam.

World Leaders to Meet this Weekend to Discuss an Ending for Syrian Crisis

In the most serious effort yet, world leaders are meeting this weekend in Vienna to end the nearly 5-year-old Syrian civil war as well as discuss a Russian proposal that calls for early elections.

And while top diplomats from almost 20 countries agree that it is time to end the bloodshed in Syria, there is no clear plan for how to make that dream a reality, according to the Associated Press.

However, the Washington Post reports that there is at least a determination to end the crisis as a senior administration official stated that the world leaders plan on having rapid-fire meetings until a plan is developed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also be attending the meeting. There are high hopes that the peace draft the Kremlin reportedly created will at least be a start to planning the end of the civil war, especially now that Russia and the U.S. are starting to see eye-to-eye on restructuring the political system in Syria, according to the Associated Press.

Some of the other countries at the meeting include Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Iran is a key ally to Russia and the Syrian regime while Saudi Arabia and the U.S. has backed Syrian opposition forces. Syria will not be included in the meeting.

Initial peace talks began in an official meeting between world leaders on October 30.