Tag: Vladimir Putin

Trump and Putin Discuss Russia’s Attendance at G7, but Allies Are Wary

New York Times logoThe British and Canadian governments oppose admitting Russia into the bloc, as President Trump continues a renewed courtship of Russia’s leader.

President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke by telephone on Monday, two days after Mr. Trump said he would invite Mr. Putin to attend a Group of 7 summit in the United States in September, the latest instance of a renewed round of personal diplomacy between the two leaders this year.

Hours after the Kremlin first described the call on its website, the White House released a statement saying that the men had discussed “the latest efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and reopen global economies” and “progress toward convening the G7.” A largely similar Kremlin readout said Mr. Trump had initiated the call, and a senior White House official said Mr. Trump had extended a personal invitation to Mr. Putin to attend the gathering, which the president will host.

Russia was expelled in 2014 from what was known as the Group of 8 after Mr. Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Mr. Trump has supported re-entry but even as he reached out to Mr. Putin, key U.S. allies reiterated that Russia was an outlaw nation that should be denied readmittance into the group of industrialized nations, whose members include the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan. Continue reading.

Here’s what Bill Barr doesn’t want you to remember about Michael Flynn

AlterNet logoOn October 7, 2016, the intelligence community issued a statement confirming that it was the Russian government that “directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” Then, on January 6, 2017, they released an assessment of both Russian activities and intentions in their efforts to interfere the 2016 election. Here is their key finding:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

Upon completion of that assessment, two issues remained: (1) the question of whether the Trump campaign had conspired with the Russian government and (2) how to respond to an adversary’s attempt to interfere in an election. The first question was eventually assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller and, on the second, President Obama ordered sanctions on individuals and entities involved in the interference efforts, shut down two Russian compounds in the U.S., and expelled more than 30 Russian intelligence operatives.

Same Goal, Different Playbook: Why Russia Would Support Trump and Sanders

New York Times logoVladimir Putin is eager both to take the sheen off U.S. democracy and for a counterpart who is less likely to challenge his territorial and nuclear ambitions.

At first glance, it may seem contradictory that the nation’s intelligence agencies were telling Congress that President Vladimir V. Putin is presumably striving to get President Trump re-elected, while also warning Senator Bernie Sanders of evidence that he is the Russian president’s favorite Democrat.

But to the intelligence analysts and outside experts who have spent the past three years dissecting Russian motives in the 2016 election, and who tried to limit the effect of Moscow’s meddling in the 2018 midterms, what is unfolding in 2020 makes perfect sense.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders represent the most divergent ends of their respective parties, and both are backed by supporters known more for their passion than their policy rigor, which makes them ripe for exploitation by Russian trolls, disinformation specialists and hackers for hire seeking to widen divisions in American society. Continue reading.

The Putin defense: How far will Donald Trump go now to stay in power?

AlterNet logoDonald Trump never faced even the tiniest chance that two-thirds of the United States Senate would vote to find him guilty in the impeachment trial we’re now being told will come to its ignominious end in the middle of next week. You don’t need to put on a defense when you already know the outcome of the trial. He could have gone with what you might call the “potted plant defense,” sending Jay Sekulow or Pat Cipollone or even one of the lesser lights on his team to essentially sit there by himself and watch the House managers set their hair on fire. He didn’t even need to ask for what amounted to a directed verdict of acquittal. He had all the Republican votes he needed right from the start.

Trump didn’t bother merely swatting aside the rule of law and the Constitution. No, he dropped all pretense and went full-on authoritarian, tapping no less a figure than Jeffrey Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz to present the Putin Defense: If it’s good for Trump, it’s good for the country, and that means it can’t be illegal.

I guess we always knew it would come to this. How else can you account for Trump’s parade of obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin? It goes back to December of 2015, when Trump was running for the Republican nomination. He appeared on “Morning Joe” not long after Putin had praised him as “brilliant” and “talented.” Host Joe Scarborough asked him if he still accepted Putin’s praise in the face of his violent policies. Continue reading.

Putin and Assad caught on video laughing as they mock Trump during Damascus meeting: ‘Invite him. He will come’

AlterNet logoVideo has emerged of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad having a laugh at President Trump’s expense during Putin’s visit to Damascus last week.

“If Trump arrives along this road [to Damascus], everything will become normal with him too,” Assad said, according to a translation of the conversation. Putin then quipped that Trump would jump at the offer and if not, he’ll convince him to visit the country’s capital. “It will be repaired… invite him. He will come.” Assad replied that he’s ready to invite Trump. Putin then smiles and says, “I will tell him.”

The inspiration for the joke was the biblical story of the Apostle Paul, who was struck blind by God while on a road to Damascus, only later to be transformed into a follower of Christ.

Putin Thanks Trump for Helping Russia Thwart Terrorist Attack

New York Times logoThe Russian president called the American president to thank him for a tip about an attack said to be aimed at St. Petersburg.

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called President Trump on Sunday to thank him for a tip from American intelligence agencies that helped prevent a terrorist attack in Russia, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The announcement offered no details about what information the United States had passed along.

But the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the K.G.B., told Russian media it had detained two suspects preparing an attack on a crowded location in the northern city of St. Petersburg on New Year’s Eve. Continue reading

Former White House officials say they feared Putin influenced the president’s views on Ukraine and 2016 campaign

Washington Post logoAlmost from the moment he took office, President Trump seized on a theory that troubled his senior aides: Ukraine, he told them on many occasions, had tried to stop him from winning the White House.

After meeting privately in July 2017 with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Trump grew more insistent that Ukraine worked to defeat him, according to multiple former officials familiar with his assertions.

The president’s intense resistance to the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia systematically interfered in the 2016 campaign — and the blame he cast instead on a rival country — led many of his advisers to think that Putin himself helped spur the idea of Ukraine’s culpability, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Vladimir Putin Backs Trump, Calling Impeachment Charges ‘Completely Made Up’

Halfway across the world from Washington, D.C., where President Trump on Wednesday became just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, Trump’s counterpart in the Kremlin made clear that he has the American president’s back.

During his annual marathon news conference in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the charges against Trump as “completely made up.”

“The Democratic party, which lost the elections, is now trying to revise this history through the means that they have at their disposal — first by accusing Trump of collusion with Russia. But then it turned out there was no collusion,” Putin said Thursday during the hours-long event, echoing the arguments put forth by Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress. “It could not form the basis for impeachment, and now there is this made-up pressure on Ukraine. Continue reading

Russian state TV not even pretending anymore as they openly call Trump their ‘agent’ — and joke about offering him asylum

AlterNet logoWhile many in  America may joke that Fox News is now state TV for the Trump administration, in Russia there actually is state TV – and they’re not even pretending anymore about the Russian government’s relationship with President Donald Trump.

The Daily Beast’s Julia Davis offered an in-depth look at various instances of Russian state TV’s reporting on the stunning moment when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once again met with Trump in the Oval Office and posed for a photo with the U.S. president, standing above him as Trump sat at the renowned Resolute Desk.

“Russian state media was gloating over the spectacle,” David writes. “TV channel Rossiya 1 aired a segment entitled ‘Puppet Master and ‘Agent’—How to Understand Lavrov’s Meeting With Trump.’ ”

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It couldn’t be any clearer that Trump serves the interests of the Kremlin

AlterNet logoOne thing that came through in many of the House Intelligence Committee’s interviews with Ukraine experts was the symbolic importance to President Zelensky of having an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump. It was widely understood that he would be strengthened both at home and in his upcoming negotiations with Vladimir Putin. The meeting with Putin occurred in Paris on Monday. Zelensky entered the summit without the benefit of an Oval Office meeting.

Not only that, Zelensky lacked anything resembling unified American support. The whole world now knows that President Trump does not like Ukraine and accuses them of trying to “take him down” in 2016. They know he sees the country as irredeemably corrupt and uniformly unsupportive of his political future. They know that Trump put Ukrainian military aid on hold and only released it reluctantly when he realized that he was about to face down a scandal that could (and will) cause his impeachment.

Meanwhile, some in the Republican Party have now embraced a debunked theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. They adopted this theory because it’s the only way to defend Trump’s demand that Ukraine blame themselves for the hacking of the Democrats if they wanted to receive a formal visit in the White House. For those who can’t quite embrace this level of craziness, they simply argue that Ukraine was almost as guilty of Russia because some of them objected publicly to Candidate Trump’s opinion that Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia.

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