Security chief sheds light on Russian intels’ activities in Ukraine

 

Russian intelligence services have long planned the annexation of Crimea, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, has said in a lengthy interview with a Ukrainian daily. He added that the former Ukrainian leadership must have been aware of these plans. Nalyvaychenko said that the SBU had severed any ties with the Russian law-enforcement agencies. Nalyvaychenko also spoke about the SBU’s activities under his leadership, the service’s challenges and first successes. The following is the text of the interview with Nalyvaychenko, conducted by Ivan Kapsamun, entitled "About the ‘dividing line’" published by the Ukrainian analytical daily Den on 19 June; subheadings are as published:

Valentyn Nalyvaychenko returned to service in the Security Service of Ukraine [SBU] at a dramatic time for the country. After the victory of Euromaydan and escape of Yanukovych, the security service was faced with serious challenges.

First, it finally became clear that the famous so-called Yanukovych’s "rigid structure of power" was working not to strengthen Ukraine’s statehood, but to cater the interests of the neighbouring country [Russia]. The SBU had actually been destroyed from within, because representatives of foreign intelligence services operated in its structure.

Second, the incumbent authorities immediately found itself facing a new threat – the Russian aggression. Taking advantage of the moment, the Kremlin occupied and annexed Crimea, and then launched a sabotage and terrorist war against Ukraine in Donbass, destabilizing the situation in the south and east of the country as a whole.

Valentyn Nalyvaychenko has been occupying the post of the head of the SBU for almost four months. This is his first official interview with mass media, which he exclusively gave to the Den newspaper. We were talking about restoring security service operations, implementation of the president’s [peace] plan, traitors within the SBU, fate of the Crimean personnel, effectiveness of the Alpha unit, military counterintelligence, the Hague tribunal for Yanukovych and his milieu, banning of the Communist Party of Ukraine and other things.

"We have arrested 90 terrorists, 13 of whom are Russian citizens"

[Ivan Kapsamun] Mr Nalyvaychenko, the president initiated a peace plan to resolve the situation in Donbass. Will the role of the SBU in it be changed?

[Valentyn Nalyvaychenko] It is extremely important that Ukraine has a commander-in-chief of the armed forces and a legitimately elected president, who has resolved the issue of coordination, accountability and implementation of the plan to settle the situation in the east using the experience of other countries.

The president is a professional in the area of international security, so requirements for work of the SBU have been increased. This also applies to responsibilities of the management of the security service, the Anti-Terrorist Centre and all other bodies combating terrorism and corruption.

[Kapsamun] Does this mean that functions of the SBU will remain unchanged?

[Nalyvaychenko] They will be brought up to date. Of course, we were reacting and will continue to react to threats posed by foreign saboteur and terrorist groups, funding of terrorism in Ukraine by former senior officials… [ellipsis as published] More than 90 terrorists and saboteurs have already been arrested, there are 13 Russian citizens among them (in addition to mercenary militants, these are professional intelligence officers, agents). One of the latest arrestees from Kiev is an associate of the leader of saboteur groups in Horlivka and Slovyansk.

"Together with Yanukovych Moscow has been deliberately preparing for aggression against Ukraine for a long time"

[Kapsamun] Which were the first surprises and unexpected things you encountered after your appointment to the post?

[Nalyvaychenko] From December 2013 and until the end of February 2014, three groups of senior officials from the FSB were operating within the Security Service of Ukraine’s structure. During these months, all modern weapons, personal files, archives, every foundation of a professional security service, were transferred to Simferopol. In recent years, units designed to protect the Ukrainian state were filled with Russian agents and planned to shoot people and disperse [protests in] Maydan. Moreover, in February 2014, the management of the [SBU’s] statehood protection department, and other senior SBU generals, were planning this crime day and night in one of the offices in the city centre.

All this indicates the fact that Moscow, together with Yanukovych, had prepared for the annexation of Crimea and the events taking place in Donbass today deliberately and for a long time. In March this year, we have already identified separatist organizations which are, in fact, saboteur groups working on the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk regions. They had their own ideology, funding and even arms depots. The recruitment of mercenaries and transportation of weapons, including MANPADS [man-portable air-defence systems] was done by cells of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the former interior minister [Zakharchenko] and the former SBU head [Yakymenko]. And the former commander of the Interior Troops went as far as to engage in the mobilization of mercenaries in Russia’s Rostov Region.

In 2013, the SBU pretended that none of this had existed, or that it was normal. All of this was ruining the Ukrainian security service. The legacy in the SBU, which we are left with after Yakymenko’s control of the organization and the reign of Yanukovych in general, is a huge blow to the security of our country. In fact, the people who had allowed this were actually helping the enemy and are state criminals.

At the cost of enormous efforts, primarily by rank and file SBU employees, some areas were saved and new employees perform their professional functions. Of course, I cannot say that the service has been reshuffled by 100 per cent, but, for example, counterintelligence and statehood protection are the departments we can rely on.

[Kapsamun] By the way, does the FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] contact you now?

[Nalyvaychenko] At the moment, all contacts with the aggressor have been severed. Moreover, bilateral arrangements and agreements were terminated. Our "contacts" are limited to countering sabotage activities carried out by FSB agents.

"Ukrainian military counterintelligence has been 100 per cent reshuffled"

[Kapsamun] The work of the military counterintelligence was the one to gather many complaints. What is the problem?

[Nalyvaychenko] In the work of military counterintelligence we have completely changed our approaches and objectives. Ukrainian counterintelligence has been reshuffled by 100 per cent. At the moment, we are employing young officers there and changed the balance of forces and means in accordance with the location and actions of the armed forces. Military counterintelligence has been relieved of other tasks and oriented to counter enemy infiltration in the command of the armed forces and the ATO [antiterrorist operation] headquarters, that is, the structures that today are the key to countering military aggression. There were cases of treason. But at the time of war the enemy aims their main efforts at headquarters and military units. We are countering this.

What are we lacking yet? We need to build a new uncompromising line of fight against corruption. Unfortunately, the military aggression dictates different operating conditions. Despite everything, this week in partnership with communities in cities and districts we have formed public anticorruption vetting councils. Everyone is familiar with the facts of corruption in a particular locality – people have had enough of it, so they turn to us. The today’s challenge is to reshuffle the SBU directorate for combating corruption and help people fight against corruption, punish the corrupt officials and destroy the corruption schemes. In order to earn trust, we appoint new people, activists of anticorruption non-government organizations, including Maydan activists, to senior positions at the directorate for combating corruption. My position is as follows: if in a month the new managers have no results or the public has complaints against them, they will be rotated.

"Yakymenko is using funds from corruption activities to organize supplies of arms from Sevastopol to Ukraine"

[Kapsamun] How do you explain the surrender of Crimea, in particular Sevastopol? What is the fate of your personnel?

[Nalyvaychenko] The occupation of Crimea was carried out by military forces of the Russian Federation. As for the SBU employees in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, during the annexation of our lands a dividing line was drawn. The officers, who remained loyal to their oath and protection of Ukrainian statehood, were partially evacuated (we have given all hostels and motels of the security service to those employees, who have moved from Crimea with their families) and partially continued operating in Crimea under the harsh conditions of occupation.

[Kapsamun] Did the others betray?

[Nalyvaychenko] Yes, and traitor No 1 is the former SBU head, Yakymenko, who still in Sevastopol, using funds stolen from our citizens by corrupt means to organize arms supplies to Ukraine. The latest proof is a huge shipment of arms, explosives and money seized in Berdyansk: 900 grenades, 80 assault rifles, tens of thousands of dollars for agents and self-proclaimed mayors, all coming from Yakymenko. This is not just a betrayal, this is a disgrace in front of the whole world when a former head of security service engages in terrorist and sabotage activities against his own people. He will certainly answer for this.

Traitor No 2 is the former head of the SBU directorate in Sevastopol, who is closely connected with Yakymenko. Such betrayals hurt the service a lot. Everything they did in four years, all special forces fielded against us on Maydan were not just for show. They were preparing for a serious war against Ukrainians.

"Employees, such as Petrulevych, were not traitors"

[Kapsamun] Examples of treason, which led people to getting killed, took place in Donbass as well. Have you managed to clean up "the fifth column" in the SBU by now?

[Nalyvaychenko] Now patriotism is felt in the SBU, especially among young people. Over the past two months I received a lot of requests for transfer to Luhansk and Donetsk regions to fight against terrorism. Every week about 70-80 officers from various departments file them.

Those who betrayed and defected to the aggressor are people spoiled by corruption, they were appointed through bribes and relations with the Yanukovych family. Today, these people continue to be funded by the entourage of the former president. Now these traitors are committing crimes, killing people, taking part in destroying the economy of a part of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In essence, these are looting terrorist groups and criminals.

[Kapsamun] Did you get to the bottom of circumstances, under which SBU offices in Luhansk, Donetsk and other cities in these regions were seized by terrorists? It was the first time of such a high quantity of automatic and special weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. Is it difficult to understand why the invaders managed it so easily? There were many accusations about it in the press against the then head of the Luhansk regional SBU directorate, Oleksandr Petrulevych. What is his fate?

[Nalyvaychenko] The enemy began to seize our directorates and units because immediately after the people overthrew the criminal regime the SBU began to actively arrest the leaders of separatists, eliminate their weapon caches.

Back then, in early March, we still did not fully understand how deeply the second echelon of aggression against Ukraine – Russian commandos and local criminals, was prepared in all the previous years. They are components of a hybrid war being waged against us, including an information one.

In March-April, in social networks groups from the Russian Federation and saboteurs present in Ukraine launched misinformation, lies, open provocations to discredit our employees, who opposed terrorists and separatists. In early April, I personally had worked in Luhansk for five days and I can say that such employees as Petrulevych were not traitors.

[Kapsamun] Why did they release the so-called people’s governor, Gubarev [Hubaryev], at the time?

[Nalyvaychenko] The preventive measure for him was changed by the court. Criminal investigations on cases regarding Gubarev are nearing completion, and regarding Klinchaev [Klinchayev] have already been completed. We will pass them to the court in the near future. If they do not appear in court, we will make sure to deliver them using force.

"Alpha is following orders to fight terrorism"

[Kapsamun] What can you say about yesterday’s and today’s Alpha [the SBU’s special purpose unit]? As you know, this special unit took part in the shootings on Maydan? What happened to its personnel? Today Alpha has somehow receded into the sidelines.

[Nalyvaychenko] The Alpha from February 2014 has not gone away. It is true that Alpha was ordered by the former leadership to go to the rooftop of the Trade Unions building against the people. The then leadership gave such orders in writing. The Prosecutor General’s Office ]PGO] is investigating criminal cases regarding the employees, while the former leaders are being questioned. As of today, the leadership of this special force has been changed.

Now Alpha is following orders to fight terrorism. Alpha was the first to go into combat with an armed group of saboteurs – [Russian intelligence] GRU officers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Donbass near Slovyansk. The new commander was wounded in battle. Heroes of Alpha, including Capt Bilychenko, died. Those officers who still remain in the ranks are performing combat missions at the forefront. The special unit is used to combat the most dangerous terrorists and saboteurs in the area of the ATO. Neither Alpha nor other military units are used against the civilian population.

What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a real military aggression on the part of the Russian Federation with the participation of criminals. This aggression had been prepared for years. I do not know what kind of Eurasian fundamentalism is in the heads of saboteurs and terrorists, but every day we, in fact, detain and interrogate cadets of Russian military schools, cossacks and Russian soldiers who come here to go on safari.

Now the government is strengthening military and special units in all law-enforcement agencies. First and foremost, they purchase body armour, ammunition, food. Where did the old ones go? Stolen. Everything that was bought for Euro 2012 at the expense of Ukrainian taxpayers, all modern weapons were looted and sold. By the end of February of this year, not a single set of modern body armour was left in Alpha.

[Kapsamun] Who was in charge of the antiterrorist operation until now? By law, this is supposed to be your deputy Vasyl Krutov, but how is it in reality? He had very little contact with the press, usually this is done by you, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and acting Defence Minister Mykhaylo Koval.

[Nalyvaychenko] A military general, who is an experienced person, is directly in charge of the ATO. We will not give the name. Gen Krutov heads the Anti-Terrorism Centre, which is an interagency coordinating body, which includes the Defence Ministry, the Interior Ministry, civilian infrastructure, local authorities, emergency services and other subjects involved in combating terrorism.

"There is no confrontation. I feel no political influences in my work"

[Kapsamun] There are many complaints about the lack of coordination between the law-enforcement agencies involved in the ATO. What is the reason for this?

[Nalyvaychenko] Coordination is a major factor in any special operation. There have been problems from the very beginning: both with coordination, and with weapons, and with communication. We started from a situation of complete ruin.

Today, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine have built up not just coordination, but a strict management structure of the ATO.

Peace and stability must be renewed in territories overrun by terrorism and banditry. Civilian administration, which will take control of the management and infrastructure of the region, must start working. It is the peace plan that saboteurs and terrorists are fighting against: undermine the power grid, water supply facilities, kidnap children, rob and intimidate the civilian population.

[Kapsamun] Appointments of heads of law-enforcement agencies were done on the quota principle, and that is why today we are talking about confrontations between the different bodies.

[Nalyvaychenko] There is no confrontation. I feel no political influences in my work. The 333 MPs, who voted for [my] appointment, do not try to influence the staffing issues in the SBU.

[Kapsamun] Do you feel a political game now that the country has the new president and personnel rotation is possible?

[Nalyvaychenko] No, I do not. There is no game. There is a decision of the president: one should work and fulfil his duties. There can be no intrigues here.

"If the terrorist’s position does not change, we will act harshly and without compromise"

[Kapsamun] The president’s peace plan envisages a ceasefire and creation of a corridor for the terrorists to retreat and surrender their weapons. And what if they will not surrender?

[Nalyvaychenko] We are talking about a general possibility of settlement and stabilization of the situation in the east of Ukraine. We speak and think of peaceful people, who need to be protected, so that they are not shot at, not robbed, or their children kidnapped. As for the terrorists and saboteurs, they should lay down their arms and cease fire unconditionally.

We are ready to implement the peace plan of the president of Ukraine. But unfortunately, neither terrorist, nor separatist or communist centres in Donbass, nor the Russian side, which continues to supply weapons, nor militants, including those from Chechnya, are ready for it. If their position does not change, we will act harshly and without compromise.

[Kapsamun] How long, in your opinion, can the process of surrendering arms take? Approximately how many terrorists can dissolve among the civilians, hide their arms and become guerrillas? How long can the process of cleaning up this category of militants take?

[Nalyvaychenko] The Security Service of Ukraine and the law-enforcement agencies realize that disarmament is not a one-day process. Those people, who have committed war crimes, will not stop tomorrow. The main thing is to do everything for the protection and defence of the Ukrainian border every day. When militants and military equipment is coming from the Russian side – it is not a border.

We must understand that our border guards are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Today the process of blocking and strengthening the border with military forces is under way. But it is not enough to restore control of the border. We still need to defend it, regain trust of the local population, stop the inflow of arms and mercenaries from Russia. If Russia lets militants with weapons pass, we do not need such a border. We will have to build specialized facilities and completely block the traffic there.

"The strength of terrorist and bandit groups in Donbass amounts to at least 4,500 people"

[Kapsamun] How many, according to your data, armed terrorists and militants are there in total in Donbass today?

[Nalyvaychenko] We learn about the origin, quantity and location of Russian officers, saboteurs, mercenaries, traitors from the police and the SBU. For example, mercenary militants, so-called Kozitsin’s cossacks, number at about 300, criminals under former Ukrainian ensign Mozhovyy number up to 400 armed bandits. Collectively, the terrorist and bandit groups in Donbass amount to at least 4,500 people. And their constant replenishment from Russia is a key threat to Ukraine’s national security. This is what prevents us from resolving the situation and resuming a peaceful life.

[Kapsamun] Why are the authorities yet to introduce martial law in the east of the country?

[Nalyvaychenko] We have to understand and protect the people living in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Russian information influence and propaganda, hired illegal armed units, provocations and lootings are all a war that is now waged specifically against them. But people want to live in peace, have jobs, wages, and education for their children. And this is why we need to implement the peace plan of the president of Ukraine.

[Kapsamun] Do you expect the spread of acts of terrorism to other regions of Ukraine? Is Kiev well protected?

[Nalyvaychenko] We can locate and stop the threat after the terrorist threats in Luhansk and Donetsk regions are eliminated, and the supply of weapons, drugs, money and mercenaries across our border is stopped. Indeed, the terrorists who entered Ukraine involve former Ukrainian law enforcers and criminals from other regions in their criminal activities. The SBU carried out the latest arrests in Odessa, Kiev and Kharkiv. We arrested saboteur and terrorist groups that planned to engage in sabotage and provocations. We do our best to protect the country.

"The SBU has done its part in documenting the crimes of former senior officials"

[Kapsamun] Against the background of events in the east, information about the results of investigations into the killings on Maydan has somehow slipped into the sidelines. Why is this process taking so much time?

[Nalyvaychenko] The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating the tragic events and crimes of the former government on Maydan. Investigators, special units of the SBU and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are actively involved in the investigation. The arrests of former leaders and employees of Berkut [riot police], the SBU and other structures are still taking place. Accounts, assets and everything that belonged to the corrupt officials and organizers of Maydan’s dispersal have already been arrested. People, who were involved in this crime, have been dismissed from office, interrogated and the fugitives are being hunted.

[Kapsamun] Is there enough evidence of the involvement of Yanukovych and his milieu in the shootings on Maydan and in Donbass for the Hague tribunal?

[Nalyvaychenko] The SBU has completed its part of documenting the crimes of former senior officials and their associates, and passed the materials to the PGO. Arbuzov and Klymenko, who created the laundry machine for money laundering and plundering of Ukraine’s budget, have been added by us to the international wanted list. The crimes of all senior officials – from the ex-president to the former head of the Ministry of Revenues and Levies have been documented, their assets and property in Ukraine have been arrested.

[Kapsamun] Did you register them attempting to get in touch with the "right" people to negotiate with the new government?

[Nalyvaychenko] I was not contacted, and they would certainly not make a deal with us. International sanctions regarding them are already in force. Now they must face the PGO and testify in court.

"We must ban not just the party, but also its ideology, and then have the criminals face trial"

[Kapsamun] Ukrainian parliament speaker has instructed the Justice Ministry with investigating the criminal activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Did the SBU hand them a base of evidence? What is the current stage of the investigation?

[Nalyvaychenko] We have already sent the materials of our investigation to the Ministry of Justice. With the support of Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko we established a joint working group, which is now processing the evidence base, so that all decisions are lawful and beyond any doubt. In my opinion, Ukrainian registration of the Communist Party of Ukraine must be terminated and then materials about illegal activities of this structure must be considered by the court. We should ban not just the party, but its ideology, too. We also need to bring to justice those Communist Party functionaries who recruit mercenaries in Luhansk and Donetsk, supply weapons and openly encroach on the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Kapsamun] What further actions of the Russian state machine do you expect?

[Nalyvaychenko] I can say that whoever in the Kremlin was planning the hybrid war, the chaos and destruction of infrastructure and the economy of Ukraine, we will put a stop to it. The peace plan of the president of Ukraine, stabilization and implementation of peace initiatives is the only real chance to restore peace and stability in the state today. We must return the main thing to the people – I mean peace.

Source: Den, Kiev, in Ukrainian 19 Jun 14; p 6

Russian website says today’s realities prevent US from isolating Russia

 

Text of report by Russian political commentary website Politkom.ru on 14 June

[Article by Nana Gegelashvili, director of the Centre for Regional Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences United States and Canada Institute: "Washington’s Russia policy in the context of the Ukrainian crisis"]

The Ukrainian crisis is now a test for the United States as a "superpower" and chief helmsman of the world order. Undoubtedly, the unsurpassed economic and military might of this country enable it to still maintain its superpower status. But does this mean that in the era of the formation of new power centres with both comparable economic potential and their own vision of a security system Washington is capable of remaining the chief international arbiter?

One further question directly connected with the role of the United States in the modern world is whether Washington has at the present time a firm conviction of the need to consolidate and maintain this world order under the conditions of overexertion in which the United States has found itself. The fatigue that has built up in Americans from the extremely unpopular wars in Iran [as published] and Afghanistan begun by G. Bush Jr as part of his declared anti-terror campaign, the slow pace of recovery of the American economy, and the far from unambiguous reform of health care launched by B. Obama together with other domestic-policy problems have given rise in the American electorate to doubts as to the expediency of the lead role of the United States in support of global security.

And, truly, the majority of Americans express their consent to support America only for a war for the defence of treaty allies or the emergence of a threat. The American voter thus does not feel the least desire to support Washington’s interference in regions that are not of critical significance for the United States. It would appear that it will each time be increasingly difficult for Washington to conduct high-cost military operations outside of the sphere of its traditional allies and in the absence of support of the electorate. Even the most bellicose politicians in the United States have to acknowledge that the United States truly has no vitally important interests in Ukraine. Furthermore, nor can Washington fail to understand that there simply could be no direct Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the present time the world’s sole remaining superpower is thus avoiding military intervention for a settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, and, despite the tough rhetoric of B. Obama directed at Russia in connection with the events in Ukraine, both fatigue and extreme apathy may be read in it simultaneously.

Today’s realities are such that the US possibilities of remaining a superpower are, indeed, shrinking somewhat, which has to do both with the consequences of the global financial crisis and the domestic-policy problems which have driven Washington to overextend itself. It was these factors which dictated B. Obama’s intention to put the United States at the head of two giant integration associations -Trans-Pacific and Transatlantic partnerships – which affords Washington an opportunity to shift the accomplishment of many tasks onto the EU.

The sanctions announced by Washington on account of Russian support for the unilateral proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Crimea and designed to deter an invasion of Ukraine and the Republic of Crimea becoming a part of the Russian Federation, which followed this, as, equally, the continued escalation of the situation in southeast Ukraine, are seen by the United States as a violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity [sentence as published]. A new package of Washington’s latest sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy – the banking sphere, power industry, finances, technology, and arms – is in the drafting phase.

But the effects of the sanctions policy against Moscow on the part of Washington could be not that favourable not only for Russia but for the United States as well.

In the context of the Transatlantic Partnership the United States has been forced to act in close harness with the EU and to pay heed to its position. Understanding the high degree of Brussels’ energy dependence on Moscow, which could be an obstacle to Washington within the framework of implementation of its transatlantic energy strategy, the United States could compensate the quantities of energy resources that the EU needs. This could be done both with significant quantities of its own US strategic oil and gas reserves intended for the short term and through the use of the extremely ambiguous and environmentally unsafe technology necessary in the development of shale gas and geared to the long term. This would contribute to the United States becoming the biggest producer of energy resources and would afford Washington an opportunity to compete with the main suppliers of hydrocarbons and, notably, the Russian Federation. Considering that implementation of the energy strategy could take several decades, it is recommended that the EU countries begin to invest capital in the building of the infrastructure necessary for obtaining gas from the United States in short order.

But the close partnership between the United States and the EU could be weakened primarily through both the lack of readiness of the EU as a whole and of Germany in particular for the transition to suppliers of energy resources alternative to Russia, considering both the uncertainty of the financial costs having to do, mainly, with the construction of the new infrastructure and with the timeframe. Second, the role of so powerful a factor as the trade and financial relations between the EU and the Russian Federation that have been developing successfully between both countries over a lengthy period could also cast doubt on the likelihood of close partnership between the United States and the EU.

Third, considering the upsurge of far-right sentiments in Europe and also the results of the recent elections to the European Parliament, Brussels could acquire greater independence in the context of the Transatlantic Partnership. And, finally, this could also to a considerable extent have to do with the consolidation of the economic positions of the EU itself in the future.

It is clear that the Ukrainian crisis has given NATO a second wind, which has contributed to the return of the alliance to its key deterrence and collective security commitments. In the view of NATO strategists, it is essential to increase the alliance’s military potential and, equally, to disperse it over the entire territory of the members, ensuring here its permanent presence in the Central European and Baltic countries. But without serious financial support from the EU countries providing for an upward revision of the defence budgets of each NATO member, such a possibility will be extremely complicated. This will have to do primarily with the financial difficulties of practically all the EU countries, where only Germany is an exception. But under the conditions of the division in German society owing to the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia and also to the presence there of a strong pacifist mood largely determined by this country’s history in the 20th century, doing this will be extremely difficult. But the main danger for NATO will be the conflict with such new dangers as non-traditional wars – insurgent war (hybrid war).

It would appear that nor does the Obama administration have a particular desire to resort to new sanctions against Moscow and recognizes that it is essential to make Russia part of the international system, not isolate it. The following factors are contributing to this. First, Washington understands that modern realities are compelling all global international actors to act within some polycentric system of international relations, where mutual economic competition and the level of economic dependence on the outside world are coming to be unprecedented.

Second, the CIS has been declared a most important priority of Russian foreign policy since the election as president of V. Putin in March 2000. Joint efforts for a settlement of conflicts in the CIS participants and the development of cooperation in the military-political field and the security sphere, particularly in the fight against international terrorism and extremism, are coming to be the main priorities. The experience of recent years has shown that Russia now really is prepared to take real steps to defend its interests on the space of the former Soviet Union. This, Moscow believes, is required both by problems of security and economic considerations. And Washington has to understand here that Ukraine, whose strategic significance it is hard to overstate, represents a sphere of vitally important interests for Moscow. In Moscow’s view, therefore, the West’s attempts geared to the integration of post-Soviet countries in Euro-Atlantic bodies – the Eastern Partnership programme launched by EU strategists, the NATO plans for the alliance membership of some post-Soviet countries -could not have failed to have caused it particular concern, which could not, in turn, have gone unnoticed by the Americans.

Third, Russia continues to regard the young independent states of the post-Soviet territory as part of a former country – the USSR – whose successor it was. This is explained to some extent as a response to the defeat of the Russian Federation in the cold war and its loss of status of world superpower, and Washington cannot fail to take account of this as well. Moscow proceeds here from the consideration involving its long experience of joint coexistence with the post-Soviet countries and also from the recognition that it is it which is the guarantor of their security. Furthermore, in Moscow’s view, the Ukrainian crisis exposed the entire incapacity of the Ukrainian elite for ensuring the country’s sovereignty, for which outside management both on the part of Russia and the EU is essential. All this together with the financial problems which Ukraine is experiencing today will create serious difficulties for Moscow, which also Washington cannot fail to recognize.

Fourth, the United States cannot fail to consider also that we are living in an era when international law creates conditions for its interpretation in different directions, and this sets a precedent in the absence of necessary reforms or a new architecture of international institutions – the United Nations, OSCE, IMF, WTO, IAEA, and others.

Today neither the Russian Federation nor the United States is about to halt the process of a reduction in the number of strategic nuclear warheads even under the conditions of the acute tension that has arisen between them owing to the situation in Ukraine. The interests of both countries are interconnected in many spheres (the Syrian problem, Iran, Afghanistan). Furthermore, Moscow at the present time not only successfully guarantees the stability of the biggest state with nuclear potential but also ensures stable supplies of energy resources, and this is of tremendous significance for the West.

Despite the entire complexity of this most acute crisis, which could both alter the disposition of the principal key players on the global chessboard furthering increased confrontation and secure for them the so necessary reconciliation, it would appear that today’s realities will prevent the United States from isolating Russia and torpedoing the engaged process of Moscow’s incorporation in the international system.

Source: Politkom.ru website, Moscow, in Russian 14 Jun 14

Russia transferring military hardware from Chechnya to Ukrainian border

 

Text of report by North Caucasus rebel internet news agency Kavkaz-Tsentr

27 July: Kavkaz-Tsentr sources in Chechnya report that unusual movement was observed at the Khankala military base on Friday and Saturday [25-26 July]. Pieces of military hardware have been loaded on railway platforms for over two days now.

The sources have said that long echelons are being formed. Officers are openly saying in conversations that the military hardware is being dispatched to Ukraine for use in military operations.

Local residents who work at the Khankala base said that they had never witnessed the shipment of hardware in such large amounts.

The source also reports that several hundreds of Kadyrovites [men linked to Russia’s Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov] were deployed from Chechnya to Rostov on Friday [25 July] for further deployment in the territory of Ukraine. On Saturday [26 July], formations of Kadyrov murtads were partly dislocated near the Ukrainian border.

Chechnya itself is seeing unusual reinforcement of military posts and mobile patrol groups on roads. The considerable strengthening has also been observed in Dzhalka settlement (where relatives of [Duma MP Adam] Delimkhanov live) and in Kadyrov’s residence in [the village of Novyy-]Benoy.

The reason for the reinforcement is unknown. This is certainly not linked to the completion of the month of Ramadan since the apostates used to do this before. Locals say that posts and armoured personnel carriers appeared on the roads several hours after the announcement of international sanctions against a number of Russian officials, among them Kadyrov.

There is also information that rumours are circulating among Kadyrovites about forthcoming big war with Ukraine and NATO. Allegedly, Chechnya might be bombed and Kadyrov is getting prepared for possible attacks by the USA and NATO.

Source: Kavkaz-Tsentr news agency website in Russian 27 Jul 14

 

Inspections found no build-up of troops near Ukraine – Russian Defence Ministry

Text of report by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti

Moscow, 27 July: International inspections have recorded no breaches or undeclared military activities by the Russian Federation on the border with Ukraine, Russian Defence Ministry official spokesman Maj-Gen Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday [27 July]. Konashenkov was commenting on statements by US envoy to NATO Douglas Lute and US State Department [deputy] spokesperson Marie Harf about the alleged concentration of "about 15,000 service personnel" along the border with Ukraine.

He said that 18 international inspections had visited areas of the Russian Federation bordering on Ukraine in the last four months as part of the observance of the 2011 Vienna document and the Treaty on Open Skies. These inspections included not only representatives from the USA and NATO countries but also some from Ukraine. These groups flew over the said areas and visited the military units they were interested in. "As a result of the work of these inspection, no breaches or undeclared military activities by Russia were recorded in the areas bordering on Ukraine," Konashenkov said.

"To clarify the situation, we deem it necessary to remind our colleagues across the ocean that, in addition to social network, where as we know they are getting most of their intelligence about the Russian Armed Forces, there are other sources of information, whose veracity is not in doubt," the spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry said.

At the same time, according to Konashenkov, active military operations by Ukrainian troops in the areas bordering on the Russian Federation make it impossible to carry out similar inspection flights over these areas. "The Russian Defence Ministry is convinced that the results of official inspections of these areas would record high concentration of Ukrainian troops, weapons and military hardware, which regularly shell Russian population centres and have already led to deaths and injuries among our citizens," the Defence Ministry spokesman said.

Source: RIA Novosti news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1125 gmt 27 Jul 14

U.S. Could Help Ukraine Target Rebels’ Missiles

DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
Reporting was contributed by Michael R. Gordon in Paris and David M. Herszenhorn in Kiev, Ukraine
The New York Times | July 27, 2014

The Pentagon and American intelligence agencies are developing plans that would enable the Obama administration to provide specific locations of surface-to-air missiles controlled by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine so the Ukrainian government could target them for destruction, American officials said.

But the proposal has not yet been debated in the White House, a senior administration official said. It is unclear whether President Obama, who has already approved limited intelligence sharing with Ukraine, will agree to give more precise information about potential military targets, a step that would involve the United States more deeply in the conflict.

Already, the question of what kind of intelligence support to give the Ukrainian government has become part of a larger debate within the administration about how directly to confront President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and how big a role Washington should take in trying to stop Russia’s rapid delivery of powerful weapons to eastern Ukraine.

At the core of the debate, said several officials — who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy deliberations are still in progress — is whether the American goal should be simply to shore up a Ukrainian government reeling from the separatist attacks, or to send a stern message to Mr. Putin by aggressively helping Ukraine target the missiles Russia has provided. Those missiles have taken down at least five aircraft in the past 10 days, including Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Since the downing of Flight 17, a civilian jet, the flow of heavy arms into eastern Ukraine has drastically increased, the Pentagon and the State Department said on Friday, citing American intelligence reports. The Obama administration is already sharing with the Ukrainians satellite photographs and other evidence of the movement of troops and equipment along the Ukrainian-Russian border. But a senior administration official acknowledged late Friday that the data were ”historical in nature,” hours or even days old, and not timely enough to use in carrying out airstrikes or other direct attacks.

”We’ve been cautious to date about things that could directly hit Russia — principally its territory,” but also its equipment, the official said. A proposal to give the Ukrainians real-time information ”hasn’t gotten to the president yet,” the official said, in part because the White House has been focused on rallying support among European allies for more stringent economic sanctions against Moscow, and on gaining access for investigators to the Malaysia Airlines crash site.

But the official added that the decision on whether to provide targeting information would soon become ”part of the intel mix.”

The debate over providing information about potential military targets gives the first insight into the Obama administration’s thinking on long-term strategies to bolster Ukraine, counter Russia and reassure nervous Eastern European nations, some of which have joined NATO in recent years.

Plans to share more precise targeting information with Ukraine have the strong backing of senior Pentagon officials and would fit broadly into Mr. Obama’s emerging national security doctrine of supporting allied and partner nations in defending their territory without direct American military involvement.

Several senior American military and intelligence officials are arguing that if Mr. Putin does not encounter significant resistance to Russia’s moves in Ukraine, he may be emboldened to go further. And a senior State Department official said Saturday that Secretary of State John Kerry supported sharing intelligence on the locations of surface-to-air missiles that Russia has supplied the separatists.

Providing the location of weaponry and military equipment for possible destruction — something the United States does for Iraq in its battle against Islamic extremists, for example — would not be technologically difficult. ”We think we could do it easily and be very effective,” a senior military official involved in the discussions said. ”But there are issues of escalation with the Russians, and the decision about whether it’s wise to do it” is complex.

Another senior official said there were questions of whether the Ukrainian military, even if given targeting coordinates, had the reach and the precision to strike Russian-supplied antiaircraft batteries. The trucks transporting the missiles move frequently, often back and forth across the border. And if any strikes missed their targets, they could cause civilian casualties or land in Russia, giving Mr. Putin an excuse to enlarge the conflict.

”Although providing the Ukrainian forces with target location data may seem like a panacea, the actual destruction of these mobile launchers by Ukrainian forces may prove quite a bit more difficult,” said Reed Foster, an analyst at IHS Jane’s.

Mr. Foster said that Ukrainian forces had not trained extensively on using intelligence from other countries, and that any Ukrainian warplanes trying to strike missile sites would be vulnerable to ground fire. Some officials say they are worried that the Ukrainian military has been infiltrated by Russian sympathizers and agents, meaning that if the United States gave locations for targeting, the separatists could have warning of attacks.

Still, the issue has become increasingly urgent. The Pentagon said on Friday that it had seen evidence that Russia was planning a major influx of new weaponry across the border, and that it believed multiple-rocket launchers would soon be delivered from Russia.

American officials also said they had evidence that Russia was firing artillery from within its borders to attack Ukrainian military positions.

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s top commander, has drawn attention to a video that appears to show the Russian military firing short-range Grad rockets into Ukraine.

Ukraine is seeking all the Western help it can get as Russia increases aid to the separatists. Last week, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, emphasized the role of unmanned Russian surveillance drones that he said had been used for precision targeting of Ukrainian positions. But Ukraine is not a NATO ally, complicating the question of how to support its government.

”The debate is over how much to help Ukraine without provoking Russia,” said a senior official participating in the American discussions.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Thursday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seemed to allude to the internal arguments when he said: ”We have a very active, ongoing process to think through what support we may provide to Ukraine. That debate is ongoing.”

A senior Pentagon official said later that General Dempsey had been referring to all types of aid to Ukraine, including military assistance and intelligence sharing.

The Obama administration is giving Ukraine about $33 million in nonlethal support such as bomb-disposal equipment, radios and engineering equipment, and it plans to provide night-vision goggles. But there are bipartisan calls in Congress to supply weapons, ammunition, military vehicles and training as well.

”How can you possibly sit by and not give them military assistance with all the Russian arms flowing in?” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said in a telephone interview on Saturday.

The shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane, on top of Russia’s earlier shipments of heavy weaponry, were a perilous escalation of the crisis that threatened to menace all of Europe and the United States, General Dempsey said.

”You’ve got a Russian government that has made a conscious decision to use its military force inside another sovereign nation to achieve its objectives,” he said. ”They clearly are on a path to assert themselves differently not just in Eastern Europe, but Europe in the main, and towards the United States.”

EXPOSED: PUTIN’S SECRET ARMY HQ

IAN GALLAGHER
MAIL ON SUNDAY (London) | July 27, 2014

On a corner of a street in Snizhne in eastern Ukraine, there is a gap where a block of flats used to be. In the wreckage of this destroyed four-storey building lies the chilling motive behind the mass murder of 298 innocent civilians – including ten Britons – on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

For Snizhne has become the main base for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clandestine war on Ukraine, and after getting unprecedented access to this town controlled by pro-Russian separatists, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the most likely reason missiles were being aimed at the aircraft was revenge – pure and simple.

Two days before the airliner was shot down near this town, Snizhne – part of the breakaway so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) which has declared allegiance to Russia – was bombed by Ukrainian air force jets, which destroyed the apartment block on Lenin Street, killing five women and four men and critically injuring a young boy.

Peshehonov Sergey, a newspaper editor in the town who helped pull bodies from the rubble, said: There is nothing but hatred towards the people who caused this tragedy.

You have to understand that when we got the little boy out of the building, the lower part of his body was totally crushed by rubble. The boys [rebels] were very angry.’

It is thought the sortie had been targeting a separatist military base just 100 yards away – which has become the headquarters of Putin’s covert war.

In the words of one local, the bombing attack spread panic’. A day later, others are said to have died in attacks on nearby villages. And this seems to have set in train the chilling sequence of events which led a BUK anti-aircraft missile launcher to be driven across the Russia-Ukraine border on July 17, and moved around Donetsk region to a field outside Snizhne, where it launched the weapon that blew the Boeing 777 out of the sky.

Although it is widely accepted that the pro-Russian rebels mistook the airliner for a Ukrainian military plane, tensions in the town were high, and locals callously explained the launch as self-defence’.

I think taking down the Boeing plane might be the reaction to what’s happening in Snizhne and around our city,’ said Mr Sergey said.

The boys are just doing their job. The planes bring death into our city so they could have just thought that it [Flight MH17] was another plane that was about to bomb Snizhne. It’s pure self-defence.’

And as an international team of investigators were finally allowed access to the crash site yesterday, Putin and his henchmen showed no sign of scaling down their aggression.

New photographs and video images of unguided Grad rocket launchers being moved across the border emerged yesterday, amid reports that a huge column of Russian military vehicles was massing a few miles behind the border.

The Mail on Sunday was the first British newspaper to be allowed to visit the centre of Snizhne, and access was only granted because we asked about the Ukrainian bombing, rather than the downing of MH17.

To reach the town, we negotiated six checkpoints on the road from the regional capital, Donetsk. At the last, on the edge of the town, a group of militants swaggered back and forth, armed with assault rifles.

We can’t let you through, there is fighting,’ said one, sunglasses resting on his head. As he spoke, a family in a car packed with belongings crossed in the opposite direction. On the windscreen was a hastily scrawled poster with the word Kids’ in Russian, presumably, in case anyone mistook them for combatants.

Eventually, after we sent a message to the town’s military commander explaining that we wanted to report on the attack by the Ukrainians, the guards let us through.

All smiles now where once they’d been sullen, one said: Tell the truth or we will come and find you.’ With that he made a throat-slitting gesture and returned to his colleagues.

Certainly few locals would have been particularly surprised to see the BUK mobile rocket launcher parked outside a supermarket on the afternoon of July 17, just hours before Flight MH17 was shot down.

Residents said they had grown accustomed to the rumble of tanks and armoured personnel carriers moving around their town, with armed militiamen roaming the streets and setting up positions on the outskirts, in anticipation of a Ukrainian attack.

They said that Russian military hardware had been sneaked across the border into the Donetsk region under the cover of darkness in recent weeks. Accompanied by a young man in fatigues on an old Russian motorbike, we drove into the centre of the town along Lenin Street. There was no fighting, but the air was thick with tension.

There was fighting this morning nearby – the Ukrainians are getting closer,’ said the soldier. But we held them off.’

He leaned on a railing, listlessly smoking a cigarette as we began to interview more locals. They told us that at least half the population has left town because they fear more attacks, their anxiety raised by the downing of Flight MH17.

Yes, many assume we will take the blame and fear a backlash,’ said Viktor, 76, who was on his way to the chemist to try to buy medicine for his sick wife. I go every day but they never have it, supplies are running out generally. There is bread but not much other food. There is no money in the ATMs. Power keeps going off. We have been taken over by the DPR militants.’

Another man said it was common knowledge’ that the rebels received much of their hardware from Russia and claimed his cousin spotted a convoy of tanks coming from the border a month ago. Most of the movement is at night when there is an unofficial curfew,’ he said.

Behind him lay the remains of the destroyed four-storey Soviet-era apartment block, once home to more than 200 people.

Now only 50-year-old Oleg Sapozhnik remains. I am not going to leave and let them win,’ he said.

A Ukrainian plane hit us at 6.30 in the morning – I was still in bed. The building shook and there was this massive explosion and I tried to get out of the door but it was blocked by rubble. So I jumped out of the window.’ He took us room by room through the building. Why did they attack these families? Why?’

After the attack, the militia began to appear more panicked’, according to one local. Others spoke of seeing tanks and military vehicles’ moving through the town later than night. Further down Lenin Street, less than 100 yards from the apartment block, we came across an empty supermarket and, adjacent, the sandbagged entrance to the militia’s HQ, a converted warehouse.

This, several residents tell us, was the Ukrainian plane’s real target.

The rebels looked increasingly nervous after this,’ said one middle-aged woman. And they were angry too, really angry, shuttling all over the place in their military vehicles.’ The following day something else happened to intensify their fury: an attack on the nearby village of Dmitrovka, in which, it is claimed, civilians were killed.

It was at this point that the rebels decided to hit back, and 12 hours later began moving the rocket launcher around Snizhne. It was later photographed in the nearby town of Torez, under a tree near a supermarket. From there it was taken to the outskirts of Snizhne, where it was fired.

On Friday, we requested an interview with the rebel commander in the town. He doesn’t wish to speak to you,’ came the reply from his emissary, a rifle-wielding man in his 20s. You must go back now.’ Back in rebel-held Donetsk, the expected major offensive from the Ukrainian army to retake the city never materialised, though there were reports of blasts in a suburb. Experts said the noise resembled those of Grads.

In all, Ukraine’s bloody insurgency has forced 230,000 people to flee their homes, including 130,000 who have sought refuge in Russia.

Meanwhile, a pro-Putin Russian senator claimed a new Cold War had begun after the White House accused the Russian authorities of being in part to blame for the Malaysian airliner tragedy.

After this statement we can say that a long, tough Cold War has begun,’ said Valeriy Shnyakin, a member of the defence committee of the upper house of parliament.

And the Russian government accused the US of blatant lies’ over the crash. The Foreign Ministry said accusations against Russia were a common practice in Washington when no evidence nor even references to the facts are given as a confirmation, which we could have verified and commented on.

All the White House says is limited to mentioning some "intelligence data" that cannot be presented or, and – this is totally absurd – "information from social media".’

Russia’s protests, though, count for nothing in Snizhne, the town that will be for ever bound to that appalling explosion 33,000ft above them. Not all of us want to live like this, in Putin’s pocket,’ said one elderly resident. For years we were happy – but this has changed everything.’

***

A large column of Russian military vehicles, including multiple rocket launchers known as Grad’ rockets, circled and below, pass through the border town of Krasnodon. The incident was captured on video and later posted on YouTube.

At 4.20pm, as shown in The Mail on Sunday last week, the vapour trail, above, from the BUK is spotted as the missile homes in on its target.

Lunchtime. Some hours before the Malaysian jet passed overhead, a BUK mobile missile launcher, circled, was seen passing through Torez, adjoining Snizhne, loaded with four SA-11 surface-to-air missiles.

Residents of the rebel-held town of Snizhne say the shooting down of MH17 was a revenge attack’ for a bombing of a block of flats, above, two days earlier. Nine civilians were killed when a Ukrainian warplane struck. One resident standing beside a pile of bags said: My home was bombed to bits.’

Putin Stays on Offense in Ukraine

Jim Heintz
July 27, 2014

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin might be expected to hunker down into defense mode as he is besieged by accusations of Russian involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Instead he has stayed on offense and appears to positioning for the long game.

In his televised appearances since last Thursday’s crash, Putin’s demeanor hasn’t wavered from his usual steely determination. He has allowed Russian media to propound theories blaming Ukrainian forces or suggesting a U.S hand in the crash, while refusing to deny such theories and indirectly placing responsibility on the Ukrainians.

Just hours after the crash, Putin laid the groundwork for this approach, saying at a meeting of economic officials that "the tragedy would not have happened" if Ukraine had not resumed its military actions against rebels in late June. "The state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy," he said.

That argument neatly eludes a key issue: that the offensive was renewed after a 10-day unilateral ceasefire that the pro-Russia rebels ignored. Throughout the eastern Ukraine crisis, now in its fourth month, Putin and his officials have consistently portrayed the conflict as Ukraine’s unprincipled assault on its own citizens, rather than as a move to take back a sizeable part of the country seized by heavily armed separatists.

The aim is to discredit the Kiev authorities without openly opposing them. Putin even spoke face-to-face in June with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who had just been elected following the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych in the wake of months of mass protests. But on Tuesday, he stepped up the aspersions in a meeting with his security council.

"True, they held elections after the takeover," Putin said. "However, for some strange reason, power ended up again in the hands of those who either funded or carried out this takeover."

This is where the long game appears to take shape.

By aggressively suggesting that Ukraine’s instability is a prelude to Western designs on Russia, Putin not only deflects attention away from the plane crash, but strikes a chord in the Russian psyche. Russia characteristically sees itself as both a vast and mighty world power and as forever beleaguered by devious and violent forces dating back to the Mongol hordes and later including Napoleonic France, Poland, Sweden and, finally, Nazi Germany.

Even as he expresses concern about Russia’s vulnerability, Putin also declares that "the recipes used regarding weaker states fraught with internal conflict will not work with us."

Resorting to the contradictory – yet popular – message may indicate the tight spot Putin finds himself in as he faces not only international opprobrium but the prospect of even more economic sanctions.

"He appears caught, first, by the possibility of very serious limitations from the West," analyst Fyodor Lukyanov was quoted as saying by the news website Ekspert. "Secondly, the psychological pressure is very serious. And for Putin, I think, it’s hard just on a human basis."

But Putin is the ultimate survivor. And barring evidence that irrefutably connects Russia with the plane’s crash Putin likely has the stamina and determination for a long haul.

Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow think-tank, said that while many may hope that sanctions and the pressure on Putin will cause him to pull back, "those banking on this scenario will probably be disappointed."

"Putin is unlikely to stand down, or back off," he wrote in a commentary.

 

Putin lashes out at criticism over plane crash as more bodies found
FoxNews.com | July 21, 2014

July 21, 2014: Ukrainian Emergency workers carry a victim’s body in a plastic bag as other bodies are laid on the ground nearby at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out against a chorus of international condemnation Monday over Moscow’s role in training and arming the rebels believed to have shot down a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane Thursday, killing all 298 on board.

Putin said Russia was doing everything possible to allow a team of experts from the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, to investigate the scene. He also again criticized the Ukraine authorities in Kiev for reigniting the fighting with the pro-Russian rebels who control the crash site.

"We can say with confidence that if fighting in eastern Ukraine had not been renewed on June 28, this tragedy would not have happened," Putin said. "Nobody should or does have a right to use this tragedy for such mercenary objectives."

That statement came in the wake of comments by the United States on Sunday, presenting what it called "powerful" evidence that the rebels shot down the plane with a Russian surface-to-air missile.

"Russia is supporting these separatists. Russia is arming these separatists. Russia is training these separatists," Secretary of State John Kerry said on CNN’s `State of the Union.’

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Australia also spoke to Putin by phone late Sunday. European foreign ministers are also meeting in Brussels Tuesday to consider further sanctions on Russia.

In an opinion piece for the Sunday Times, British Prime Minister David Cameron said there was a "growing weight of evidence" suggesting that the rebels shot down the plane.

If that was the case, Cameron said that was "a direct result of Russia destabilizing a sovereign state, violating its territorial integrity, backing thuggish militias and training and arming them."

Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported that 21 more bodies had been discovered at the crash site and had been piled by the side of the road in black body bags. Over the weekend, pro-Russia rebels had transported nearly 200 bodies from the crash site into four refrigerated boxcars in the nearby town of Torez, an act that drew international condemnation and accusations that the site was being tampered with to forestall a full investigation. In addition to the removal of the bodies, the AP reported that cranes had moved pieces of the Boeing 777 from the crash scene.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, whose country lost 28 citizens in the crash, told a Sydney radio station that the rebels’ treatment of the crash site was "completely unacceptable" and "more like a garden cleanup than a forensic investigation."

The United Nations Security Council was set to consider competing resolutions — one drafted by Australia, the other by Russia –  that would call for a thorough and impartial investigation into the crash. Western diplomats told Fox News that the introduction of a Russian resolution was seen as a delaying tactic by Moscow.

Reuters reported that the final draft of the Australian resolution characterized the incident as the "downing" of the plane as opposed to the "shooting down" of the plane in an apparent attempt to win the support of Russia, one of five permanent members of the Security Council with veto power.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country lost 192 citizens on the plane, told a news conference Sunday that repatriating the bodies was his "No. 1 priority."

He said all efforts were aimed at getting the train with the bodies to "territory controlled by Ukraine" and that a Dutch military plane was being sent to Kharkiv to set up a coordination center. On Monday, three Dutch members with Holland’s National Forensic Investigations Team arrived in Donetsk to join an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission.

Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE, said reports from the group’s investigators in Ukraine suggest some bodies were incinerated without a trace.

"We’re looking at the field where the engines have come down. This was the area which was exposed to the most intense heat. We do not see any bodies here. It appears that some have been vaporized," he said from the crash site.

Experts said that even if investigators are granted access now, it might be too late.

"Even without any deliberate attempt at a cover-up, the crash site is already compromised in forensic terms," said Keir Giles, an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank. "A reconstruction of the aircraft fuselage and wings would give a picture on how the missile struck and what kind it was. If any aircraft parts have already been removed … this compromises the objectivity of the investigation."

Rutte said the Dutch foreign minister was headed to the U.N. to lobby "to further expand the international coalition pushing for quick recovery of the bodies and getting to the bottom of the terrible events on MH17."

In the Netherlands, worshippers at church services prayed for the victims, as anger grew over the rebels’ hindering of the investigation.

Silene Fredriksz-Hoogzand, whose son, Bryce, and his girlfriend, Daisy Oehlers, were among those killed, said she was appalled their bodies weren’t being handed over.

"Mr. Putin, send my children home," she said, speaking on Sky TV from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. "Send them home. Please."

Fox News’ Jonathan Wachtel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/07/21/putin-lashes-out-at-criticism-over-plane-crash-as-more-bodies-found/

Russian TV talk show blames MH17 air disaster on Ukraine

 

The 23 July edition of the talk show "Politika" ("Politics") on Russia’s state-controlled Channel One discussed the aftermath of the 17 July crash of a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft, flight MH17, in an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian militia. The programme was added to the schedule at short notice, like the previous edition on 18 July (please see: "Russian TV airs talk-show special to blame passenger jet downing on Ukraine").

Both the presenters and the panellists, who included senior Russian MPs, military experts and east Ukraine’s separatist activists, strongly defended the official Russian theory of the crash, suggesting that the aircraft was shot down by Ukrainian forces, not Russia or pro-Russian militias. The USA, Ukraine and their allies were accused of making politically motivated accusations, and not being concerned with finding out the truth. The discussion on the crash looks "like a political brawl", according to presenter Petr Tolstoy. He also described Britain as an "interested party" in the conflict, which is why there are concerns about impartiality of deciphering the MH17 flight recorder data in the UK. Co-presenter Aleksandr Gordon described the ongoing worldwide conflicts as the end of "70 years of America’s unpunished terror".

Senior State Duma members blame Ukraine, USA

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovskiy said that the Malaysian Boeing was shot down by Ukrainian air defence forces, however, the plan to have it fall in Russia was botched by firing the missiles too early. He added that the USA and Ukraine accused Russia, despite knowing the truth, for the purposes of propaganda. It is not impossible that a Russian "traitor of an officer" would admit that Russia did indeed shoot it down but it would still be a ruse, Zhirinovskiy said. The MH17 flight was shot down to allow Ukrainian forces to gain military advantage over the pro-Russian militias who were poised to "start a march on Kiev", he noted.

Fighting in the Middle East and in Ukraine are part of World War III, which means that all Russians have to "live in the conditions of mobilisation", Zhirinovskiy said. Russia "will support by any means" pro-Russian movements such as the east Ukrainian statelet of Novorossiya, he added. "Hundreds of thousands" of volunteers from Russia and regions such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia would "happily fight against Kiev and Washington" there, but no Russian soldiers would die, Zhirinovskiy said. Russia has to be capable of making "preventive strikes", and to be aware of internal subversion, such as US attempts to "open an internal front" by funding civil society groups, he added.

Deputy State Duma speaker Sergey Zheleznyak (One Russia) said that Russia was freely sharing and publishing information that it has on the crash, whilst the West plays a "diplomatic game" and is not interested in truth, as Russia was already declared guilty. "The Russian state and Russian society", as well as "the large Russian world" and "international anti-fascist movement" have to continue providing assistance to Novorossiya, he added. All resources, which exceed those of "official Russian statehood", have to be fully deployed so that "fascism would not triumph in Ukraine", Zheleznyak said.

Russian experts support official line

Former commander of Russia’s Air Force Army Gen Vladimir Mikhaylov said that "the organisers of this most horrible terror attack, of course, counted on the aircraft falling on Russian territory". A Ukrainian Su-25 destroyer was likely used, he added. The Malaysian aircraft was chosen "to somehow damage our relations with southeast" of Asia, Mikhaylov said.

Editor in chief of Natsionalnaya Oborona magazine Igor Korotchenko said that the USA hesitates to produce information describing real causes of the MH17 crash as "they know who the real culprit is – Ukrainian armed forces". He added that UK’s GCHQ was quite likely to try to delete the flight recorders’ data to hinder investigation.

Military observer of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper Col (retd) Viktor Baranets said that the transfer of flight recorders to the UK "would much delay the search for the truth because it is evident that the Great Britain is a bought judge in this situation".

Director of Centre for Strategic Conjuncture Ivan Konovalov said that even if the flight recorders had been analysed in the Netherlands, it would have made no difference as it is also a NATO member state. However, "the Britons are of course the most biased" against Russia, he added.

Political analyst Sergey Mikheyev said that UK experts and Ukrainian flight authorities would co-ordinate altering their records.

Editor in chief of Zhurnalistskaya Pravda newspaper Vladislav Shurygin suggested that Ukrainian air defence forces may have fired missiles at the aircraft by accident, as the Buk-2 system was rarely used in drills.

Dean of the Higher School of Television under the Moscow State University Vitaliy Tretyakov said that it was "practically obvious that the aircraft was shot down by Ukrainians". Russia should warn Ukraine that if any more civilians get killed, it would recognize independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk "people’s republics" and enter into a military union with them, he added.

Member of the presidential council for development of civil society and human rights Iosif Diskin said that according to his sources, the MH17 flight was brought down by Ukrainian officers who had been bribed by US special services.

President of the Institute for National Strategy Mikhail Remizov said that Russia may face some sanctions as the MH17 crash was blamed on it, but it may offset their severity by threatening to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk "people’s republics".

Deputy editor in chief of the Vzglyad newspaper Petr Akopov said that Russia is "winning the situation concerning the Boeing" but warned there would be further US stratagems aimed against Russia.

Director general of the Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiative Veronika Krasheninnikova said that the Western public is not likely to believe the "American propaganda machine". "Ukraine has unified all of [Russian] society", which helps solve all of Russia’s systemic problems, she added.

Expert with the Fund for Development of Civil Society Stanislav Apetyan said that Russian society would be capable of withstanding the next few years of "turbulence", which is proven by how united it is behind President Vladimir Putin.

Pilot Andrey Litvinov said that there is no way Russia is responsible for shooting down the MH17 flight, as even if it was shot down by the militia, it was a result of US activities in sponsoring Ukraine’s pro-Western protests.

East Ukraine separatist activists blame government

Co-chairman of the People’s Front of Novorossiya Konstantyn Dolhov (Konstantin Dolgov) said that only Ukrainian forces were capable of and did benefit from shooting the aircraft down, unlike the militia, who do not possess required weapons. The "act of provocation" was needed "to discredit Novorossiya, the Donetsk people’s republic, to present us as terrorists", he added. Ukrainian army offensive was an attempt to "hide the traces of their crime", Dolhov alleged.

Member of the board of the Novorossiya co-ordination centre Yehor Kvasnyuk (Yegor Kvasnyuk) said that "no-one seems to have any doubt that this is an act of provocation" by the Ukrainian authorities. He alleged that Ukrainian soldiers who fight in east Ukraine are "on drugs".

Note: due to the programme having been added to the schedule at short notice, this account is based on the version posted on Channel One’s website (1tv.ru/sprojects_edition/si5905/fi32511).

Source: Channel One TV, Moscow, in Russian 1755 gmt 23 Jul 14

 

Ukrainian Su-25 fighter detected in close approach to MH17 before crash – Moscow
RT | July 21, 2014

Download video (80.3 MB)

The Russian military detected a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet gaining height towards the MH17 Boeing on the day of the catastrophe. Kiev must explain why the military jet was tracking the passenger airplane, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

“A Ukraine Air Force military jet was detected gaining height, it’s distance from the Malaysian Boeing was 3 to 5km,” said the head of the Main Operations Directorate of the HQ of Russia’s military forces, Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov speaking at a media conference in Moscow on Monday.

“[We] would like to get an explanation as to why the military jet was flying along a civil aviation corridor at almost the same time and at the same level as a passenger plane,” he stated.

“The SU-25 fighter jet can gain an altitude of 10km, according to its specification,” he added. “It’s equipped with air-to-air R-60 missiles that can hit a target at a distance up to 12km, up to 5km for sure.”

The presence of the Ukrainian military jet can be confirmed by video shots made by the Rostov monitoring center, Kartopolov stated.

At the moment of the MH17 crash an American satellite was flying over the area of eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry. It urged the US to publish the space photos and data captured by it.

‘Ukrainian Buk missile system transported to militia-held area’

In addition, MH17 crashed within the operating zone of the Ukrainian army’s self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air ‘Buk’ missile systems, the Russian general said.

“We have space images of certain places where the Ukraine’s air defense was located in the southeast of the country,” Kartapolov noted.
The first three shots that were shown by the general are dated July 14. The images show Buk missile launch systems in about 8km northwest of the city of Lugansk – a TELAR and two TELs, according to the military official.

Another image shows a radar station near Donetsk.

Radar stations of the air defense in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 14, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry

While the third picture shows the location of the air defense systems near Donetsk, he explained. In particular, one can clearly see a TELAR launcher and about 60 military and auxiliary vehicles, tents for vehicles and other structures, he elaborated.

Buk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 14, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry

“Images from this area were also made on July 17. One should notice that the missile launcher is absent [from the scene]. Image number five shows the Buk missile system in the morning of the same day in the area of settlement Zaroschinskoe – 50km south of Donetsk and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk," the Kartapolov said.

No Buk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 17, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry

Buk missile defense units in Zaroschinskoe, 50km south of Donetsk city and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk, on July 17, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry

The question that has to be answered is why the missile system appeared near the area controlled by the local militia forces shortly before the catastrophe, he stated.

Images taken on July 18 show that the missile systems left the area of the MH17 crash, the military official said.

Kartapolov also pointed to the fact that on the day of the plane crash Ukraine’s military increased activity on the part of Ukraine’s Kupol-M1 9S18 radars, which are part of the Buk system.

"..there were 7 radars operating on July 15, 8 radars operating on July 16, and 9 radars operating on July 17 in the area. Then, starting with July 18, the intensity of radar activities radically decreased, and now there are no more than two or three radars operating a day. The reason behind this is yet to be found."

In response to Moscow’s evidence, Kiev said on Monday it had proof the missile that brought down a Malaysian airliner last week came from Russia.

"There is evidence that the missile which struck the plane was fired by terrorists, who received arms and specialists from the Russian Federation," spokesman for Ukraine’s Security Council Andrey Lysenko told a news conference. "To disown this tragedy, [Russia] are drawing a lot of pictures and maps. We will explore any photos and other plans produced by the Russian side."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday that Kiev has “strong evidence” of the causes of the MH17 crash.

“We know exactly the place [the surface-to-air missile was] launched, we know exactly the place where it hit the civilian plane and the place where the plane crashed.”

Kiev is ready to hand the information to the international investigation commission, according to the presidential press-service.

http://rt.com/news/174412-malaysia-plane-russia-ukraine/

Behind the Scenes in Putin’s Court: The Private Habits of a Latter-Day Dictator

Ben Judah
Newsweek | July 23, 2014

The President wakes late and eats shortly after noon. He begins with the simplest of breakfasts. There is always cottage cheese. His cooked portion is always substantial; omelette or occasionally porridge. He likes quails’ eggs. He drinks fruit juice. The food is forever fresh: baskets of his favourites dispatched regularly from the farmland estates of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia’s religious leader.

He is then served coffee. His courtiers have been summoned but these first two hours are taken up with swimming. The President enjoys this solitary time in the water. He wears goggles and throws himself into a vigorous front crawl. This is where the political assistants suggest he gets much of Russia’s thinking done.

The courtiers joke and idle and cross their legs in the lacquered wood waiting rooms. He rarely comes to them quickly. They say three, perhaps four hours is the normal wait for a minister. He likes to spend some time in the gym where Russian rolling news is switched on. There he enjoys the weights much more than the exercise bikes.

He sometimes reads after the sweat. This is because he likes to work late into the night. He summons his men at the hours that suit his mental clarity – the cold hours where everything is clearer. The books he finds most interesting, are history books. He reads these attentively. Heavy, respectable tomes: about Ivan the Terrible, Catherine II, Peter the Great.

But there sometimes fly rumours: that he has read a novel. In 2006, the President is said to have read a thriller in which working class men beat up Chechens and cops and seize the governor’s office from corrupt thieves with machine guns – Sankya by Zakhar Prilepin.

Now those that claim to know his bedside, say he has much enjoyed The Third Empire, a fantasy about an imaginary Latin American historian from 2054, who recounts the exploits of Tsar Vladimir II, the in-gatherer of all Russian lands. But his courtiers are at pains to make it clear – the President is no reader.

He spends time completing his cleanse. He immerses himself into both hot and cold baths. Then the President dresses. He chooses to wear only ­tailored, bespoke suits in conservative colours. His choice of ties is usually dour.

And now power begins. The early afternoon is about briefing notes. This mostly takes place at his heavy wooden desk. These are offices without screens. The President uses only the most secure technologies: red folders with paper documents, and fixed-line Soviet Warera telephones.

The master begins his work day by reading three thick leather-bound folders. The first – his report on the home front compiled by the FSB, his domestic intelligence service. The second – his report on international affairs compiled by the SVR, his foreign intelligence. The third – his report on the court complied by the FSO, his army of close protection.

He is obsessed with information. The thickest, fattest folders at his request are not intelligence reports: they are press clippings. His hands first open the Russian press digest. The most important papers come at the front: the obsequious national tabloids – such as Komsomolskaya Pravda and Moskovsky Komsomolets. These matter most, with their millions of readers. Their headlines, their gossip columns, their reactions to the latest Siberian train wreck affect the workers’ mood.

Then he moves onto Russia’s quality press: the lightly censored broadsheets, Vedomosti and Kommersant. These matter in the Kremlin court: this is their gossip, their columnists, their analysis. He pays particular attention to the regular columns about Vladimir Putin written by Andrey Kolesnikov in ­Kommersant. His courtiers say he enjoys this one greatly and always reads right to the end.

Then the least important folders: his foreign press. These are clippings compiled both in the presidential administration, and his Foreign Ministry. The departments do not hide from him the bad news. They like to make a point: the President must know how far these foreigners demonise him. But to please him, they also dutifully include materials in German in the original, the language in which his long-ago KGB posting in Dresden, left him fluent.

The courtiers wait at the door and by video-link he likes to watch them ­gossip and writhe in boredom, or play with their electronic gadgets. But he ignores them and works his way through the reports.

The President rarely uses the internet. He finds the screens within screens and the bars building up with messages confusing. However, from time to time, his advisers have shown some satirical online videos: he must know how they mock him. His life has become ceremonial: an endless procession of gilded rooms. His routine is parcelled up into thousands of units of 15 minutes and planned for months, if not years ahead. Following his morning review the schedule folders embossed with the eagle are presented to him. After glancing at them, he follows the plan: without a smile or a joy.

Mostly, these meetings are meaningless. There are those who come to pay homage to him: receiving the crown Prince of Bahrain, awarding bronze medals to Udmurt Heroes of Labour, or reviewing promotions in the management of the federal space industry.

He does not live in Moscow. He dislikes the place: the traffic, the pollution, the human congestion. The President has chosen the palace at Novo-Ogaryovo as his residence. Home is out there, to the west of the city, away from the red walls, the mega-estates, the mega-malls – out in his parkland.

It is 24km from the palace to the ­castle. The route is closed and cleared of all traffic when the President chooses to commute. He can reach the Kremlin in less than 25 minutes, while Moscow sits in gridlock.

He dislikes coming to the Kremlin. He prefers working on his estate. He has cut down his meetings in Moscow since 2012 to a strict minimum: to meeting dignitaries that need to be impressed, or the formal gatherings that require those extravagant halls, with crystal-cut cut chandeliers and the mirrors as high as birch trees.

He finds the commute irritating.

The President keeps busy, even on Saturday and Sunday. At weekends, his schedule becomes more haphazard: but there are sometimes study sessions in the afternoon. Mostly, English language. His teacher helps him learn difficult words – singing songs together. There are times on Sundays he is said to pray or make a confession. But courtiers familiar with the office of the Patriarch are at pains to clarify – though not an atheist, perhaps a believer – his life is not that of a Christian.

The President loves ice hockey. This is his favourite sport. He thinks it is graceful and manly and fun. The President practices ice hockey as much as he can. He loves putting on that thick comfy helmet and picking up his agile hockey stick. This is what the court most feverishly covets: every few weeks, the President organises a game of ice-hockey.

A mark of intimacy, the treasured invite, the most bragged about occasion in oligarchic society, is watching one of the President’s hockey matches. These are his intimates – most, like him, from St Petersburg, the old associates, the ones he trusts. They are mostly businessmen; and on the US-sanctions list. Men like the brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg or Gennady Timchenko. They play and they lose. The teams are filled out with bodyguards.

The Presidential bodyguards wear his shirt and shout his name. The bodyguards of Dmitry Medvedev, his little Prime Minister, fill up the opposing, entertaining team. Despite his bodyguards being compulsory at the Presidential games, the Prime Minister himself is rarely present.

These men are the inner circle. The ones that rose with him out of the swamps of St Petersburg. He was only then a deputy mayor. They shared electricity wires between their dachas and ate cheap meat together. They feel they deserve this. They used to call him: the “Boss”. But over recent years they have come to call him the “Tsar”.

There are no stories of extravagance: only of loneliness. The President has no family life. His mother is dead. So is his father. His wife suffered nervous disorders, and after a long separation, there has been a divorce. There are two daughters. But they are a state secret and no longer live in Russia. There are rumours of models, photographers, or gymnasts that come to him at night. But there is a hollow tick to these stories, which no courtier can quite explain.

The President loves animals. He smiles at the sight of creatures that refuse to obey him. The President finds solace in the company of a black Labrador, who is not afraid of him. He enjoys the hunting parties. He enjoys the helicopter rides with camera-crews over the grey-white tundra looking for tigers and bears – the beauty of Russia.

The court interpreter says his life is monotonous. The meaningless meetings. The pedantic clip of presidential protocol. The repetitive routine these schedules have year after year. His motorcade goes in two directions: either to the Kremlin or to the airport. The President says that he works harder than any leader since Stalin.

None of them travelled, negotiated, or saw as much of Russia as him. His planes leave from the Presidential terminal: Vnukovo-2. For a while there were memorandums to move the Russian administration to these forested edgelands; half filled with housing estates coloured like giant Lego blocks. Build over the woods and scattered rubbish was their imagined aerotropolis: a Kremlin city built into jet-engine addiction. But he thought it too ambitious.

His planes travel in threes. One carries his motorcade; one, his delegation; the third that flies ahead for him. The fleet leaves Vnukovo-2 more than five times a month. His wish is to be everywhere: the industrial fair in Omsk, the inspections of Karelia, the summit in Astana, or the state visit to South Korea.

But in Russian time-zones his provincial governors, with their micro-garchs and their sallow police chiefs, use little tricks to deceive him. Recently, they were ashamed in Suzdal of their city of rotting wooden hutches so they covered them in tarpaulin facades of freshly painted cottages. They were ashamed in the factories and the military installations – hiding everything broken.

The visits abroad are conducted differently: the intelligence service plans ahead. The pilot group comes a month before the President to the capital in question. The luxury hotel his administration will occupy is inspected. The FSB and the SVR cooperate in this delicate matter. How secure is that room? How bio-contaminable is this bathroom?

The court has established itself on ­foreign soil a week before he arrives. The hotel becomes the Kremlin. They have booked and sealed 200 rooms. There is a special lift uniquely prepared for the presidential use. Diplomats cluck and confer with pot-bellied FSO inspectors and clammy-handed protocol ­officers.

His room is sealed: no one is allowed access to it. This is the work of the ­special security team. The hotel sheets and toiletries are removed and replaced. Their places filled with wash stuffs and fresh fruit under special Kremlin anti-contamination seals.

Meanwhile everything he will need arrives by the planeload: Russian cooks, Russian cleaners, Russian waiters. Russian lorries bleep and dock with two tons of Russian food. He will sleep on this soil one night. Meanwhile, teams of diplomats engage in multi-session food negotiations with the host.

The President cannot be served milk products, though that is contradicted by orders of Russian security services. The President cannot be offered food by the host – including the head of state or government. The embassy finds itself negotiating a tough position in countries with a rich culinary heritage: the President cannot consume foreign foodstuffs that have not been cleared by the Kremlin.

There is uncertainty here amongst the negotiators. Perhaps the President is secretly lactose intolerant? More likely, he is merely paranoid about poisoning. Russian materials are shipped in advance for the Presidential platter, where local cooks will be supervised by the FSB, SVR, FSO and their team of tasters. The President has refused to even touch food at foreign banquets.

The President is indifferent to the offence of the host nation. The interpreter talks about the plane landing on the hot tarmac. Excitement, fear and uncertainty tingle in the Russian embassy staff: he has arrived.

The President behaves as though he is made of bronze, as if he shines. He seems to know that they will flinch when meeting his eye. There is a silence around him. The voices of grown men change when they speak to him. They make their voices as low as possible. Their faces become solemn, almost stiffened. They look down: worried, ­nervous, alert.

“He doesn’t talk,” the interpreter says. “He feels no need to smile. He doesn’t want to go for a walk. He doesn’t want to drink… At anyone time there are 10 people around him… You cannot get more than 3m close to him because the space is guarded so carefully. He is endlessly surrounded by whispering aides, cameramen, bodyguards.

“The politicians whisper when he is in the room. They stay very attentive. There is next to nobody close enough to joke with him. When he enters a room the sound level drops. There was a time when I spoke loudly – ‘ladies and gentlemen of the delegation we must move to the next room for the signature’ – and a minister grabbed my hand. ‘Shut up,’ he hissed. ‘He is here.’”

The President has no time to think. He goes from gold room, to gold room, in an endless sequence of ceremonial fanfare, with the lightest ballast of political content. The photoshoot. The reception. The formalities that enthrall those new to the summit of power, but irritate those long enchained to it. He thinks very little on his feet: the speeches are all pre-written, the positions all pre-conceived, the negotiations mostly commercial in nature.

The ministers have arrived with him. There are very few close enough to address him directly, fewer still able to joke in his presence. But he takes little interest in them and the moment he can he retires to the sealed and secured bedroom. Because he has seen all this before.

The ministers like to imitate the ­President. They like to imitate his gestures and affect that world-weary air. They like to pretend they too disdain technology. They like to imitate his tone and parrot his scoffing remarks. But, unlike him, the ministers laugh and drink with the night. Their half-shadowed faces become puffy and garrulous. But he is nowhere to be seen.

“He looks emotionless, as if nothing really touches him,” the interpreter remembers. “As if he is hardly aware of what happens around him. As if he is paying little attention to these people. As if he is worn out… He has spent so long as an icon he is not used to anyone penetrating… He is not used to anything not being so perfectly controlled for him. He is isolated, trapped.”

“The impression… you get from being close to him is that he would have been quite happy to step down. But he knows he has failed to rule Russia in anything else but a feudal way. And the moment his grip falters… it will all come crashing down and he will go to jail… and Moscow will burn like Kiev.”

There are courtiers who claim to have heard him speak frankly. There was one who remembers one warm summer evening where he began to talk openly about the fate of his country. The President asked those, whose business it was to be with him that night at Nov-Ogaryovo, who were the greatest Russian traitors.

But he did not wait for them to answer: the greatest criminals in our history were those weaklings who threw the power on the floor – Nicholas II and Mikhail Gorbachev – who allowed the power to be picked up by the hysterics and the madmen, he told them.

Those courtiers then present, claim, that the President vowed never to do the same.

Author’s note: This piece of journalism is an amalgamation of more than three years of interviews, for my book Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin (Yale). In the course of my research I had the chance to interview everyone from former prime ministers, to Putin’s current ministers and regional governors, down to senior bureaucrats, close advisers, personal aides and ordinary people. Using information from these interviews, I have pieced together the private habits and routines of this latter-day dictator. The quotes here are from Russian officials, whose identities need to be protected. In the current climate of Russian politics, the punishment for revealing personal information is extremely severe and so it is impossible even to hint at the identities or occupations of my sources. The result is an example of what many call “new journalism” using the techniques of fiction to relay facts. While this article may read like a piece of imaginative writing, every detail has been carefully reported.

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/01/behind-scenes-putins-court-private-habits-latter-day-dictator-260640.html

The MH17 culprits may never be caught

ROBERT MENDICK; Ben Farmer; Roland Oliphant
Sunday Telegraph (London) | July 27, 2014

THE INQUIRY into the shooting down of Flight MH17 risks becoming hopelessly compromised by the failure of official investigators to inspect the crash site properly, after rebels had nine days to destroy and tamper with vital evidence.

The probable launch site of the ground-to-air missile, found by a Sunday Telegraph reporting team, also remains unexplored by the Dutch offi-cials leading the investigation.

Experts fear that the inquiry has become bogged down almost before it has begun, raising the prospect of years of wrangling between the Kremlin and the West over what happened to the Malaysia Airlines jet, which crashed into a field in eastern Ukraine killing all 298 people on board.

A team of unarmed Dutch troops – made up of military police and special forces – and Australian police is finally to be deployed this week on the ground in rebel-held eastern Ukraine in an attempt to secure the site.

Until now, fears for their safety at the hands of heavily armed militia have prevented official crash inspectors from going there, although hundreds of journalists as well as locals have visited the scene over several days. The circumstantial evidence against Russian-backed separatists seems overwhelming.

But precisely who fired the missile, who supplied it and who ordered it is unknown. Here, The Sunday Telegraph examines what we know, and don’t know, about Flight MH17.

LAUNCH SITE

The Sunday Telegraph’s own inquiries suggest the missile – an SA-11 from a Buk mobile rocket launcher – was possibly fired from a cornfield about 12 miles to the south of the main crash site.

Scorch marks in the soil indicate where the rocket’s propulsion system may have set fire to the crops.

The location of the site tallies with a surveillance photograph, released by Ukraine’s intelligence service, showing a signature trail of smoke emanating from beyond a hill in rebel-held eastern Ukraine.

The Telegraph’s investigation corroborates analysis by Ukraine at War, a pro-Kiev English-language blog, suggesting that the smoke trail from an SA-11 appeared to originate from the direction of the cornfield.

The photograph appears to have been taken from a highrise apartment block overlooking the area.

The location is further corroborated by evidence apparently obtained by Ukraine intelligence, which suggests the launcher was transported into Ukraine from Russia at 1am on July 17, about 15 hours before Flight MH17 was downed, and then taken to a site near the village of Pervomaiski. The field is within a few hundred yards of the village.

Experts insist that both the crash and possible launch site needed to be treated like crime scenes.

FORENSIC EVIDENCE

The passage of time may have compromised any investigation, allowing the Russians and Kremlin-backed rebels to blame Ukraine forces for the disaster while questioning the veracity and neutrality of Ukrainian intelligence gathering.

"It will be almost impossible to say who pushed the button," said Reed Foster, the head of the armed forces capabilities team at the intelligence and security analysts IHS Jane’s Defence.

"The evidence at the crash site will not tell you if it was a Ukraine or Russian operator of the Buk launcher.

"It is very easy for the Russians to maintain plausible deniability. The launch site needs to be found and treated like a crime scene. There will be telltale signs of chemical residue where the rocket motor has ignited the flora and fauna.

"But even once you have identified the site it is still dif-ficult to know who the persons were at that location."

Debris from the crash scene will at some stage be removed and analysed. Photographs taken of Boeing 777 debris shows the metal skin perforated with a number of similar sized holes.

The evidence is consistent with a ground-to-air missile attack from a Buk-launched SA-11 missile, said Mr Foster.

Shrapnel from the missile is likely to be scattered at the crash site, stretching over about eight square miles.

Vital evidence such as the missile casing and rocket motor, containing factory serial numbers, could have been removed by now by the rebel militia who control the area.

Even if the casing and motor is found, Russian-made SA-11 missiles are in possession of both sides in the conflict.

THE INVESTIGATION

The Dutch authorities – the country lost 189 citizens – are leading the investigation, to remove claims of bias that would be levelled against a Ukraine-led team. They are only now planning to secure the site with 50 unarmed military police across a huge area that remains a war zone.

Chris Yates, an independent aviation analyst who has worked as a consultant on a number of air crashes, said the promise to finally secure the site may already be too late. "I am afraid this is going to go on for years for the simple reason the crash site is now substantially contaminated," said Mr Yates.

"People have been trampling all over it; debris has been shifted, cut up and removed; the whole area has been interfered with."

In normal circumstances, said Mr Yates, debris and bodies should only be moved under controlled conditions with the authorisation of offi-cial inspectors and not before photographs are taken.

"The problem is the people trampling over the site including Russian-backed rebels who know what they are looking for and are probably trying to sanitise the site," he said.

Reports claim rebels may have even tried to sabotage the scene by scattering pieces of metal unrelated to the aircraft, simply to confuse investigators. Rebels have argued that debris has only been moved or cut up to allow them to recover bodies.

As of Friday night, there were still 71 people unaccounted for. Investigators will also want access to possible radar data.

David Gleave, aviation expert at Loughborough University and formerly a chief safety investigator in the airline industry, said if Ukraine had recorded ‘primary radar’ data it could show the trajectory of the missile, allowing investigators to work out exactly where it was launched.

Black box data, downloaded by a British team at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough, and passed to the Dutch for analysis is unlikely to yield many clues, said Mr Gleave. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder will rule out other causes of the crash and will give a precise time for the disaster. But if Flight MH17 was hit by a missile, the incident would have been so quick that no recordings of the crews’ reaction to the strike will exist.

Prof Anthony Glees, director of the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said that the investigation could take many years but he expected that the perpetrators would be eventually charged with war crimes.

"The pictures of the fuselage which show the effect of the explosion on the aircraft, with the twisted metal facing inside the structure, clearly shows that the plane was shot down. But getting the evidence to prove who actually carried it out may take a very long time. All the black boxes are going to show is that the plane suffered an extreme and catastrophic event which ended the flight – it won’t tell us who did it.

"The only way we are going to find out what really happened and who is responsible is by getting hold of the logbooks of those who were operating the missile system. The Ukrainian separatist thugs must be made to hand over the information and there should be some kind of armed intervention at the wreckage site to allow accident investigators to carry out their work unhindered."

INTELLIGENCE EVIDENCE

Beyond forensic evidence on the ground, the most damning evidence unearthed so far comes from Ukraine’s security service.

It has made public apparent telephone transcripts between rebel forces, detailing discussions of the attack on the aircraft, both before and after the plane was downed; surveillance photographs showing Buk missile launchers moving back across the border to Russia; and the photographs apparently of the missile smoke trail.

The Ukraine evidence lays the blame on the separatists who thought they had spotted a Ukraine military transport plane – an Antonov AN-26 – but mistook the passenger jet for a military aircraft with catastrophic consequences. Three days before MH17 crashed, just such a military plane was downed by rebels in the same area.

On Friday, the Ukraine security service released a telephone transcript in which Igor Bezler, nicknamed "The Devil" and described as a colonel in Russia’s military intelligence directorate, discusses detecting the plane two minutes before the alleged missile strike.

In another recording, Bezler is apparently heard to say: "We have just shot down a plane," which another rebel officer arriving on the scene of the crash, clarifies, is "100 per cent civilian." About half an hour after the crash, a posting on a Russian social networking account from Igor Strelkov, military leader of the rebel held "Donetsk People’s Republic", stated: "We warned you not to fly in our skies." The posting was hastily deleted after it became apparent the plane was a passenger jet.

Western intelligence agencies have remained tightlipped if they do have concrete evidence of who fired the missile. A US intelligence official said last week: "We don’t know a name, we don’t know a rank and we’re not even 100 per cent sure of a nationality", adding: "There is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here" in a reference to a fictional crime solving lawyer.

US infrared satellite technology picked up the explosion, but that does not show who fired the missile nor the precise involvement of the Russians. It remains possible the separatists used a missile launcher seized from the Ukraine army.

THE VICTIMS

For the relations and friends of those who died, including 10 British citizens and more than 80 children, the uncertainty and confusion will be deeply upsetting. While the most likely scenario points to the involvement of Russianbacked rebels, the question remains whether Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, should also be held to account.

Pam Dix, whose brother died in the Lockerbie bombing, fears that victims’ relatives will suffer ongoing anxiety in the search for the truth.

In the case of Lockerbie, in which a Pan Am jet was blown up over the Scottish town, one Libyan intelligence official was jailed for murder but doubts remain 25 years on about the conviction, with many blaming Iran rather than Libya for the atrocity.

"The situation for the families from MH17 is agonising – waiting for news of whether they can get the bodies back, for information about what happened, who did it and why," said Mrs Dix.

"At least after Lockerbie we could travel to the site to see the debris for ourselves, and investigators could have access in order to establish as many facts as they could.

"Twenty-five years later we still don’t know why Pan Am 103 was bombed and who ordered it. For the MH17 families the investigation will be just if not more frustrating. The political situation in Ukraine and Russia means it could be years before any proper information or evidence emerges."

Pier Cottee-Jones, 21, whose best friend Richard Mayne, a student from Leicester, died in the MH17 crash, said: "It is pretty clear what happened. But it is quite frustrating with the finger pointing and [governments] getting childlike about it. I don’t care about putting someone in jail and throwing away the key. I just want closure for us."

Additional reporting by Roland Oliphant and Ben Farmer in Ukraine

1 THE ROCKET LAUNCH SITE

SA-11 missile Guided by ground radar, it carries around 46lbs of explosives and detonates about 100 to 300ft away from the target

The missile detonates creating a shrapnel cloud that strikes the aircraft with the intent of damaging its critical parts including engines and wings

Length: 18ft

Weight: 121lb

Speed: Mach 3

Range: 20 miles

WHAT WE KNOW

Flight MH17 was almost certainly brought down by a ground-to-air missile fired from rebel-held eastern Ukraine. The SA-11 missile was in all probability fired from a Russianbuilt Buk, a mobile rocket launcher, which carries four missiles. The missiles are radarguided and capable of hitting targets at a height of 50,000ft

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

Who fired the rocket or precisely where from. If Western intelligence agencies know, they are not saying. Investigations by The Sunday Telegraph – using Ukraine intelligence photographs of a telltale plume of smoke – point to a cornfield 12 miles from the epicentre of the crash site as a possible launch site. Scorch marks could be a sign of a missile ignition. Official investigators have not been there

2 THE CRASH SITE

Wreckage in Shaktarsk, the day after the crash. Inset, wreckage burning

Left, a Buk launcher; what Kiev says is smoke from a missile near the crash site and wreckage miles from the main concentration of debris

WHAT WE KNOW

Near the town of Grabovo and covering eight square miles, the crash site is under the control of armed separatists hostile to investigators from the Dutch-led team.

The official team has not yet been able to work in the area and reports suggest forensic evidence has been tampered with by rebels and the scene compromised. Some 227 bodies have been accounted for, but 71 have not been found

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

Is potentially damning forensic evidence, including the missile’s casing and rocket motor, still at the site, or has it been removed? It is unclear if tampering with evidence has been ordered by rebel leaders – or even the Kremlin – or whether material was simply looted by locals or moved in a cack-handed manner in an attempt to pull bodies out of the wreckage

3 THE INTELLIGENCE

Journalists at the scene as a pro-Russian separatist guards bodies

WHAT WE KNOW Ukraine’s security service has released telephone intercepts and photographic material that claims to provide overwhelming evidence that Russian-backed separatists are responsible. Voice recordings seem to show the approach of Flight MH17 being flagged up two minutes before it was hit by rebels followed by the realisation in the aftermath that they had hit a passenger jet rather than a Ukraine military aircraft

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW What precise material, including phone intercepts and satellite imagery, Western intelligence agencies possess. The big question remains: can Western governments link the attack directly to Vladimir Putin and the Russian military? If they can, do the governments want to expose Mr Putin at this stage, which could lead to a new Cold War?

4 THE INVESTIGATION

What is believed to be the rocket launcher in eastern Ukraine with a missile missing

Left, Igor Bezler, commander of the rebel unit being blamed; below, investigators examine the wreckage

Aircraft carry two so-called black boxes

Flight Data Recorder Records flight information, including airspeed, altitude and engine performance, as well as systems such as autopilot, throttle and position of the flaps and rudder

Cockpit voice recorder Units record for 25 hours of all aircraft communications

WHAT WE KNOW

The Dutch Safety Board, based in The Hague, is now leading the inquiry, heading off claims that a Ukraine-led investigation would be inherently biased against Russia. Unarmed military police and special forces from Holland along with Australian police officers are being sent to eastern Ukraine to try to secure the crash site as a crime scene.

Black boxes recovered from the plane are being analysed in The Hague

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

What material the black boxes contain or whether they will provide much useful material anyway.

On the ground, it is unclear whether rebels will allow the Dutch full access to the site or even cooperate at all. It is likely the perpetrators have fled by now and doubts remain whether the Dutch can find who pressed the button to fire and who gave the command to do so

A separatist with the ‘black box’ recorder before it was handed over to officials

Flight MH17 took off from Amsterdam at 11.30am BST and was due to land at Kuala Lumpur at 10.50pm. The plane made its way over Germany, Poland and Ukraine. But at 1.21pm radar contact was suddenly lost over eastern Ukraine

Flight MH17 was on Airway L980 which had remained open during the Ukrainian conflict. Malaysia Airlines a flight plan requested a cruising altitude of 35,000ft through Ukraine airspace but traffic control instructed to fly at 33,000ft

BOEING 777 Cruise speed 560mph Passenger capacity 368 Cost £175,000,000 Manufacturer Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Putin, MH17 and the West

A web of lies
Vladimir Putin’s epic deceits have grave consequences for his people and the outside world
Economist | Jul 26th 2014

IN 1991, when Soviet Communism collapsed, it seemed as if the Russian people might at last have the chance to become citizens of a normal Western democracy. Vladimir Putin’s disastrous contribution to Russia’s history has been to set his country on a different path. And yet many around the world, through self-interest or self-deception, have been unwilling to see Mr Putin as he really is.

The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, the killing of 298 innocent people and the desecration of their bodies in the sunflower fields of eastern Ukraine, is above all a tragedy of lives cut short and of those left behind to mourn. But it is also a measure of the harm Mr Putin has done. Under him Russia has again become a place in which truth and falsehood are no longer distinct and facts are put into the service of the government. Mr Putin sets himself up as a patriot, but he is a threat—to international norms, to his neighbours and to the Russians themselves, who are intoxicated by his hysterical brand of anti-Western propaganda.

The world needs to face the danger Mr Putin poses. If it does not stand up to him today, worse will follow.

Crucifiction and other stories

Mr Putin has blamed the tragedy of MH17 on Ukraine, yet he is the author of its destruction. A high-court’s worth of circumstantial evidence points to the conclusion that pro-Russian separatists fired a surface-to-air missile out of their territory at what they probably thought was a Ukrainian military aircraft. Separatist leaders boasted about it on social media and lamented their error in messages intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence and authenticated by America (see article).

Russia’s president is implicated in their crime twice over. First, it looks as if the missile was supplied by Russia, its crew was trained by Russia, and after the strike the launcher was spirited back to Russia. Second, Mr Putin is implicated in a broader sense because this is his war. The linchpins of the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic are not Ukrainian separatists but Russian citizens who are, or were, members of the intelligence services. Their former colleague, Mr Putin, has paid for the war and armed them with tanks, personnel carriers, artillery—and batteries of surface-to-air missiles. The separatists pulled the trigger, but Mr Putin pulled the strings.

The enormity of the destruction of flight MH17 should have led Mr Putin to draw back from his policy of fomenting war in eastern Ukraine. Yet he has persevered, for two reasons. First, in the society he has done so much to mould, lying is a first response. The disaster immediately drew forth a torrent of contradictory and implausible theories from his officials and their mouthpieces in the Russian media: Mr Putin’s own plane was the target; Ukrainian missile-launchers were in the vicinity. And the lies got more complex. The Russian fiction that a Ukrainian fighter jet had fired the missile ran into the problem that the jet could not fly at the altitude of MH17, so Russian hackers then changed a Wikipedia entry to say that the jets could briefly do so. That such clumsily Soviet efforts are easily laughed off does not defeat their purpose, for their aim is not to persuade but to cast enough doubt to make the truth a matter of opinion. In a world of liars, might not the West be lying, too?

Second, Mr Putin has become entangled in a web of his own lies, which any homespun moralist could have told him was bound to happen. When his hirelings concocted propaganda about fascists running Kiev and their crucifixion of a three-year-old boy, his approval ratings among Russian voters soared by almost 30 percentage points, to over 80%. Having roused his people with falsehoods, the tsar cannot suddenly wriggle free by telling them that, on consideration, Ukraine’s government is not too bad. Nor can he retreat from the idea that the West is a rival bent on Russia’s destruction, ready to resort to lies, bribery and violence just as readily as he does. In that way, his lies at home feed his abuses abroad.

Stop spinning

In Russia such doublespeak recalls the days of the Soviet Union when Pravda claimed to tell the truth. This mendocracy will end in the same way as that one did: the lies will eventually unravel, especially as it becomes obvious how much money Mr Putin and his friends have stolen from the Russian people, and he will fall. The sad novelty is that the West takes a different attitude this time round. In the old days it was usually prepared to stand up to the Soviet Union, and call out its falsehoods. With Mr Putin it looks the other way.

Take Ukraine. The West imposed fairly minor sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea, and threatened tougher ones if Mr Putin invaded eastern Ukraine. To all intents and purposes, he did just that: troops paid for by Russia, albeit not in Russian uniforms, control bits of the country. But the West found it convenient to go along with Mr Putin’s lie, and the sanctions eventually imposed were too light and too late. Similarly, when he continued to supply the rebels, under cover of a ceasefire that he claimed to have organised, Western leaders vacillated.

Since the murders of the passengers of MH17 the responses have been almost as limp. The European Union is threatening far-reaching sanctions—but only if Mr Putin fails to co-operate with the investigation or he fails to stop the flow of arms to the separatists. France has said that it will withhold the delivery of a warship to Mr Putin if necessary, but is proceeding with the first of the two vessels on order. The Germans and Italians claim to want to keep diplomatic avenues open, partly because sanctions would undermine their commercial interests. Britain calls for sanctions, but it is reluctant to harm the City of London’s profitable Russian business. America is talking tough but has done nothing new.

Enough. The West should face the uncomfortable truth that Mr Putin’s Russia is fundamentally antagonistic. Bridge-building and resets will not persuade him to behave as a normal leader. The West should impose tough sanctions now, pursue his corrupt friends and throw him out of every international talking shop that relies on telling the truth. Anything else is appeasement—and an insult to the innocents on MH17.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21608645-vladimir-putins-epic-deceits-have-grave-consequences-his-people-and-outside-world-web?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/weboflies

 

The grave price of Obama’s ‘reset’ with the Russians: Examiner Editorial
Washington Examiner | July 21, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin has mounted an aggressive propaganda campaign to convince his own people that someone else was responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. According to one version of this fantasy, Putin’s own jet was in fact the intended target. According to others, downing the commercial airliner carrying 298 people was an American provocation to start a new world war.

But given the damning evidence already released that Ukrainian separatists — puppets of the Russian government — downed the passenger airline using a Russian-made surface-to-air missile, it’s in Putin’s best interest to drop this charade even though something like it became inevitable after he incited a civil war in Ukraine.

War is always a last resort. Leaders who initiate or enter wars take on grave responsibility. Combat creates conditions in which atrocities are likely — even when leaders go out of their way to wage war as justly and humanely as possible, and even in wars waged by conventional forces scrupulously trained to follow international laws governing conflicts.

When Putin initiated the bloody hostilities in Ukraine, he did so without any serious justification, and also in an unconventional way that created greater risks. He relied on a heavily armed, largely unaccountable militia force. He apparently hoped to distance himself from the conflict, but in fact his deception heightens his culpability.

President Obama is right to demand answers from the Kremlin and to demand full access to the downed plane for international investigators — regardless if the scene of this war crime has already been contaminated by those who committed it. Even setting aside the foreign policy implications, American citizens depend on the freedom of movement made possible by various treaties on international civilian aviation, so the United States has interests here. At the same time, Putin’s increasingly bizarre behavior should teach Obama a hard lesson about his greatest foreign policy miscalculation — his apparent belief, upon assuming office, that his own winning personality was all that had been missing from a positive “reset” to U.S.-Russian relations.

This error has already led to the abandonment of missile defense bases in Eastern Europe that might have proven useful — especially given the likelihood that in retaliation for new sanctions, Putin will derail the current nuclear talks with Iran. It has led the U.S. away from neutrality in Syria’s horrible Civil War and toward an ad hoc U.S. alliance with Bashar al-Assad, who apparently continues to use chlorine gas against his own citizens.

Americans probably should have been forewarned when wrong-way Obama ridiculed his 2012 election opponent for identifying Russia as a geopolitical foe. They should have been even more alarmed when Obama was overheard on a hot mic promising concessions to former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, once the election was over and he had more “flexibility.” Even so, U.S. voters in 2012 chose a president who clearly trusted the Russians too much. Americans should now encourage him to do whatever it takes to undo the consequences of their mistake.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/the-grave-price-of-obamas-reset-with-the-russians-examiner-editorial/article/2551088