Tag: Russia

What’s wrong with Nato ships docked in New Russia’s Sevastopol port aka Ukraine? None. It means no nation has anything to worry, and the rule of law is operational and citizens can demand, and are getting, Lincoln’s government “of, by and for” the people. Russia’s greatness is not in “unmarked” boots on the ground and taking land by force and disturbing sovereignty.

Her greatness would be if her leaders created a nation that folks fought to migrate to for a better life – after all, that’s the litmus test. Without any apology, and despite our democratic (lower case) warts, America still has a long line of folks from all over the world seeking to migrate here and raise a family.

We have 11 million illegal aliens to prove it. President Putin’s desire for Russia to be great is a worthy goal, and which should win every human being’s heart – but to do it with force is a self-defeating enterprise when the digital world citizenry is as well informed as it is and driven to achieve the ceiling, not floor, of human rights for their children.

That is the true curse for modern day politicians still playing divide and rule – even Syria’s Assad’s successful unleashing of sectarian violence to thwart the Arab Spring has a limited shelf life – every parent wants their kid to have the American Dream. Russia needs to find a better and more permanent way to greatness – true greatness, and Abraham Lincoln’s recipe is the answer for all, for all time.

DONETSK (UKRAINE) (TIP): A day after an international deal in Geneva to defuse the East-West crisis in Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists vowed not to end their occupation of public buildings and Washington threatened further sanctions on Moscow if the stalemate continued.

Leaders of gunmen who have taken over city halls and other sites in and around Donetsk this month in pursuit of demands for a Crimea-style referendum on union with Russia, rejected the agreement struck in Geneva by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and European Union and demanded on Friday that the leaders of the Kiev uprising must first quit their own government offices. Moscow renewed its insistence that it has no control over the “little green men” who, as before Russia annexed Crimea last month, appeared in combat gear and with automatic weapons to seize public buildings – a denial that Western allies of those who overthrew the pro-Russian president in Kiev do not accept.

The White House renewed President Barack Obama’s demands that the Kremlin use what Washington believes is its influence over the separatists to get them to vacate the premises. It warned of heavier economic sanctions than those already imposed over Crimea if Moscow failed to uphold the Geneva deal – or if it moved to send troops massed on the border into Ukraine. “We believe that Russia has considerable influence over the actions of those who have been engaged in destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine,” national security adviser Susan Rice said.

“If we don’t see action commensurate with the commitments that Russia has made yesterday in Geneva … then obviously we’ve been very clear that we and our European partners remain ready to impose additional costs on Russia. “Those costs and sanctions could include targeting very significant sectors of the Russian economy.” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman hit back, while voicing scepticism – of a kind also heard from the Ukrainian government – about how useful the cautiously worded Geneva pact would be.

“You can’t treat Russia like a guilty schoolboy,” said Dmitry Peskov. “That kind of language is unacceptable.” The Russian foreign ministry said: “The Americans are once again stubbornly trying to whitewash the actions of the Kiev authorities, who have embarked on a course of violently suppressing protesters in the southeast who are expressing their legitimate indignation over the infringements of their rights.”

UKRAINIAN OFFERS
Ukraine’s interim government, in power since pro-Western protests forced President Viktor Yanukovich to flee to Russia two months ago, was at pains to show it was keeping its part of the bargain. Its ill-equipped security forces have shown little sign of being able to regain control in the east by force. Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, though admitting he was not overly optimistic about the agreement solving what has become the gravest East-West crisis since the Cold War, said militants would be offered an amnesty. And he and the acting president made a formal joint broadcast pledging constitutional reform to devolve power to the regions and bolster the status of Russian as an official language in areas where it was widely spoken.

MOSCOW (TIP): Russia has pulled the US-funded Voice of America radio station from the air, a senior state media official said today, calling it “spam on our airwaves.” Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya state media conglomerate, said a contract to broadcast Voice of America on AM radio would not be renewed.

“Rossiya Segodnya will not work with Voice of America,” Kiselyov said, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. The United States has targeted Kiselyov for sanctions over his role in promoting Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He presents a highly opinionated weekly news show on state television.

“It’s as if they broadcast from the underworld. Or at least a world that no longer exists,” Kiselyov said of VOA and USfunded Radio Liberty, which still broadcasts in Russia through a partner station. “I view these stations as spam on our airwaves,” he said. “It has nothing to do with freedom of speech” because there is “nothing original” on the stations, he said.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees US media, said last week that Kiselyov had suspended all cooperation with Voice of America. It said Kiselyov sent VOA a letter with the single sentence, “we are not going to cooperate” and said the contract would not be renewed.

In 2006 Russian regulators forced national stations to stop broadcasting Voice of America shows, a move seen as politically motivated. But the station continued to be broadcast in Moscow on a local AM radio frequency under an agreement with Voice of Russia, a state-owned station now controlled by Kiselyov’s conglomerate. Radio Liberty, which is funded by US Congress, continues to exist in Russia for the time being in form of Radio Svoboda, which broadcasts through a partner station on FM and a popular website.

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that Russia may begin requiring advance payment for gas supplies unless Ukraine comes to the negotiating table over its unpaid energy bills.

Russia’s statecontrolled natural gas company “Gazprom will only send gas in the amounts that the Ukrainian side has paid for a month in advance” under the changed sale terms being contemplated, Putin said at a government meeting according to televised excerpts.

“They will receive as much as they have paid for,” he said. Russia says Ukraine now owes it $2.2 billion for natural gas supplies, and Gazprom last week demanded that Ukraine “take immediate measures” to settle the debt.

WASHINGTON (TIP): The Russian government declined to provide the FBI with information about one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects that would most likely have led to more extensive scrutiny of him at least two years before the attack, according to an inspector general’s report.

Russian officials had told the FBI in 2011 that the suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, “was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer” and that Mr. Tsarnaev “had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” But after an initial investigation by the FBI, the Russians declined several requests for additional information about Mr. Tsarnaev, according to the report, a review of how intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have thwarted the bombing.

At the time, American law enforcement officials believed that Mr. Tsarnaev posed a far greater threat to Russia. The new inspector general’s report found that it was only after the bombing occurred last April that the Russians shared with the FBI the additional intelligence, including information from a telephone conversation the Russian authorities had intercepted between Mr. Tsarnaev and his mother in which they discussed Islamic jihad.

“They found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on him back then, and based on everything that was available the FBI did all that it could,” said a senior American official briefed on the review. Mr Tsarnaev, who was killed attempting to elude the police, and his brother, Dzhokhar, are believed to be the sole suspects in the attack, which killed three people and injured more than 200 near the marathon’s finish line.

The Justice Department said in January that it would seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Federal authorities have uncovered little evidence tying the brothers to an international terrorist organization. FBI agents who traveled to Dagestan, a region in Russia’s North Caucasus where Tamerlan Tsarnaev went in 2012 during a particularly violent period there, found nothing that showed he received training or encouragement from terrorists. “At this point it looks like they were homegrown violent extremists,” the senior official said.

“We certainly aren’t in a position to rule anything out, but at this point we haven’t found anything substantive that ties them to a terrorist group.” The report was produced by the inspector general of the Intelligence Community, which has responsibility for 17 separate agencies, and the inspectors general from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. It has not been made public, but members of Congress are scheduled to be briefed on it Thursday, and some of its findings are expected to be released before Tuesday, the first anniversary of the bombings. Its contents were described by several senior American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been publicly released.

The review is similar to an internal review the FBI conducted after the bombing. In that review, the bureau found that its agents had been restrained from conducting a more extensive investigation because of federal laws and Justice Department guidelines that prevent them from using surveillance tools like wiretapping in investigations like those conducted on Mr. Tsarnaev before the bombings. “Had they known what the Russians knew they probably would have been able to do more under our investigative guidelines, but would they have uncovered the plot? That’s very hard to say,” one senior official said.

While the review largely exonerates the FBI, it does say that agents in the Boston area who investigated the Russian intelligence in 2011 could have conducted a few more interviews when they first examined the information. The report also recommends several steps it says the FBI should take to more effectively share information with state and local authorities, the officials said. The FBI, which has worked with police chiefs from around the country over the past year on how it can better share information, has already adopted several of the recommendations, according to the officials.

When the FBI disclosed shortly after the bombing that it had received information from the Russians, congressional Republicans and a few Democrats, including Representative William Keating of Massachusetts, criticized the bureau for not continuing to track him when he left to visit Dagestan and for not questioning him on his return in 2012. “It’s people like this that you don’t want to let out of your sight, and this was a mistake,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “I don’t know if our laws were inefficient or if the FBI failed, but we’re at war with radical Islamists, and we need to up our game.” As part of its investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, FBI agents examined his criminal and educational records and his Internet search history.

They also interviewed him, his parents and people at his school. It was after those investigative efforts uncovered little that FBI agents stationed in Moscow went back to the Russian authorities and requested any additional information they had on Mr. Tsarnaev, who immigrated to the United States from Dagestan a little more than a decade ago. The exoneration of the FBI stands in contrast to the findings of a similar investigation conducted after the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Tex, in which 13 people were killed. After the shooting, a former bureau director,William H.Webster, conducted a formal review of the investigation into the gunman, Nidal Malik Hasan, before and after the attack. That review said the FBI had mishandled information garnered from intelligence, and it led to changes in the way the agency shares information.

MUMBAI (TIP): In a grim reminder of the Cold War days, Nasa on Wednesday suspended majority of its ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation and the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, because of “Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

A statement issued by Nasa, has however, clarified that Nasa and Roscosmos will continue to work together to maintain safe and continuous operation of the International Space Station. The ban covers teleconferences , travel and email exchanges. Russian space officials have been banned from visiting Nasa facilities till the order is in effect.

This order was passed a few days after the second half of the Expedition 39 crew launched to the International Space Station from Russia.With the space shuttle flights ending in July 21, 2011, US astronauts have been training in Russia’s Star City for flights to the space station.

Among those who has been trained at Russia is Indian-American astronaut , Sunita Williams. Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said that if Russia responds by stopping US crew flights to the space station, then he will have no choice but to suspend Orion, Space Launch System and human space flight programme. The statement further said, “Nasa is focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to US soil, and end our reliance on Russia to get into space.

This has been a top priority of the Obama administration for the past five years, and had our plan been fully funded, we would have returned American human space flight launches -and the jobs they support—back to the US next year.” Meanwhile, Ukraine’s security chiefs said on Thursday that the killing of anti-government protesters in Kiev in February took place ‘under the direct leadership’ of ousted President Viktor Yanukovich.

UNITED NATIONS (TIP): Russia and the United States exchanged threats on March 19 at a tense UN security council meeting over the Ukraine crisis, with the Russian envoy saying the US ambassador’s “insults” are jeopardizing Moscow’s willingness to cooperate with Washington on other diplomatic matters.

It was the council’s eighth meeting in three weeks on Ukraine, a show of determination by Western powers to highlight Russia’s diplomatic isolation over the Crimean Peninsula — even if the council is powerless to act because of Moscow’s veto power as a permanent council member. The meeting came as UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon left for Russia and Ukraine in a bid to seek a diplomatic way out of the crisis. Ban will meet with President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials in Moscow on March 20, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

On Friday, the UN chief will travel to Kiev for talks with the acting president and prime minister. At the council, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin was once again alone in defending his country’s actions in Crimea. He began his speech by celebrating the treaty signed a day earlier by Putin declaring Crimea part of Russia, saying it honored the will of the Crimean people and complied with international law. “Yesterday, something truly historic happened,” Churkin declared. US ambassador Samantha Power warned Russia that, two days after the Obama administration and other countries imposed sanctions on Russia, the US and its allies “are prepared to take additional steps if Russian aggression or Russian provocations continue.”

She also compared Russia’s takeover of Crimea to theft. “A thief can steal property, but that does not confer the right of ownership on the thief,” she said. The Russian ambassador shot back: “It is simply unacceptable to listen to these insults addressed to our country.” He added, “If the delegation of the United States of America expects our cooperation in the security council on other issues, then Power must understand this quite clearly.” By then, Power had left the meeting to her deputy. Churkin did not elaborate. The United States and Russia are the key players in efforts to establish peace talks in Syria, and also are involved in talks over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The council also heard a briefing from Ivan Simonovic, assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, who expressed particular concern over the security of Tatars and other ethnic minorities in Crimea. He highlighted the disappearance of a Crimean Tatar activist after participating in a March 3 protest. Simonovic said the activist was found dead March 16 and his body bore marks of “mistreatment.” He said the United Nations is deploying a 34-member human rights monitoring mission to Ukraine, scheduled to be in place by Friday. Simonovic said he was not able visit Crimea because the authorities there refused to receive his mission or ensure its security until it was too late. But he said he spoke to representatives of displaced Tatars and victims of arbitrary arrests, torture and other human rights violations. Churkin dismissed Simonovic’s assessment as “one-sided.” He also blamed snipers for the killing of a Ukrainian soldier and a member of a local self-defense brigade in Crimea on Tuesday, saying the two were deliberately targeted to provoke confrontation.

WASHINGTON (TIP): The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission, have in a joint statement through the White House, March 12, called on the Russian Federation to cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law.

The leaders said, “We call on the Russian Federation to immediately halt actions supporting a referendum on the territory of Crimea regarding its status, in direct violation of the Constitution of Ukraine. Any such referendum would have no legal effect. Given the lack of adequate preparation and the intimidating presence of Russian troops, it would also be a deeply flawed process which would have no moral force.

For all these reasons, we would not recognize the outcome. “Russian annexation of Crimea would be a clear violation of the United Nations Charter; Russia’s commitments under the Helsinki Final Act; its obligations to Ukraine under its 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership; the Russia- Ukraine 1997 basing agreement; and its commitments in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.

In addition to its impact on the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea could have grave implications for the legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states. Should the Russian Federation take such a step, we will take further action, individually and collectively.

“We call on the Russian Federation to deescalate the conflict in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine immediately, withdraw its forces back to their pre-crisis numbers and garrisons, begin direct discussions with the Government of Ukraine, and avail itself of international mediation and observation offers to address any legitimate concerns it may have.

We, the leaders of the G-7, urge Russia to join us in working together through diplomatic processes to resolve the current crisis and support progress for a sovereign independent, inclusive and united Ukraine. We also remind the Russian Federation of our decision to suspend participation in any activities related to preparation of a G-8 Sochi meeting until it changes course and the environment comes back to where the G-8 is able to have a meaningful discussion.”