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Category: Russia

  • Iran, Russia Start Naval Drill In Indian Ocean

    Iran and Russia have embarked on a joint naval drill in the northern part of the Indian Ocean that they say has been designed to “enhance the security” of maritime trade in the region, Iranian state media reported.

    State television said on February 16 that the exercise dubbed Maritime Security Belt will cover an area of about 17,000 square kilometers and include units from the Iranian Navy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Navy, and the Russian Navy.

    Iranian Rear Admiral Gholamreza Tahani said its purpose was to “enhance the security of international maritime trade, confront maritime piracy and terrorism, and exchange information.”

    The Indian Navy will also join the exercise, in a message of “peace and friendship for neighboring and regional countries,” Tahani said.

    Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that the drill was scheduled to last three days.

    This is the second joint Russian-Iranian naval exercise since December 2019, when the two countries plus China held a drill in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman.

    Iran and China also participated in military exercises held in Russia in September 2020.

    Tehran has been seeking to step up military cooperation with Beijing and Moscow amid tensions with the United States.

    Iran has also increased its military drills in recent weeks as tensions built during the final days of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Tehran is now trying to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden’s new administration to reenter a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

    Last week, the IRGC conducted a ground forces drill in the southwest of Iran near the Iraqi border.

    Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear pact in 2018 and reimposed crushing sanctions on Iran.

    In response to the U.S. moves, which were accompanied by increased tensions between Iran, the United States, and its allies, Tehran has gradually breached parts of the pact saying it is no longer bound by it.

    The Biden administration has expressed willingness to return to compliance with the accord if Iran does, and then work with U.S. allies and partners on a “longer and stronger” agreement, including other issues such as Iran’s missile program and its support for regional proxy forces.

    Iranian officials insist that the United States should make the first move by returning to the agreement, which eased international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

    They also say that the country’s missile program and regional policies are off the table.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Homophobic Hate Speech On The Rise In Europe, Says New Report

    An advocacy group says that homophobic language and hate speech against transgender people is on the rise among European politicians and has warned about a backlash against the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people across the continent.

    The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association said in its annual report published on February 16 that politicians in 17 countries in Europe and Central Asia have verbally attacked LGBT people over the past year.

    The report highlighted Poland, where nationalist politicians from the ruling right-wing PiS party have criticized “LGBT ideology” during election campaigns. It also singled out Hungary, where transgender people last year were banned from legally changing gender.

    The situation for LGBT people in Bulgaria and Romania could worsen this year, while in Turkey, ruling-party politicians have repeatedly attacked LGBT people, Evelyne Paradis, the association’s executive director, warned.

    The trend of politicians verbally attacking LGBT people has also been on the rise in countries such as Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Moldova, North Macedonia, and Russia, the report said.

    In Belarus and Ukraine, some religious leaders have blamed LGBT people for the coronavirus pandemic. Hate speech on social media has grown in Montenegro, Russia, and Turkey, in traditional media in Ukraine, and is an ongoing issue in Georgia, North Macedonia, and Romania, the group said.

    “There’s growing hate speech specifically targeting trans people and that is being reported more and more across the region….We have grave concerns that it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Paradis said.

    In Central Asia, LGBT rights are stagnating or backsliding in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the report said, adding that in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, “we see windows of opportunity for advancing LGBT rights.”

    The group said the pandemic has caused difficulties for some young LGBT people at home with homophobic families during lockdowns and given openings to politicians who attack gay and trans people as a way to shift attention from economic problems.

    “LGBT communities are amongst the groups that get scapegoated in particular,” said Paradis.

    With reporting by Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russians Expect To See More Protests, But Few Are Willing To Attend

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Reports: Russian Court Rejects Gulag Historian’s Appeal Of Prison Sentence

    Russian news agencies said a court has rejected an appeal by gulag historian Yuri Dmitriyev, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually abusing his daughter.

    TASS and RIA Novosti reported that the St. Petersburg appeals court on February 16 dismissed the request by Dmitriyev, who has said the charges brought by prosecutors were based on fabricated evidence.

    Dmitriyev, 65, was arrested on child-pornography charges in 2016 based on photographs of his foster daughter that authorities found on his computer.

    He said the images were not pornographic and were made at the request of social workers concerned about the child’s physical development.

    Last July, he was found guilty, and he was scheduled to be freed in November due to time served.

    But a court in the northwestern Karelia region, where Dmitriyev lives, abruptly added a decade to his sentence and ordered him held in a high-security prison.

    Dmitriyev’s historical work has focused on exposing the victims of the 1937-38 Great Terror, in which nearly 700,000 people were executed.

    After the Soviet collapse, he found a mass grave containing thousands of bodies of people held in the Soviet gulag network of slave labor camps.

    Memorial, a rights group where Dmitriyev works, has said the accusations against him were groundless.

    Based on reporting by TASS and RIA Novosti

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?

    In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert),1 “BC.” During a break, I conversed with some fellow attendees. They expressed skepticism to colonial provincial authorities being behind the intentional spreading of smallpox among First Nations people2 and that a vaccine was withheld from infected Indigenous individuals. The attendees insisted that there was no vaccine at that time for smallpox.

    Yet, the English doctor Edward Jenner is celebrated for having discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796. This is the predominant western account on the origin of the smallpox vaccination.

    It is also recorded that inoculation against smallpox was already being practiced in Sichuan province by Taoist alchemists in the 10th century CE.3 The Chinese inoculators administered dead or attenuated smallpox collected from less virulent scabs, which were inserted into the nose on a plug of cotton. Inoculation may also have been practiced much earlier by the Chinese — some sources cite dates as early as 200 BCE.

    China obviously has a historical background in strengthening the immune response of people. Yet, in the western media, one seldom reads or hears about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Neither were we well informed about the effectiveness of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine — that was until recently, when some western nations have been coming up short on vaccine supplies. The Canadian government has been scrambling to meet the demand for vaccines since Pfizer shipments were held up. The focus of western state and corporate media seemed clearly on procuring supplies of the Pfizer (US), Moderna (US), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) vaccines. This is despite effective, but less heralded, Russian and Chinese vaccines being available and at a more affordable price. South Korea’s Arirang News reported Russian test results that “its second COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective.” CBC.ca found this success problematic; it depicted a political quandary in considering a Russian vaccine: “At first dismissed and ridiculed by Western countries, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has not only been rehabilitated; it’s emerging as a powerful tool of influence abroad for President Vladimir Putin.” France 24 concurred, hailing it as “a scientific and political victory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

    Would Canada refuse to consider securing vaccines from Russia to safeguard the health of Canadians to avoid granting Putin, derided by Canadian magazine Macleans as a “new Stalin,” a political victory? Why shouldn’t Russia be lauded for coming up first with a working and effective vaccine? What does it matter if the leader of that country receives recognition? Shouldn’t the national priority be obtaining the best vaccine to protect the health of citizens?

    Medical data aside, western mass media has, apparently, been effective in stirring up a distrust of COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia in comparison to western vaccines, as revealed in a YouGov poll of almost 19,000 people worldwide.

    Hungary has been mildly criticized for going its own way in ordering the Russian vaccine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had no qualms and defended Budapest’s decision to buy two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

    The Czech Republic is also considering following Hungary in using Russian and Chinese vaccines that are still pending approval by the European Union.

    Huge Potential Profits in Vaccines

    Investigative journalist Matt Tabibi pointed out,

    What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., … the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly criticized big pharma for profiteering and vaccine inequalities. Adhanom charged that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries were being prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and that markets were sought to maximize profitability.

    In chapter VII of the e-book The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” (December 2020, revised January 2021), professor Michel Chossudovsky writes:

    The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven.

    The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

    The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2….

    The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.

    Imagine, if those thousands of people stay home, reduce contact with others, they may have survived the pandemic.4

    Chossudovsky also questions the safety of the rushed testing and the need for a vaccine given that the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza.”5

    Some Safety Concerns about Vaccines

    A report raised alarm about at least 36 people who developed a rare, lethal blood disorder, called thrombocytopenia, after receiving either of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A Miami obstetrician, Gregory Michael, just 56, died of a brain hemorrhage just 16 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccination. His thrombocytopenia had caused his platelets to drop to virtually zero.

    A Johns Hopkins University expert on blood disorders, Jerry L. Spivak, who was uninvolved in Michael’s care, said that based on Michael’s wife’s description: “I think it is a medical certainty that the vaccine was related [to Michael’s death].”

    In Israel, at least three people suffered Bell’s palsy, facial paralysis, after receiving the vaccine. Data from Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials revealed seven COVID-19 participants had experienced Bell’s palsy in the weeks following vaccination.

    In Norway, at least 23 people who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine died. According to authorities, thirteen of the fatalities were associated to the vaccine’s side effects. In addition, 10 deaths shortly following vaccination were being probed in Germany.

    Pfizer and Moderna use a novel vaccine based on mRNA. Following the deaths in Norway, Chinese health experts called for caution and the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially for elderly people.

    Regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC reported the administration of over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US from 14 December 2020 through 7 February 2021. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System received 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people vaccinated for COVID-19. Based on the extremely low figure, the CDC advised people that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective” and “to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible.”

    Yet, it seems some Europeans distrust their own government-approved Covid-19 vaccines. A black market has arisen; two doses of unapproved Chinese vaccines have reportedly sold for as high as 7,000 yuan (£800) — almost 20 times the reported usual price.

    Vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, cautioned the public not to buy the vaccines online.

    Chinese Vaccines and Profit-seeking

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been magnanimous with what could be an extremely profitable property. Said Xi, “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with other countries in the research and development, production, and distribution of vaccines,”

    “We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford.”

    Imagine that: making an in-demand product available as a “pubic good” instead of taking advantage of a seemingly dire situation to rake in huge profits. Africa, for one, is benefiting.

    Back in October 2020, Fortune.com proclaimed in its headline: “World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese COVID candidate ‘the safest, most promising.’” The tests conducted in Brazil were large, human trials of the COVID-19 vaccines that included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm.

    São Paulo Governor João Doria said,

    The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac from Chinese developer Sinovacis the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates.

    On 3 February 2021, the peer-review medical journal, The Lancet, published a study by Wu et al. who spoke to the urgent need for a vaccine against COVID-19 for the elderly. Their study found that the Chinese CoronaVac, containing inactivated SARS-CoV-2, is safe and well tolerated by the elderly.

    Journalist Wei Ling Chua, who follows closely how events involving China are portrayed and perceived elsewhere, asked in an email on 12 February 2021:

    1) till this date, there is no report of a single death or hospitalisation after taking China vaccine

    2) unlike the capitalist west, China vaccine companies did not require nations to excuse them from legal liability from side effects.

    Despite, western nations acknowledging many having died soon after taking the vaccine, they all claim that after investigation the cause of death not related to vaccine. But, why does death happen so soon after taking the vaccine?

    Why following administration of a Chinese vaccine are there no reports of people dying soon afterwards?

    Closing Comments

    This essay does not explore the necessity for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, there are grounds to be skeptical of the necessity for all people to be vaccinated. However, if COVID-19 is genuinely an urgent health issue,6 then why would governments play politics with the health of their populace?

    1. The city’s name is an eponym for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a European elitist who never set foot on the Pacific coast. For the Ts’msyen: “Place names are usually rooted in the natural world and the land they refer to.” See Kenneth Campbell, Persistence and Change: A History of the Ts’msyen Nation (Prince Rupert, [sic] BC: First Nation Educational Council, 2005): 10. Author Kenneth Campbell commented, “By writing and saying the name name in [Sm’algyax, the Ts’msyen language], both the language and the people are honored.” (p. 10)
    2. Tom Swanky, The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance (Burnaby, BC: Dragon Heart Enterprises, 2012). See also an interview with Tom Swanky.
    3. Robert Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention (London: Prion Books, 2002): 135-137.
    4. Click on the following link to access the complete E-book consisting of a Preface, Highlights and Nine Chapters.
    5. For more on “the absolute and relative ‘flu-like’ risk of death from a SARS-CoV-2 infection” see “Review of calculated SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality rates: Good CDC science versus dubious CDC science, the actual risk that does not justify the ‘cure’ – By Prof Joseph Audie,” ResearchGate.
    6. Even about this be skeptical; research and inform yourself; and draw your own conclusions.
    The post Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?

    In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert), “BC.” During a break, I conversed with some fellow attendees. They expressed skepticism to colonial provincial authorities being behind the intentional spreading of smallpox among First Nations people and that a vaccine was withheld from infected Indigenous individuals. The attendees insisted that there was no vaccine at that time for smallpox.

    Yet, the English doctor Edward Jenner is celebrated for having discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796. This is the predominant western account on the origin of the smallpox vaccination.

    It is also recorded that inoculation against smallpox was already being practiced in Sichuan province by Taoist alchemists in the 10th century CE. The Chinese inoculators administered dead or attenuated smallpox collected from less virulent scabs, which were inserted into the nose on a plug of cotton. Inoculation may also have been practiced much earlier by the Chinese — some sources cite dates as early as 200 BCE.

    China obviously has a historical background in strengthening the immune response of people. Yet, in the western media, one seldom reads or hears about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Neither were we well informed about the effectiveness of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine — that was until recently, when some western nations have been coming up short on vaccine supplies. The Canadian government has been scrambling to meet the demand for vaccines since Pfizer shipments were held up. The focus of western state and corporate media seemed clearly on procuring supplies of the Pfizer (US), Moderna (US), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) vaccines. This is despite effective, but less heralded, Russian and Chinese vaccines being available and at a more affordable price. South Korea’s Arirang News reported Russian test results that “its second COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective.” CBC.ca found this success problematic; it depicted a political quandary in considering a Russian vaccine: “At first dismissed and ridiculed by Western countries, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has not only been rehabilitated; it’s emerging as a powerful tool of influence abroad for President Vladimir Putin.” France 24 concurred, hailing it as “a scientific and political victory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

    Would Canada refuse to consider securing vaccines from Russia to safeguard the health of Canadians to avoid granting Putin, derided by Canadian magazine Macleans as a “new Stalin,” a political victory? Why shouldn’t Russia be lauded for coming up first with a working and effective vaccine? What does it matter if the leader of that country receives recognition? Shouldn’t the national priority be obtaining the best vaccine to protect the health of citizens?

    Medical data aside, western mass media has, apparently, been effective in stirring up a distrust of COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia in comparison to western vaccines, as revealed in a YouGov poll of almost 19,000 people worldwide.

    Hungary has been mildly criticized for going its own way in ordering the Russian vaccine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had no qualms and defended Budapest’s decision to buy two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

    The Czech Republic is also considering following Hungary in using Russian and Chinese vaccines that are still pending approval by the European Union.

    Huge Potential Profits in Vaccines

    Investigative journalist Matt Tabibi pointed out,

    What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., … the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly criticized big pharma for profiteering and vaccine inequalities. Adhanom charged that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries were being prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and that markets were sought to maximize profitability.

    In chapter VII of the e-book The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” (December 2020, revised January 2021), professor Michel Chossudovsky writes:

    The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven.

    The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

    The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2….

    The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.

    Imagine, if those thousands of people stay home, reduce contact with others, they may have survived the pandemic.

    Chossudovsky also questions the safety of the rushed testing and the need for a vaccine given that the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza.”

    Some Safety Concerns about Vaccines

    A report raised alarm about at least 36 people who developed a rare, lethal blood disorder, called thrombocytopenia, after receiving either of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A Miami obstetrician, Gregory Michael, just 56, died of a brain hemorrhage just 16 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccination. His thrombocytopenia had caused his platelets to drop to virtually zero.

    A Johns Hopkins University expert on blood disorders, Jerry L. Spivak, who was uninvolved in Michael’s care, said that based on Michael’s wife’s description: “I think it is a medical certainty that the vaccine was related [to Michael’s death].”

    In Israel, at least three people suffered Bell’s palsy, facial paralysis, after receiving the vaccine. Data from Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials revealed seven COVID-19 participants had experienced Bell’s palsy in the weeks following vaccination.

    In Norway, at least 23 people who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine died. According to authorities, thirteen of the fatalities were associated to the vaccine’s side effects. In addition, 10 deaths shortly following vaccination were being probed in Germany.

    Pfizer and Moderna use a novel vaccine based on mRNA. Following the deaths in Norway, Chinese health experts called for caution and the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially for elderly people.

    Regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC reported the administration of over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US from 14 December 2020 through 7 February 2021. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System received 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people vaccinated for COVID-19. Based on the extremely low figure, the CDC advised people that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective” and “to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible.”

    Yet, it seems some Europeans distrust their own government-approved Covid-19 vaccines. A black market has arisen; two doses of unapproved Chinese vaccines have reportedly sold for as high as 7,000 yuan (£800) — almost 20 times the reported usual price.

    Vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, cautioned the public not to buy the vaccines online.

    Chinese Vaccines and Profit-seeking

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been magnanimous with what could be an extremely profitable property. Said Xi, “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with other countries in the research and development, production, and distribution of vaccines,”

    “We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford.”

    Imagine that: making an in-demand product available as a “pubic good” instead of taking advantage of a seemingly dire situation to rake in huge profits. Africa, for one, is benefiting.

    Back in October 2020, Fortune.com proclaimed in its headline: “World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese COVID candidate ‘the safest, most promising.’” The tests conducted in Brazil were large, human trials of the COVID-19 vaccines that included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm.

    São Paulo Governor João Doria said,

    The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac from Chinese developer Sinovacis the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates.

    On 3 February 2021, the peer-review medical journal, The Lancet, published a study by Wu et al. who spoke to the urgent need for a vaccine against COVID-19 for the elderly. Their study found that the Chinese CoronaVac, containing inactivated SARS-CoV-2, is safe and well tolerated by the elderly.

    Journalist Wei Ling Chua, who follows closely how events involving China are portrayed and perceived elsewhere, asked in an email on 12 February 2021:

    1) till this date, there is no report of a single death or hospitalisation after taking China vaccine

    2) unlike the capitalist west, China vaccine companies did not require nations to excuse them from legal liability from side effects.

    Despite, western nations acknowledging many having died soon after taking the vaccine, they all claim that after investigation the cause of death not related to vaccine. But, why does death happen so soon after taking the vaccine?

    Why following administration of a Chinese vaccine are there no reports of people dying soon afterwards?

    Closing Comments

    This essay does not explore the necessity for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, there are grounds to be skeptical of the necessity for all people to be vaccinated. However, if COVID-19 is genuinely an urgent health issue, then why would governments play politics with the health of their populace?

    This article was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2021 at 4:30pm and is filed under Africa, China, Corporate Globalization, COVID-19, Health/Medical, Russia, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • French Cyberagency Reveals Suspected Russian Hacking Campaign

    France’s cybersecurity watchdog says it has discovered a hack of French organizations that bore similarities to other attacks by a group linked to Russian intelligence.

    In a report released on February 15, the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) said the hackers had taken advantage of a vulnerability in monitoring software sold by the Paris-based company Centreon.

    ANSSI said it discovered intrusions dating back to late 2017 and stretching into 2020.

    The watchdog did not identify the names or number of victims involved but said they were mainly “information technology providers, especially web hosting providers.”

    It also stopped short of identifying the hackers but said they had a similar modus operandi as the Russian cyberespionage group often nicknamed Sandworm and thought to have links with Russian military intelligence.

    Centreon’s website says the company has more than 600 enterprise clients across the world, including France’s Justice Ministry and blue-chip French companies such as power group EDF, defense group Thales, and oil and gas giant Total.

    The announcement comes as U.S. cybersecurity officials are still investigating a massive espionage campaign that hijacked IT monitoring software made by U.S. firm SolarWinds.

    U.S. intelligence services have said Russia was likely behind the intrusions discovered in December 2020 in which government and private company networks in the United States and other countries were breached.

    Earlier this month, Reuters reported that suspected Chinese hackers also targeted SolarWinds customers.

    With reporting by AFP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New Report On Alleged Extrajudicial Executions In Chechnya

    The Moscow-based Novaya gazeta newspaper on February 15 published official documents it says prove that many of the people allegedly killed in extrajudicial executions in Chechnya in 2017 had been detained by local police.

    Novaya gazeta reported in 2017 that 27 detained individuals had been summarily executed in late January that year.

    Chechen authorities have denied the individuals in question had ever been arrested, while the Investigative Committee rejected Novaya gazeta’s request to launch an investigation into the allegations.

    The North Caucasus region of Chechnya is controlled by Kremlin-installed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Its security forces have been accused of gross human rights abuses for many years, including abductions, torture, and killings.

    Citing documents Novaya gazeta said were obtained from the Chechen Interior Ministry, the newspaper reported on February 15 that the 27 were detained during a special operation following an attack against police officers in Grozny in December 2016.

    In April 2017, Novaya gazeta officially handed to the Investigative Committee the list of the 27 people and additional three men who, according to the newspaper, were also killed by the Chechen police during a campaign against gays in February 2017 in the region.

    Investigators only confirmed that four men from the list had deceased, and two other men were announced as being alive.

    However, Novaya gazeta said in its latest investigative report that the two in fact were brothers of two executed men identified as Mokhma Muskiyev and Shamkhan Yusupov.

    The report also alleged that several men detained in Chechnya in January 2017 were pressured by local law enforcement to “take an oath of loyalty to the Islamic State [extremist group]” in front of cameras and then forced to denounce the extremist group.

    The newspaper suggested that the videos were later used to declare the men as terrorists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • With Flashlight Protests, Russian Opposition Circumvents Ongoing State Crackdown

    When Russians took to the streets three times in recent weeks to protest the jailing of Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny, police violently dispersed the crowds and detained more than 11,000 people. But the latest nationwide demonstration, on February 14, provoked hardly any clashes or arrests.

    That was one of the goals of the Valentine’s Day gatherings, which saw residents of numerous cities brave subzero temperatures to hold flashlights in the courtyards of their apartment buildings, silently expressing opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s government while showing solidarity with Navalny and other activists swept up in the crackdown.

    Absent were the chants — “Putin is a thief!” and “Down with the tsar!” — that echoed through town squares at rallies across Russia on January 23 and 31 and in Moscow and St. Petersburg on February 2. Police mostly stayed away despite advance warnings that formed part of a concerted state effort to keep people from taking part.

    Thousands posted selfies online, boosting the hashtag #любовьсильнеестраха (#LoveIsStrongerThanFear) to the top of the Russian-language segments of Twitter and Instagram.

    'Love Is Stronger Than Fear': Navalny Supporters Cast Their Protests In A New Light

    'Love Is Stronger Than Fear': Navalny Supporters Cast Their Protests In A New Light Photo Gallery:

    ‘Love Is Stronger Than Fear’: Navalny Supporters Cast Their Protests In A New Light

    Following mass anti-government rallies that saw a brutal crackdown and thousands of detentions, supporters of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny used cell-phone lights, flashlights, and candles on the night of February 14 as a new form of silent — but visible — protest.

    But the diffuse nature of the flashlight protest, and the difficulty of gauging how many joined them, provoked mixed responses as to what impact they could have in a country where many of the key opposition activists are under house arrest or in jail, with many wondering whether such demonstrations can maintain momentum in the months before parliamentary elections in which Navalny’s allies hope to challenge the ruling United Russia party.

    Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, seized on the lack of reliable turnout figures to suggest the low-key demonstrations had little impact. “Yes, some people walked around with flashlights,” he told reporters on February 15. “Wonderful.”

    “It wasn’t a failure, but you can’t exactly call it a success either,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter and now political analyst, told RFE/RL. “It seems not that many people came out.”

    Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, suggested on February 15 that based on the thousands of social-media posts, tens of thousands of people had come out. Vladislav Inozemtsev, an economist and political analyst who is a critic of Putin, said that if just a few residents from thousands of apartment buildings came out, the total numbers may have been similar to the 100,000 estimated at protests on January 23 and 31.

    ‘No OMON, No Fear’

    The opposition has had a tough time in recent weeks. Following a particularly violent crackdown on the recent protests, and Navalny’s sentencing to more than 2 1/2 years in prison on February 2, activists issued a controversial statement calling for a halt to street rallies until the spring and urging supporters to dig in for a protracted political campaign that would culminate with the September elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

    So it came as a surprise to some when Leonid Volkov, who runs Navalny’s network of campaign offices across Russia, announced the flashlight demonstrations as an alternative show of anger against the state. “Let’s have social-media feeds filled with thousands of shining hearts from dozens of Russian cities,” Volkov wrote on Facebook on February 9. “No OMON [riot police], no fear.”

    The unorthodox protest was initiated by Navalny’s team as a way of circumventing the authorities’ readiness to deploy violence and overcoming the fear it instilled. It was also a way of keeping up momentum in the face of the authorities’ campaign to break it through force, through TV propaganda, and by organizing counter-rallies featuring participants professing their ostensible respect and admiration for Putin.

    Inozemtsev said that the Valentine’s Day initiative had greater symbolic appeal than large street protests and that it reached more people because it took place in neighborhoods across cities, including on their outskirts, not just in the center.

    “The number of people who saw what was taking place was immeasurably greater than the number that directly observed the protests on recent weekends,” he wrote on Facebook. “In other words, as a symbolic act the initiative turned out to be very successful.”

    Many participants voiced the same sentiment, revealing hopes that despite its more understated nature, the series of flashlight demonstrations would send a message that would resonate across the country and recruit even more activists to the protest cause.

    “I went out alone. It was predictable, I expected nothing else,” Yekaterina Khramtsova, an activist in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, wrote on Twitter. “And if just one person walked past or looked out of their window and paused to think, then all this wasn’t in vain.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Navalny’s Supporters Hold ‘Flashlight’ Protests

    Following recent mass rallies that saw thousands of detentions, supporters of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny used light from cell phones, flashlights, and candles as a new form of protest. Groups of people showed their support for Navalny by turning on phone flashlights and arranging candles in a heart shape in various cities across Russia to mark Valentine’s Day on February 14. The ‘flashlight’ protests were held under the motto “Love is stronger than fear.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Moscow Women Protest For Release Of Detainees

    Hundreds joined a women-only rally in downtown Moscow on February 14 to demand the release of women detained in recent demonstrations held across Russia in support of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. The human-chain protest featured references to Valentine’s Day, such as flowers and images of black hearts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hundreds Of Women Rally In Russia In Support Of Political Prisoners

    Hundreds of women have attended protests in Moscow and St Petersburg on St. Valentine’s Day in support of Russian women prosecuted for political reasons.

    The Chain Of Solidary And Love protest is also dedicated to imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who flew to Germany on February 10. Although no explanation was given for her departure, Navalnaya had recently been detained for taking part in unsanctioned rallies in support of her husband.

    Images shared on social media on February 14 show women holding red roses, balloons, and heart signs with the names of female political prisoners written on them. Demonstrators also sang, “Love is stronger than fear,” the motto of the protests.

    The organizers said on their Facebook page that the rallies were dedicated to the women who were “beaten and tortured by police during peaceful protests,” as well as “to everyone who spends their days in courts, police buses, and special detention centers.”

    They said the “chain” along Moscow’s Old Arbat Street honors Navalnaya as well as lawyer Lyubov Sobol, Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, municipal deputy Lucy Shtein, Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh, and Doctors’ Alliance head Anastasia Vasilyeva, who all face criminal charges for calling on supporters to rally for Navalny’s release last month.

    Later on February 14, Navalny supporters plan a protest using light from mobile phones, flashlights, and candles to express support for him, despite a warning that people taking part could face criminal charges.

    Navalny’s team has called on people across Russia to switch on their cell phone flashlights for 15 minutes beginning at 8 p.m. local time and shine the light into the sky from their homes or the courtyards of their apartment buildings.

    Navalny, 44, a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany where he had been treated for a nerve-agent poisoning he says was ordered by Putin. The Kremlin denies it had any role in the attack.

    Navalny’s detention sparked outrage across the country and much of the West, with tens of thousands of Russians taking part in street rallies on January 23 and 31.

    Police cracked down harshly on the demonstrations, putting many of Navalny’s political allies behind bars and detaining thousands more — sometimes violently — as they gathered on the streets.

    With reporting by tvrain.ru, Reuters, hrw.org, and themoscowtimes.com

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Remains Of Soldiers Who Died In 1812 Battle Reburied In Russian Town

    The remains of French and Russian soldiers who died more than 200 years ago during Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow were laid to rest on February 13 in a cemetery in a town in the Smolensk region.

    The ceremony in Vyazma, about 200 kilometers west of Moscow, was held to rebury the remains of 126 people killed in one of the bloodiest battles of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812.

    French diplomats and representatives of the princes of the Murat family and the imperial house of Romanov attended the ceremony, which took place in a snowstorm and severe frost, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reported.

    About 100 reenactors in military uniforms of the period and a company of the guard of honor took part in the event, which included playing the national anthems of France and Russia, a gun salute, and a liturgy by Orthodox and Catholic priests.

    The remains of 120 soldiers, as well as three women and three adolescents, were discovered in 2019 by a Russian-French archaeological dig led by Pierre Malinowski, head of the Foundation for the Development of Russian-French Historical Initiatives.

    All are thought to have fallen during the Battle of Vyazma on November 3, 1812, at the beginning of the French Army’s retreat from Moscow.

    The three women are believed to have provided first aid and kept canteens in the French Army, while the three adolescents are believed to have been drummers.

    Inna Demidova, head of the Vyazemsky district administration, said they had been buried in a mass grave.

    Prince Joachim Murat, a descendant of one of Napoleon’s most celebrated marshals, called the ceremony a “symbol of mutual respect” between the once-warring sides, according to the French AFP news agency.

    The ceremony marked a rare moment of unity between Russia and France at a time of heightened tensions between the European Union and Russia, including the Kremlin’s increasingly harsh crackdown on political opposition.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Change Of Tactics, Protesters Plan To Use Light To Show Support For Navalny

    Supporters of imprisoned Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny plan a protest using light from mobile phones, flashlights, and candles on February 14 to express support for Navalny despite a warning that people taking part could face criminal charges.

    Navalny’s team has called on people across Russia to switch on their mobile phone flashlights for 15 minutes beginning at 8 p.m. (local time) and shine the light into the sky from their homes or the courtyards of their apartment buildings. They can also express solidarity with Navalny by holding flashlights aloft or arranging candles in a heart shape to mark the Valentine’s Day protest.

    Participants have been encouraged to post pictures of the protest on social media.

    The Valentine’s Day action under the motto “Love is stronger than fear” is a response to the “unprecedented wave of violence and repression” by security forces at past rallies, the organizers said.

    The peaceful protest is designed to make it difficult for the police to take action, but the Kremlin has already signaled its contempt for the event.

    Russia’s federal media regulator on February 12 ordered media outlets, including RFE/RL’s Russian Service and Current Time TV, to delete all reports about the planned protest.

    The official order from Roskomnadzor said Russian authorities would consider any reporting about the flashlight protest to be a call for people to take part in an unsanctioned public demonstration and mass disorder.

    Navalny’s team in Tomsk said they also were warned by the city prosecutor’s office on February 12 that they could be held liable for staging an unsanctioned protest action.

    Leonid Volkov, director of Navalny’s network of teams across Russia, announced the change after calling a moratorium on street protests in response to police crackdowns against mass demonstrations that have led to tens of thousands of arrests across Russia.

    Volkov called the protest using light a nonviolent way for Russians to show the extent of outrage over Navalny’s treatment without subjecting themselves to arrests and police abuse.

    The protest is also dedicated to Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya, who flew to Germany on February 10. Although no explanation was given for her departure, Navalnaya had recently been detained for taking part in unsanctioned rallies in support of her husband.

    The 44-year-old Navalny, a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany where he had been treated for a nerve-agent poisoning he says was ordered by Putin. The Kremlin denies it had any role in the attack.

    Navalny’s detention sparked outrage across the country and much of the West, with tens of thousands of Russians taking part in street rallies on January 23 and 31.

    Police cracked down harshly on the demonstrations, putting many of Navalny’s political allies behind bars and detaining thousands more — sometimes violently — as they gathered on the streets. The crackdown led Volkov to call for a pause in the street demonstrations until the spring.

    A Russian court on February 2 ruled Navalny was guilty of violating the terms of his suspended sentence relating to an embezzlement case that he has called politically motivated. The judge ruled that he violated parole conditions while recovering from the near-fatal poisoning in Germany.

    The court converted the sentence to 3 1/2 years in prison. Given credit for time already spent in detention, the court said Navalny must serve another two years and eight months behind bars.

    Law enforcement officers on February 13 conducted another search of one of Navalny’s offices, activists said.

    The search in Chelyabinsk took place while nobody was present in the office, the activists said on Twitter.

    “We came to the headquarters and found this,” the activists tweeted together with several pictures of the ransacked office. “The premises were raided while we were working remotely,” the activists said.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, Reuters, and dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US And NATO Moving Against Russia’s Last Buffers

    When in 1990 U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assured Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not expand one inch eastward after German reunification, he was not alone in making that commitment. Documents declassified a few years ago establish that the same pledge was also made by President George H.W. Bush, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, CIA Director Robert Gates, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, British Prime Minister John Major, and NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner.

    The post US And NATO Moving Against Russia’s Last Buffers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why Victoria Nuland is Dangerous and Should Not be Confirmed

    Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. It is a bad sign that President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

    As a top-level appointee, Victoria Nuland must be confirmed by the US Senate. There is a campaign to Stop her confirmation. The following review of her work shows why Victoria Nuland is incompetent, highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.

    Afghanistan and Iraq

    From 2000 to 2003, Nuland was US permanent representative to NATO as the Bush administration attacked then invaded Afghanistan. The Afghan government offered to work with the US remove Al Qaeda, but this was rejected. After Al Qaeda was defeated, the US could have left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases, split the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.

    From 2003 to 2005 Nuland was principal foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney who “helped plan and manage the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, including making Bush administration’s case for preemptive military actions based on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.” The foreign policy establishment, with Nuland on the far right, believed that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a US “ally” would be simple.

    The invasion and continuing occupation have resulted in over a million dead Iraqis, many thousands of dead Americans, hundreds of thousands with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a cost of 2 to 6 TRILLION dollars.

    From 2005 to 2008 Victoria Nuland was US Ambassador to NATO where her role was to “strengthen Allied support” for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    On the 10th anniversary of the invasion, when asked about the lessons learned Nuland responded: “Compared to where we were in the Saddam era, we now have a bilateral security agreement … We have deep economic interests and ties. We have a security relationship. We have a political relationship.” Nuland is oblivious to the costs. Nuland’s loyalties are to the elite who have benefitted from the tragedy. According to online google, “One of the top profiteers from the Iraq War was oil field services corporation, Halliburton. Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in ‘federal contracts related to the Iraq war.’ Nuland’s boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, was the former the CEO of Halliburton.

    In January 2020, seventeen years after the US invasion, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution demanding the US troops and contractors leave. Now, over one year later, they still have not left.

    Libya

    In spring 2011, Victoria Nuland became State Department spokesperson under Hillary Clinton as she ramped up the “regime change” assault on Moammar Gaddafi of Libya. UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorized a “No Fly Zone” for the protection of civilians but NOT an air assault on Libyan government forces.

    That summer, as US and others bombed and attacked Libyan forces, she dismissed the option of a peaceful transition in Libya and falsely suggested the UN Security Council required the removal of Gaddafi.

    The campaign led to the toppling of the Libyan government and killing of Gadaffi. Commenting on the murder and bayonet sodomizing of Gaddafi, Nuland’s boss Hillary Clinton chortled: “We came, we saw, he died.”

    Before the overthrow, Libya had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Since the US led assault, Libya has become a failed state with competing warlords, huge inflation, huge unemployment, and exploding extremism and violence that has spread to neighboring countries. Most of the migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, or drowned trying to, are coming from Libya. By any measure, the goal of “protecting” Libyan civilians has failed spectacularly.

    Syria

    One reason that Clinton and hawks such as Nuland wanted to overthrow Gaddafi was to get access to the Libyan military arsenal. That way they could funnel arms to insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. This was confirmed in secret DOD documents which state: “During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the [Gaddafi] regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.”

    In January 2012, Nuland claimed the US is “on the side of those wanting peaceful change in Syria.” While saying this, the US was supplying sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenades, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzer missiles to the “peaceful” protestors.

    The US “regime change” strategy for Syria followed the pattern of Libya. First, claim that the protestors are peaceful. Then claim the government response is disproportionate. Put pressure on the target government to paralyze it, while increasing support to proxy protesters and terrorists. As documented, there were violent Syrian protesters from the start. During the first days of protest in Deraa in mid-March 2011, seven police were killed. As spokesperson for the State Department, Nuland was a major figure promoting the false narrative to justify the “regime change” campaign.

    Ukraine


    In September 2013 Victoria Nuland was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The uprising in the central plaza known as the Maidan began soon after her arrival. To underscore the US support for the protests, Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out bread and cookies to the crowd.

    Protests continued into January 2014. The immediate issue was whether to accept a loan from the International Monetary Fund which was going to require a 40% increase in natural gas bills or to accept a loan from Russia with the inclusion of cheap oil and gas. The opposition wanted the Yanukovych government to take the EU/IMF loan. The opposition was comprised of different factions, including the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector.

    In early February 2014, an audio recording of Victoria Nuland talking the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The 4-minute conversation was a media sensation because it included Victoria Nuland saying, “Fuck the EU.”

    But Nuland’s cursing was a distraction from what was truly significant. The recording showed that Nuland was meddling in domestic Ukraine affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders, and was managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would and would not be in the post-coup government! She says, “I don’t think Klitsch [Vitaly Klitschko] should go into government…… I think Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy… “

    The reason she wanted to “Fuck the EU” was because she did not approve the EU negotiations and compromise. Nuland and Pyatt wanted to “midwife” and “glue” the toppling of the Yanukovych government despite it being in power after an election that was observed and substantially approved by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).

    Over the next few weeks, the protests escalated. The President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kiev, Bernard Casey, described what happened next. “On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protestors and police] on the Maidan …. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics revealed that the protestors and the police were all shot with the same weapons.”

    The Estonian Foreign Minister later said the same thing: “behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new (opposition) coalition”.

    President of the American Chamber of Commerce President for Ukraine, Bernard Casey, continues: “On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between President Yanukovych and the protestors, agreeing to early elections – in May 2014 instead of February 2015…. Despite the signing of an agreement … the ultranationalist protestors, and their American sponsors, rejected it, and stepped up their campaign of violence.”

    The coup was finalized over the coming days. Yanukovych fled to for his life and Yatsenyuk became President after the coup as planned.

    One of the first acts of the coup leadership was to remove Russian as an official state language, even though it is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, especially in the south and east. Over the coming period, the “birth” of the coup government, violence by ultranationalists and neo-Nazis was prevalent. In Odessa, they attacked people peacefully protesting the coup. This video shows the sequence of events with the initial attack followed by fire-bombing the building where protestors had retreated. Fire trucks were prevented from reaching the building to put out the fire and rescue citizens inside. Forty-two people died and a 100 were injured.

    A bus convoy heading back to Crimea was attacked with the anti-coup passengers beaten and some killed.

    In the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, protests against the coup were met by deadly force.

    Victoria Nuland claims to be a “victim” because her conversation was leaked publicly. The real victims are the many thousands of Ukrainians who have died and hundreds of thousands who have become refugees because of Nuland’s crusade to bring Ukraine into NATO.

    The audio recording confirms that Nuland was managing the protests at a top level and the results (Yats is the guy) was as planned. Thus, it is probable that Nuland approved the decision to 1) deploy snipers to escalate the crisis and 2) overturn the EU mediated agreement which would have led to elections in just 3 months.

    Why were snipers deployed on February 18? Probably because time was running out. The Russian leadership was distracted with the Sochi Olympic Games ending on February 23. Perhaps the coup managers were in a hurry to “glue” it in advance.

    Russia

    During the 1990’s, Nuland worked for the State Department on Russia related issues including a stint as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs. The US meddled in Russian internal affairs in myriad ways. Time magazine proudly proclaimed: “Yanks to the rescue: the secret story of how American advisors helped Yeltsin win.” The Yeltsin leadership and policies pushed by the US had disastrous consequences. Between 1991 and 1999, Russian Gross Domestic Product decreased by nearly 50% as the social safety net was removed. The Russian economy collapsed, oligarchs and lawlessness arose. Nuland was part of the US group meddling in Russia, deploying economic “shock therapy” and causing widespread social despair.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. reneged on promises to Soviet leader Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward. Instead, NATO became an offensive pact, bombing Yugoslavia in violation of international law and then absorbing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Albania, Croatia and more.

    Coming into power in 2000, Putin clamped down on the oligarchs, restored order and started rebuilding the economy. Oligarchs were forced to pay taxes and start investing in productive enterprises. The economy and confidence were restored. Over seven years, GDP went from $1300 billion (US dollars) to $2300 billion. That is why Putin’s public approval rating has been consistently high, ranging between 85% and a “low” approval rating of 60%.

    Most Americans are unaware of these facts. Instead, Putin and Russia are persistently demonized. This has been convenient for the Democratic Party establishment which needed a distraction for their dirty tricks against Bernie Sanders and subsequent loss to Donald Trump. The demonization of Russia is also especially useful and profitable for the military industrial media complex.

    Victoria Nuland boosted the “Steele Dossier” which alleged collaboration between Russia and Trump and other salacious claims. The allegations filled the media and poisoned attitudes to Russia. Belatedly, the truth about the “Steele Dossier” is coming out. Last summer the Wall Street Journal reported “the bureau (FBI) knew the Russia info was phony in 2017” and that “There was no factual basis to the dossier’s claims”.

    While promoting disinformation, Victoria Nuland is pushing for a more aggressive US foreign policy. In an article titled “Pinning Down Putin”, she says “Russia’s threat to the liberal world has grown”, that Washington should “deter and roll back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin” and “rebuff Russian encroachments in hot spots around the world.”

    The major “hot spots” are the conflicts which Victoria Nuland and other Washington neocons promoted, especially Syria and Ukraine. In Syria, the US and allies have spent hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars promoting the overthrow of the Assad government. So far, they have failed but have not given up. The facts are clear: US troops and military bases in Syria do not have the authorization of the Syrian government. They are actively stealing the precious oil resources of the Syrian state. It is the US not Russia that is “encroaching”. The dangerous behavior is by Washington not Moscow.

    Conclusion

    Victoria Nuland has promoted a foreign policy of intervention through coups, proxy wars, aggression, and ongoing occupations. The policy has been implemented with bloody and disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

    With consummate hypocrisy she accuses Russia of spreading misinformation in the US, while she openly seeks to put “stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens.” She wants to “establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises.”

    Victoria Nuland is the queen of chicken hawks, the Lady Macbeth of perpetual war. There are hundreds of thousands of victims from the policies she has promoted. Yet she has not received a scratch. On the contrary, Victoria Nuland probably has profited from a stock portfolio filled with military contractors.

    Now Victoria Nuland wants to provoke, threaten and “rollback” Russia. A quick look at a map of US military bases shows who is threatening whom.

    Victoria Nuland is highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 13th, 2021 at 7:42am and is filed under Imperialism, Libya, Militarism, Russia, Syria, Ukraine.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why Victoria Nuland is Dangerous and Should Not be Confirmed

    Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. It is a bad sign that President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

    As a top-level appointee, Victoria Nuland must be confirmed by the US Senate. There is a campaign to Stop her confirmation. The following review of her work shows why Victoria Nuland is incompetent, highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.

    Afghanistan and Iraq

    From 2000 to 2003, Nuland was US permanent representative to NATO as the Bush administration attacked then invaded Afghanistan. The Afghan government offered to work with the US remove Al Qaeda, but this was rejected. After Al Qaeda was defeated, the US could have left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases, split the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.

    From 2003 to 2005 Nuland was principal foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney who “helped plan and manage the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, including making Bush administration’s case for preemptive military actions based on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.” The foreign policy establishment, with Nuland on the far right, believed that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a US “ally” would be simple.

    The invasion and continuing occupation have resulted in over a million dead Iraqis, many thousands of dead Americans, hundreds of thousands with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a cost of 2 to 6 TRILLION dollars.

    From 2005 to 2008 Victoria Nuland was US Ambassador to NATO where her role was to “strengthen Allied support” for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    On the 10th anniversary of the invasion, when asked about the lessons learned Nuland responded: “Compared to where we were in the Saddam era, we now have a bilateral security agreement … We have deep economic interests and ties. We have a security relationship. We have a political relationship.” Nuland is oblivious to the costs. Nuland’s loyalties are to the elite who have benefitted from the tragedy. According to online google, “One of the top profiteers from the Iraq War was oil field services corporation, Halliburton. Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in ‘federal contracts related to the Iraq war.’ Nuland’s boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, was the former the CEO of Halliburton.

    In January 2020, seventeen years after the US invasion, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution demanding the US troops and contractors leave. Now, over one year later, they still have not left.

    Libya

    In spring 2011, Victoria Nuland became State Department spokesperson under Hillary Clinton as she ramped up the “regime change” assault on Moammar Gaddafi of Libya. UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorized a “No Fly Zone” for the protection of civilians but NOT an air assault on Libyan government forces.

    That summer, as US and others bombed and attacked Libyan forces, she dismissed the option of a peaceful transition in Libya and falsely suggested the UN Security Council required the removal of Gaddafi.

    The campaign led to the toppling of the Libyan government and killing of Gadaffi. Commenting on the murder and bayonet sodomizing of Gaddafi, Nuland’s boss Hillary Clinton chortled: “We came, we saw, he died.”

    Before the overthrow, Libya had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Since the US led assault, Libya has become a failed state with competing warlords, huge inflation, huge unemployment, and exploding extremism and violence that has spread to neighboring countries. Most of the migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, or drowned trying to, are coming from Libya. By any measure, the goal of “protecting” Libyan civilians has failed spectacularly.

    Syria

    One reason that Clinton and hawks such as Nuland wanted to overthrow Gaddafi was to get access to the Libyan military arsenal. That way they could funnel arms to insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. This was confirmed in secret DOD documents which state: “During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the [Gaddafi] regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.”

    In January 2012, Nuland claimed the US is “on the side of those wanting peaceful change in Syria.” While saying this, the US was supplying sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenades, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzer missiles to the “peaceful” protestors.

    The US “regime change” strategy for Syria followed the pattern of Libya. First, claim that the protestors are peaceful. Then claim the government response is disproportionate. Put pressure on the target government to paralyze it, while increasing support to proxy protesters and terrorists. As documented, there were violent Syrian protesters from the start. During the first days of protest in Deraa in mid-March 2011, seven police were killed. As spokesperson for the State Department, Nuland was a major figure promoting the false narrative to justify the “regime change” campaign.

    Ukraine


    In September 2013 Victoria Nuland was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The uprising in the central plaza known as the Maidan began soon after her arrival. To underscore the US support for the protests, Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out bread and cookies to the crowd.

    Protests continued into January 2014. The immediate issue was whether to accept a loan from the International Monetary Fund which was going to require a 40% increase in natural gas bills or to accept a loan from Russia with the inclusion of cheap oil and gas. The opposition wanted the Yanukovych government to take the EU/IMF loan. The opposition was comprised of different factions, including the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector.

    In early February 2014, an audio recording of Victoria Nuland talking the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The 4-minute conversation was a media sensation because it included Victoria Nuland saying, “Fuck the EU.”

    But Nuland’s cursing was a distraction from what was truly significant. The recording showed that Nuland was meddling in domestic Ukraine affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders, and was managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would and would not be in the post-coup government! She says, “I don’t think Klitsch [Vitaly Klitschko] should go into government…… I think Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy… “

    The reason she wanted to “Fuck the EU” was because she did not approve the EU negotiations and compromise. Nuland and Pyatt wanted to “midwife” and “glue” the toppling of the Yanukovych government despite it being in power after an election that was observed and substantially approved by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).

    Over the next few weeks, the protests escalated. The President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kiev, Bernard Casey, described what happened next. “On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protestors and police] on the Maidan …. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics revealed that the protestors and the police were all shot with the same weapons.”

    The Estonian Foreign Minister later said the same thing: “behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new (opposition) coalition”.

    President of the American Chamber of Commerce President for Ukraine, Bernard Casey, continues: “On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between President Yanukovych and the protestors, agreeing to early elections – in May 2014 instead of February 2015…. Despite the signing of an agreement … the ultranationalist protestors, and their American sponsors, rejected it, and stepped up their campaign of violence.”

    The coup was finalized over the coming days. Yanukovych fled to for his life and Yatsenyuk became President after the coup as planned.

    One of the first acts of the coup leadership was to remove Russian as an official state language, even though it is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, especially in the south and east. Over the coming period, the “birth” of the coup government, violence by ultranationalists and neo-Nazis was prevalent. In Odessa, they attacked people peacefully protesting the coup. This video shows the sequence of events with the initial attack followed by fire-bombing the building where protestors had retreated. Fire trucks were prevented from reaching the building to put out the fire and rescue citizens inside. Forty-two people died and a 100 were injured.

    A bus convoy heading back to Crimea was attacked with the anti-coup passengers beaten and some killed.

    In the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, protests against the coup were met by deadly force.

    Victoria Nuland claims to be a “victim” because her conversation was leaked publicly. The real victims are the many thousands of Ukrainians who have died and hundreds of thousands who have become refugees because of Nuland’s crusade to bring Ukraine into NATO.

    The audio recording confirms that Nuland was managing the protests at a top level and the results (Yats is the guy) was as planned. Thus, it is probable that Nuland approved the decision to 1) deploy snipers to escalate the crisis and 2) overturn the EU mediated agreement which would have led to elections in just 3 months.

    Why were snipers deployed on February 18? Probably because time was running out. The Russian leadership was distracted with the Sochi Olympic Games ending on February 23. Perhaps the coup managers were in a hurry to “glue” it in advance.

    Russia

    During the 1990’s, Nuland worked for the State Department on Russia related issues including a stint as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs. The US meddled in Russian internal affairs in myriad ways. Time magazine proudly proclaimed: “Yanks to the rescue: the secret story of how American advisors helped Yeltsin win.” The Yeltsin leadership and policies pushed by the US had disastrous consequences. Between 1991 and 1999, Russian Gross Domestic Product decreased by nearly 50% as the social safety net was removed. The Russian economy collapsed, oligarchs and lawlessness arose. Nuland was part of the US group meddling in Russia, deploying economic “shock therapy” and causing widespread social despair.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. reneged on promises to Soviet leader Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward. Instead, NATO became an offensive pact, bombing Yugoslavia in violation of international law and then absorbing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Albania, Croatia and more.

    Coming into power in 2000, Putin clamped down on the oligarchs, restored order and started rebuilding the economy. Oligarchs were forced to pay taxes and start investing in productive enterprises. The economy and confidence were restored. Over seven years, GDP went from $1300 billion (US dollars) to $2300 billion. That is why Putin’s public approval rating has been consistently high, ranging between 85% and a “low” approval rating of 60%.

    Most Americans are unaware of these facts. Instead, Putin and Russia are persistently demonized. This has been convenient for the Democratic Party establishment which needed a distraction for their dirty tricks against Bernie Sanders and subsequent loss to Donald Trump. The demonization of Russia is also especially useful and profitable for the military industrial media complex.

    Victoria Nuland boosted the “Steele Dossier” which alleged collaboration between Russia and Trump and other salacious claims. The allegations filled the media and poisoned attitudes to Russia. Belatedly, the truth about the “Steele Dossier” is coming out. Last summer the Wall Street Journal reported “the bureau (FBI) knew the Russia info was phony in 2017” and that “There was no factual basis to the dossier’s claims”.

    While promoting disinformation, Victoria Nuland is pushing for a more aggressive US foreign policy. In an article titled “Pinning Down Putin”, she says “Russia’s threat to the liberal world has grown”, that Washington should “deter and roll back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin” and “rebuff Russian encroachments in hot spots around the world.”

    The major “hot spots” are the conflicts which Victoria Nuland and other Washington neocons promoted, especially Syria and Ukraine. In Syria, the US and allies have spent hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars promoting the overthrow of the Assad government. So far, they have failed but have not given up. The facts are clear: US troops and military bases in Syria do not have the authorization of the Syrian government. They are actively stealing the precious oil resources of the Syrian state. It is the US not Russia that is “encroaching”. The dangerous behavior is by Washington not Moscow.

    Conclusion

    Victoria Nuland has promoted a foreign policy of intervention through coups, proxy wars, aggression, and ongoing occupations. The policy has been implemented with bloody and disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

    With consummate hypocrisy she accuses Russia of spreading misinformation in the US, while she openly seeks to put “stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens.” She wants to “establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises.”

    Victoria Nuland is the queen of chicken hawks, the Lady Macbeth of perpetual war. There are hundreds of thousands of victims from the policies she has promoted. Yet she has not received a scratch. On the contrary, Victoria Nuland probably has profited from a stock portfolio filled with military contractors.

    Now Victoria Nuland wants to provoke, threaten and “rollback” Russia. A quick look at a map of US military bases shows who is threatening whom.

    Victoria Nuland is highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.

    The post Why Victoria Nuland is Dangerous and Should Not be Confirmed first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Police Search Navalny’s Chelyabinsk Office, Activists Say

    Law enforcement officers have searched the Chelyabinsk offices of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, activists reported on February 13.

    The activists said on Twitter that the search took place while nobody was present at the offices in the Urals city.

    “We came to the headquarters and found this,” the activists tweeted together with several pictures of the ransacked office. “The premises were raided while we were working remotely,” they said.

    The 44-year-old Navalny, a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany where he had been treated for a nerve-agent poisoning he says was ordered by Putin. The Kremlin denies it had any role in the poison attack against Navalny.

    Tens of thousands of Russians took part in street rallies on January 23 and 31 in protest at Navalny’s detention, which sparked outrage across the country and much of the West.

    In a change in tactics from mass street rallies that resulted in thousands of arrests, Navalny’s team has called on people across Russia to switch on their mobile-phone flashlights for 15 minutes beginning at 8 p.m. local time on February 14 — shining the light into the sky from courtyards and posting pictures of the protest on social media.

    In an attempt to limit the planned February 14 flashlight-protest, Russia’s federal media regulator ordered media outlets, including RFE/RL’s Russian Service and Current Time TV, to delete all reports about the event.

    The official order from Roskomnadzor was received by media groups on February 12.

    It says Russian authorities consider any reporting about the planned flashlight protest to be a call for people to take part in an unsanctioned public demonstration and mass disorder.

    Roskomnadzor’s order was also sent to online newspapers Meduza and Open Media, and the TV-2 news agency in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

    Navalny’s team in Tomsk said they were also warned by the city prosecutor’s office on February 12 that they could be held liable for staging an unsanctioned protest action.

    Telegram channel Baza reported on February 13 that in Bryansk, 379 kilometers southwest of Moscow, students were banned from using flashlights on the premises of the local university on the day of February 14.

    Leonid Volkov (left) and Aleksei Navalny (file photo)

    Leonid Volkov (left) and Aleksei Navalny (file photo)

    Leonid Volkov, director of Navalny’s network of teams across Russia, announced the change of tactics on February 9 in response to police crackdowns against mass street demonstrations that have led to tens of thousands of arrests across Russia.

    The “flashlight” protest is a tactic similar to what demonstrators have been doing in neighboring Belarus following brutal police crackdowns targeting rallies against authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

    Volkov says it is a nonviolent way for Russians to show the extent of outrage across the country over Navalny’s treatment without subjecting themselves to arrests and police abuse.

    Police cracked down harshly on the demonstrations, putting many of Navalny’s political allies behind bars and detaining thousands more — sometimes violently — as they gathered on the streets.

    A Russian court on February 2 ruled Navalny was guilty of violating the terms of his suspended sentence relating to an embezzlement case that he has called politically motivated.

    The court converted the sentence to 3 1/2 years in prison. Given credit for time already spent in detention, the court said Navalny must serve another 2 years and 8 months behind bars.

    That prompted fresh street protests across the country. But Volkov called for a pause in street rallies until the spring — saying weekly demonstrations would only result in more mass arrests.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, Meduza, TV-2, Dozhd, and Znak

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia Imposes Sanctions On Nine Ukrainian Companies

    Russia has slapped economic sanctions on nine Ukrainian firms, the latest in a list of businesses that it targets with such penalties.

    The companies targeted by “special economic measures” under the new Russian decree, which was published late on February 12, include Ukrainian vessel builder Craneship, towage firm Donmar, cargo operator Transship, and metal producer Maxima Metal.

    The decree did not say why the companies had been targeted. The latest move brings the number of Ukrainian companies sanctioned by Russia to 84.

    Relations between Ukraine and Russia deteriorated in 2014 after Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula and began supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine. The conflict, now in its seventh year, has killed more than 13,200 people.

    Russia denies Kyiv’s accusations that its military has been involved in the conflict.

    The West has slapped a range of sanctions since then on Russia, which has retaliated with its own measures.

    There was no immediate response from Ukraine to the move.

    In a sign of further strains in Moscow’s ties to the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 12 that it was ready to sever ties with the European Union if the bloc hit it with painful economic sanctions.

    Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Senators Urge Biden To Follow Through On Pipeline Sanctions

    Two U.S. senators have urged President Joe Biden to ensure the implementation of sanctions aimed at stopping the Nord Stream 2 gas-pipeline project from Russia to Germany.

    Senators Jim Risch (Republican-Idaho) and Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat-New Hampshire) urged the State Department in a letter on February 12 not to delay issuing a report to Congress required under sanctions passed last month in the annual defense policy bill.

    The report, due by February 16, will identify companies involved in constructing, insuring, and verifying Nord Stream 2. The law requires the companies listed in the report to be sanctioned.

    The letter made reference to “press reports that the German government has put forth an offer that would require the United States to disregard statutorily mandated sanctions.”

    Risch and Shaheen didn’t provide details, but reports in German media have said Germany sought to cut a deal with the Trump administration to let the nearly completed pipeline be finished.

    An environmental and consumer protection group said on February 9 that the German government offered financial support of up to 1 billion euros ($1.21 billion) to invest in facilities for the import of U.S. liquefied natural gas. The Trump administration pushed U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas as an alternative to Russian gas.

    According to a document published by the Environmental Action Germany (DUH), German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz offered funding in August. In return, Washington was asked to permit the “unhindered construction and operation of Nord Stream 2.

    ‘A Dirty Deal’

    Sascha Mueller-Kraenner, the DUH executive director, called it a “scandal” and a “dirty deal at the expense of third parties.” The German Finance Ministry has not commented on the matter.

    State Department spokesman Ned Price reiterated on February 12 that the United States sees the pipeline project as a “bad deal” for Europe.

    “It’s a bad deal because it divides Europe, it exposes Ukraine, and Central Europe to Russian manipulation. It goes against Europe’s own stated energy and security goals,” Price said.

    But he said “sanctions are only one” of many tools, and that the department will work closely with allies and partners to reinforce European energy security and safeguard against “predatory behavior.”

    About 150 kilometers of pipe transiting Danish and German waters of the Baltic Sea must be laid to complete the pipeline controlled by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

    The pipeline is intended to carry 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to Germany, but work was halted in December following the threat of sanctions from Washington.

    The pipeline would affect Ukraine by depriving it of transit fees from existing pipelines that transverse its territory.

    With reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Gas Leak Suspected In Russian Supermarket Blast

    A supermarket in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz was engulfed by a powerful explosion before opening hours early on February 12, causing major damage but apparently no deaths.

    Authorities suggested it was caused by a gas leak, an all-too frequent danger from suspect infrastructure and sometimes lax safety enforcement in the sprawling country of around 144 million people.

    The building housing the Magnit supermarket was said to have been nearly completely destroyed.

    A security guard who was said to be sleeping inside the store at the time of the blast and found by rescuers reportedly escaped mostly unharmed.

    “I fell asleep when it was nearly morning and woke up from the explosion,” the guard said afterward, according to RIA Novosti. “I crawled out of there somehow.”

    The Interior Ministry said the market “exploded…it was like a house of cards” and said the cause was unknown.

    But later reports suggested a gas explosion was to blame.

    Based on reporting by Current Time and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jailed Russia Opposition Leader Navalny Returns To Court For Libel Case

    Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny will appear in court again on February 12 in a libel case involving a World War II veteran after the trial was interrupted last week.

    The anti-corruption campaigner has described the slander case as a fabricated Kremlin public relations campaign meant to harass and discredit him.

    Navalny is accused of slandering a World War II veteran who took part in the promotional video in support of last year’s constitutional amendments that cleared the way for President Vladimir Putin to run for two more terms in office after 2024, if he wants.

    The trial centers on a social-media post from June in which Navalny, one of Putin’s most vocal critics, described those in the video as “traitors,” “people with no conscience,” and “corrupt lackeys.”

    Russia’s Investigative Committee argues the comments contained “deliberately false information denigrating the honor and dignity” of the World War II veteran.

    If convicted, Navalny faces a fine, community service, or jail time.

    The trial was interrupted last week after the plaintiff, Ignat Artyomenko, said he was feeling ill and was taken away by ambulance.

    Before he was rushed away, the 94-year-old veteran said he wanted a public apology from Navalny, who said he believed that the elderly man was being used “like a doll on a chain.”

    Navalny also suggested Artyomenko, who attended the proceedings by video from his home, was mentally unable to follow the trial.

    “You have perverted criminal law, and now you are using Artyomenko to defend the thief Putin and his friends with [Artyomenko’s] medals,” Navalny told the court.

    The libel trial comes after the Kremlin critic on February 2 was ordered to serve 2 years and 8 months in prison for violating the terms of probation imposed from a widely criticized 2014 embezzlement case.

    Navalny could not report to parole officers because he was recovering from a coma in Germany after being poisoned with a nerve-agent in Siberia last August, in an attack he blames on Putin and his security agents. The Kremlin dismisses the allegations.

    Navalny was immediately arrested upon his return to Russia in January, triggering nationwide protests and a crackdown on his allies and supporters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jailed Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Returns To Court For Slander Case

    Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny will appear in court again on February 12 in a slander case involving a World War II veteran after the trial was interrupted last week.

    The anti-corruption campaigner has described the slander case as a fabricated Kremlin public-relations campaign meant to harass and discredit him.

    Navalny is accused of slandering a World War II veteran who took part in the promotional video in support of last year’s constitutional amendments that cleared the way for President Vladimir Putin to run for two more terms in office after 2024, if he wants.

    The trial centers on a social-media post from June in which Navalny, one of Putin’s most vocal critics, described those in the video as “traitors,” “people with no conscience,” and “corrupt lackeys.”

    Russia’s Investigative Committee argues the comments contained “deliberately false information denigrating the honor and dignity” of the World War II veteran.

    If convicted, Navalny faces a fine, community service, or jail time.

    The trial was interrupted last week after the plaintiff, Ignat Artyomenko, said he was feeling ill and was taken away by ambulance.

    Before he was rushed away, the 94-year-old veteran said he wanted a public apology from Navalny, who said he believed that the elderly man was being used “like a doll on a chain.”

    Navalny also suggested Artyomenko, who attended the proceedings by video from his home, was mentally unable to follow the trial.

    “You have perverted criminal law, and now you are using Artyomenko to defend the thief Putin and his friends with [Artyomenko’s] medals,” Navalny told the court.

    The trial comes after the Kremlin critic on February 2 was ordered to serve 2 years and 8 months in prison for violating the terms of probation imposed from a widely criticized 2014 embezzlement case.

    Navalny could not report to parole officers because he was recovering from a coma in Germany after being poisoned with a nerve-agent in Siberia last August, in an attack he blames on Putin and his security agents. The Kremlin dismisses the allegations.

    Navalny was immediately arrested upon his return to Russia in January, triggering nationwide protests and a crackdown on his allies and supporters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia Files New ‘Revenge’ Charges Against Navalny Laywer Lyubov Sobol

    Lyubov Sobol, a prominent lawyer for jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been indicted on fresh charges she labeled political “revenge” for daring to speak to an alleged security officer behind the assassination attempt against the Kremlin critic.

    The case against Sobol, who is under house arrest for allegedly violating COVID-19 restrictions during recent anti-government protests, comes amid a widening crackdown on Navalny’s allies and supporters.

    Using her Facebook account, Sobol’s team wrote on February 11 that the Investigative Committee case against the lawyer relates to her December detention when she and journalists attempted to speak to a security agent at his home.

    The FSB officer, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, has been linked to the August poisoning of Navalny, which Western countries say was carried out with a military-grade nerve agent.

    In December, Navalny published a recording of what he said was a phone conversation with Kudryavtsev. The man speaking with Navalny in the 49-minute phone call, in which anti-corruption campaigner posed as an FSB official, described details of the operation to poison him.

    The FSB and the Kremlin have denied any role in the poisoning.

    According to the Investigative Committee, Sobol and others used or threatened to use violence as they tried to gain entry into the flat to speak with Kudryavtsev about the poisoning. The charges were brought by Kudryavtsev’s mother-in-law.

    In the Facebook post, Sobol’s team described the case as political “revenge” for the lawyer not being afraid to ask question of the alleged assassin.

    Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his returned to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment from the nerve agent poisoning.

    The detention sparked outrage across the country, drawing tens of thousands of people to the streets. At least 10,000 people were detained.

    A court later ordered Navalny to serve 2 years and 8 months in prison for violating terms of his probation while in Germany in a 2014 fraud case widely considered political.

    Most of Navalny’s allies have been detained, fined, put under house arrest, or forced to leave the country in recent weeks.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RFE/RL Accuses Russia Of Violating Treaty Through ‘Foreign Agent’ Law

    Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says Russia is violating a bilateral investment treaty by targeting the organization’s news operations within Russia under its controversial “foreign agent” law.

    The assertion, made public by RFE/RL in a statement issued on February 11, comes as Russian regulators have hit the company with a series of fines in recent weeks.

    Media regulator Roskomnadzor has demanded RFE/RL comply with strict requirements to label content published and broadcast within Russia as financed by foreign sources. Those demands include prominent 15-second disclaimers shown at the start of every television, radio, or video program, be it online or broadcast.

    RFE/RL, one of three foreign news organizations to be labeled as a “foreign agent” and the only one facing fines, has not complied. In response, Roskomnadzor has served RFE/RL with 260 notices of violations. When they go through the court system in the coming weeks, the total fines levied will amount to almost $1 million.

    In its statement, the company said Moscow’s move violated a bilateral investment treaty signed in 1994 between Russia and the Czech Republic that obligates Moscow to treat Czech investments in Russia fairly. It called on Russia to negotiate to try to resolve the dispute.

    If Russia is not willing to do so, the treaty allows for international arbitration proceedings against Moscow, the company said.

    “These punitive measures by the Russian government are a nervous reaction aimed at driving RFE/RL out of business at a time when our audience in Russia is skyrocketing,” said Daisy Sindelar, the organization’s acting president and editor in chief.

    “We intend to use every legal avenue available to defend our operations in Russia, so we can continue to deliver the accurate, unflinching journalism our audiences expect and depend on,” she said.

    Prague HQ

    Funded by U.S. Congress, RFE/RL is a private nonprofit organization incorporated under Delaware law in the United States. RFE/RL’s global headquarters have been based in the Czech Republic since moving there from Munich in 1995, and its operations there are executed through a Czech legal entity called a “branch.”

    For that reason, the company argues its investments in Russia are covered under the 1994 treaty between Prague and Moscow.

    With dozens of employees in Prague, about 50 full-time staff in Russia, and close to 300 freelance reporters across the country, RFE/RL’s Russian-language operations — TV, radio, and online — make it one of the largest independent foreign news organizations within Russia.

    Press watchdogs have said the effort appears aimed at closing down all of RFE/RL’s operations in Russia, which currently reach nearly 6.7 million people a week.

    First passed in 2012 and expanded several times since, the “foreign agent” law gives authorities the power to brand nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, and news media deemed to receive foreign funding for political activity as a “foreign agent,” a label that carries pejorative Soviet-era connotations.

    The law subjects these organizations to bureaucratic scrutiny and spot checks and requires them to attach the “foreign agent” label to their publications. They must also report on their spending and funding.

    Among other things, the law requires certain news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.” It also puts RFE/RL journalists at risk for criminal prosecution.

    RFE/RL executives have said Russian regulators singled out the organization for punishment as compared with other foreign news organizations. The only other news organizations to be hit with the “foreign agent” designation and ordered to label their content, but not yet fined, are Voice of America and a small Czech outlet called Medium-Orient — neither of which currently have a physical presence in the country.

    Last month, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers called for new sanctions against Moscow if the Kremlin moves to enforce the fines and stringent restrictions.

    Since early in Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the Kremlin has steadily tightened the screws on independent media. The country is ranked 149th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Students Sue After University Expels Them For Joining Protests

    It was with “pain in my heart,” rector Konstantin Markelov said on January 29, that he announced the expulsion of three Astrakhan State University students for attending opposition protests.

    But “the law is the law,” he said in an open letter posted to social media. “Think a hundred times when they urge you to join unsanctioned demonstrations.”

    The university in southern Russia prompted an uproar with its decision, a case still rare in Russia despite an increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent following nationwide rallies in support of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny on January 23.

    Now two of the students — Vera Inozemtseva and Aleksandr Mochalov — are suing the university and demanding their reinstatement. “I see my expulsion as a case of political repression,” Inozemtseva told RFE/RL in an interview.

    She and her legal team will argue that the decision violates the school’s own charter as well as their right to freedom of assembly under the Russian Constitution.

    “They can’t properly justify the decision aside from issuing abstract statements,” said Yaroslav Pavlyukov, the lawyer representing the students. “They say the rules of their code of conduct have been violated. What rules? They don’t say.”

    Target Demographic

    The fallout from the protests in late January and early February has convulsed Russia’s student community, a target demographic in the Kremlin’s campaign to rein in political activism among young people and shift their allegiance away from the opposition and toward the state.

    Thousands took part in the recent protests, and millions watched pro-Navalny videos uploaded by students to the TikTok video app, with many of the clips filmed in school classrooms or university corridors.

    The clampdown was swift. In Siberia, lecturer Aleksei Alekseyev was fired from the Novosibirsk Energy And Technology College for a social-media post encouraging people to attend a January 23 demonstration as a “good excuse to meet and discuss the fate of the country.”

    In the Volga River city of Samara, the state university redacted its Code of Ethics to ban participation in anti-government rallies by both students and teachers, a move that is expected to serve as an example for other schools going forward.

    Students also say they’ve been pressured or even deceived into taking part in pro-Kremlin parades that, according to news outlet Meduza, have been recorded and posted online under instructions passed down from President Vladimir Putin’s administration.

    Nevertheless, the incident in Astrakhan has turned heads.

    “We know that students are often threatened with expulsion for joining protests, but actual expulsion happens very rarely,” Pavlyukov said. “We need to prove this is illegal and unjust.”

    Of the three expelled students, 22-year-old Inozemtseva is the only seasoned opposition activist. She worked in Navalny’s regional political campaign in 2017, ahead of his attempt to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, from which he was barred due to criminal convictions on charges he says were fabricated. She has also joined multiple protests in the past, including a series of rallies in March 2017 that prompted the Kremlin to launch a similar preemptive campaign in Russia’s schools.

    Inozemtseva says that on January 23, as she was on her way home from the protest in Astrakhan, she was abducted by masked men in civilian clothing who confiscated her belongings. She says she later discovered that calls for anti-government rallies were posted to her social-media accounts while her phone was in police custody.

    Since her expulsion she has publicly campaigned for the resignation of Markelov, the Astrakhan State University rector, and has gained support from Yabloko, an opposition party that has petitioned the Education Ministry to strip Markelov of his position, citing evidence dug up by Dissernet, an anti-plagiarism group, that large parts of his doctorate thesis were taken from other academic articles.

    “A person who built his so-called academic career on a fake dissertation cannot be a guarantor of the rights and freedoms of his university’s students,” Yabloko said in a statement.

    Inozemtseva said that if her lawsuit is successful, her victory in Astrakhan’s courts will be instructive to other students who find themselves expelled or pressured to renounce opposition views in the future.

    “It will give them a guarantee that no student can be thrown out for their political views,” she told RFE/RL.

    But the scale of the recent anti-government protests, which most estimates say brought out some 100,000 people on two consecutive weekends, has fueled a fraught and tense climate ahead of parliamentary elections expected in September, and a sense among activists that the authorities will tolerate no dissent.

    “Since the case has a political undertone, I don’t know how it will play in our courts,” Pavlyukov said. “But in any case, we have to try.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • No Sputnik Shot For Ukraine As Kyiv Bans Registration Of COVID Vaccines From ‘Aggressor States’

    KYIV — Ukraine’s government has banned the registration of vaccines for COVID-19, from “aggressor states,” a designation it has applied to Russia since 2015.

    The government made the decision on February 8, but did not announce it publicly until February 10, when it appeared on the government’s website.

    “The registration of vaccines or other medical immunobiological medicines specific to the prevention of the acute respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus…[that were] developed and/or produced in a nation recognized by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine as an aggressor-state, is banned,” the government’s ruling says.

    Talking about the possible use of Russian vaccines, Zelenskiy said last week that “Ukrainians are not guinea pigs” and that the government didn’t “have the right to conduct experiments on our people.”

    Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been tense since Russia forcibly seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and threw its support behind pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s east, where the ongoing conflict has claimed more than 13,200 lives.

    The ban comes despite criticism of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the government’s sputtering vaccination plan.

    Zelenskiy said earlier this week that Ukraine would begin the first phase of the vaccination campaign later this month even though it has yet to receive a single dose of any vaccine.

    On February 10, the Health Ministry said that China’s Sinovac Biotech had officially applied to get its COVID-19 vaccine registered in Ukraine. Kyiv has already agreed to buy 1.9 million doses from the Chinese company.

    Zelenskiy said last week that his government had agreed to get 20 million vaccine doses from India’s Serum Institute and the global COVAX scheme, adding that, by early 2022, at least half of the country’s 41 million population will be vaccinated.

    Ukraine has also agreed to get COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Novavах.

    As of February 11, the number of registered coronavirus cases in Ukraine was 1,258,094, including 24,058 deaths.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Daughter Shuts Down Online Newspaper After Journalist’s Self-Immolation

    The daughter of the late Russian journalist Irina Slavina, who died in early-October after setting herself on fire in an apparent reaction to being investigated by authorities, has shut down Koza.Press, her mother’s online newspaper.

    Margarita Murakhtayeva on February 10 called her decision “not easy, but right,” and expressed gratitude to journalists who had supported the newspaper and contributed to it since her mother’s death four months ago.

    Koza.Press, created by Slavina in 2015, focused on shortcomings in the work of local authorities, cases of political persecution, and the illegal removal of historic buildings in the Nizhny Novgorod region.

    On October 2, before setting herself on fire in front of the city’s police headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod, Slavina wrote on Facebook, “Blame the Russian Federation for my death.”

    A day earlier, a group of law enforcement officers searched her apartment, trying to find evidence linking her with the opposition Open Russia group and confiscated her computers and mobile phones.

    Slavina said at the time that she was left without the tools needed to do her journalistic job, adding that she had never had any links with Open Russia.

    Slavina’s self-immolation caused a public outcry, with many people demanding justice for the journalist. However, authorities refused to launch a probe into her self-immolation, saying that the incident bore no elements of a crime .

    After Slavina’s death, her daughter and another journalist, Irina Yenikeyeva, continued the newspaper’s activities.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Russian Alternative: How Moscow is capitalizing on US Retreat in Palestine, Israel   

    Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American President, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process’, Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups.

    Indeed, a political shift is taking place on both fronts: the US away from the region and Russia back to it. If this trend continues, it could only be a matter of time before a major paradigm shift occurs.

    The Israelis are rightly worried at the potential loss of the unconditional support of their American benefactors. “There are 195 countries in the world, and … Biden has not contacted 188 of them,” Herb Keinon wrote in The Jerusalem Post on February 2, adding, “but only in Israel, people are concerned about the significance of this delay”.

    The concern is justified as Israel has been designated as Washington’s most prominent ally for many years, both in the Middle East and globally.

    It is unclear whether the relegation of Netanyahu during Biden’s early days in office is an indicator that Israel — in fact, the entire region – is no longer an American priority or a warning message to Netanyahu who has rallied for years in support of the Republican Administration of Donald Trump.

    Thanks to Netanyahu’s foreign policy miscalculation, support for Israel has, in recent years, become an unprecedented partisan issue in US politics. While the overwhelming majority of Republicans support Israel, only a minority of Democrats sympathize with Israel, as recent public opinion polls revealed.

    While it is true that Netanyahu’s behavior in recent years earned him special status within Republican ranks thus making him persona non grata among Democrats, it is equally true that the US seems to be divesting from the Middle East altogether.

    According to Politico, reporting on the Biden Administration’s initial days in office, a major restructuring has already taken place among the staff of the US National Security Council, flipping the previous structure “where the Middle East directorate was much bigger than it is now and the Asia portfolio was managed by a handful of more junior staffers.”

    However, it is not only Washington that is shifting its geostrategic center of gravity. Russia, too, is undergoing a major restructuring in its foreign policy priorities. While Washington is retreating from the Middle East, Moscow is cementing its presence in the region, which began gradually in its calculated involvement in the Syrian conflict in 2015. Moscow is now offering itself as a political partner and a more balanced mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

    Like the US, Russia might not necessarily see its political involvement as a precursor to actually ending the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Moscow insists, unlike Washington, on the centrality of international law and United Nations Resolutions in the quest for a just peace. Writing in the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Michał Wojnarowicz argues that Russia’s involvement in Palestine and Israel is consistent with its overall strategy in the Middle East, aimed at building “a network of influence among regional actors and boost its image as an attractive political partner.”

    A variation of this view was offered in the New York Times in 2016, when Moscow began working to translate its strategic gains in Syria to political capital throughout the region. It was during this time that the American-sponsored peace process had reached a dead end, giving Russia the opportunity to float the idea of a Moscow-sponsored talk between Israel and Palestine.

    “Russia’s new-found Middle East peace push, part of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reinsertion of Moscow into the region in a profound way after years of retreat, seems to be about everything but finding peace in the Middle East,” a NYT op-ed argued. “Instead, it is about Moscow’s ambitions and competition with Washington.”

    At the time, Netanyahu rejected the Russian overture, in the hope that a Republican Administration would grant Israel all of its demands without making any concessions. The Palestinians, including relatively isolated movements like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, found in Moscow a welcoming environment and a crucial international power that is able to balance out Washington’s blind support for Israel.

    Despite Israel’s refusal to engage with the Palestinians under Russian auspices, many Palestinian delegations visited Moscow, culminating, in January 2017, in a political breakthrough when rival Palestinian factions, Fatah, Hamas and others, held serious talks in the hope of bridging their differences. Although the round of talks did not bring about Palestinian unity, it served as Russia’s political debut in a conflict that has fallen squarely within the American geopolitical space.

    Since then, Russia has remained very involved through well-structured efforts championed by Putin’s Special Envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov. These efforts are channeled through three different areas: inner Palestinian dialogue, Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and, of late, dialogue within the Fatah movement itself. The latter, especially, is indicative of the nature of Moscow’s involvement in the multi-layered conflicts at work in the region.

    Even when Palestinian groups are finalizing their previous agreements in Cairo, top Palestinian officials continue to coordinate their actions with Moscow and with Bogdanov, personally.

    Russia’s credibility among Palestinian groups is boosted by similar credibility among ordinary Palestinians as well, especially as it emerged in January that they will be receiving the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, scheduled to be available in the Occupied Territories in the near future.

    Moreover, while Washington publicly declared that it will not roll back any of Trump’s actions in favor of Israel, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is pushing for an international peace conference on Palestine, to be held in the coming months.

    The US now has no other option but to slowly retreat from its previous commitments to the peace process: in fact, the region as a whole. As is often the case, any American retreat means a potential opening for Russia, which is now laying claim to the role of peace broker, a seismic change that many Palestinians are already welcoming.

    The post The Russian Alternative: How Moscow is capitalizing on US Retreat in Palestine, Israel    first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Russian Alternative: How Moscow is capitalizing on US Retreat in Palestine, Israel   

    Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American President, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process’, Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups.

    Indeed, a political shift is taking place on both fronts: the US away from the region and Russia back to it. If this trend continues, it could only be a matter of time before a major paradigm shift occurs.

    The Israelis are rightly worried at the potential loss of the unconditional support of their American benefactors. “There are 195 countries in the world, and … Biden has not contacted 188 of them,” Herb Keinon wrote in The Jerusalem Post on February 2, adding, “but only in Israel, people are concerned about the significance of this delay”.

    The concern is justified as Israel has been designated as Washington’s most prominent ally for many years, both in the Middle East and globally.

    It is unclear whether the relegation of Netanyahu during Biden’s early days in office is an indicator that Israel — in fact, the entire region – is no longer an American priority or a warning message to Netanyahu who has rallied for years in support of the Republican Administration of Donald Trump.

    Thanks to Netanyahu’s foreign policy miscalculation, support for Israel has, in recent years, become an unprecedented partisan issue in US politics. While the overwhelming majority of Republicans support Israel, only a minority of Democrats sympathize with Israel, as recent public opinion polls revealed.

    While it is true that Netanyahu’s behavior in recent years earned him special status within Republican ranks thus making him persona non grata among Democrats, it is equally true that the US seems to be divesting from the Middle East altogether.

    According to Politico, reporting on the Biden Administration’s initial days in office, a major restructuring has already taken place among the staff of the US National Security Council, flipping the previous structure “where the Middle East directorate was much bigger than it is now and the Asia portfolio was managed by a handful of more junior staffers.”

    However, it is not only Washington that is shifting its geostrategic center of gravity. Russia, too, is undergoing a major restructuring in its foreign policy priorities. While Washington is retreating from the Middle East, Moscow is cementing its presence in the region, which began gradually in its calculated involvement in the Syrian conflict in 2015. Moscow is now offering itself as a political partner and a more balanced mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

    Like the US, Russia might not necessarily see its political involvement as a precursor to actually ending the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Moscow insists, unlike Washington, on the centrality of international law and United Nations Resolutions in the quest for a just peace. Writing in the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Michał Wojnarowicz argues that Russia’s involvement in Palestine and Israel is consistent with its overall strategy in the Middle East, aimed at building “a network of influence among regional actors and boost its image as an attractive political partner.”

    A variation of this view was offered in the New York Times in 2016, when Moscow began working to translate its strategic gains in Syria to political capital throughout the region. It was during this time that the American-sponsored peace process had reached a dead end, giving Russia the opportunity to float the idea of a Moscow-sponsored talk between Israel and Palestine.

    “Russia’s new-found Middle East peace push, part of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reinsertion of Moscow into the region in a profound way after years of retreat, seems to be about everything but finding peace in the Middle East,” a NYT op-ed argued. “Instead, it is about Moscow’s ambitions and competition with Washington.”

    At the time, Netanyahu rejected the Russian overture, in the hope that a Republican Administration would grant Israel all of its demands without making any concessions. The Palestinians, including relatively isolated movements like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, found in Moscow a welcoming environment and a crucial international power that is able to balance out Washington’s blind support for Israel.

    Despite Israel’s refusal to engage with the Palestinians under Russian auspices, many Palestinian delegations visited Moscow, culminating, in January 2017, in a political breakthrough when rival Palestinian factions, Fatah, Hamas and others, held serious talks in the hope of bridging their differences. Although the round of talks did not bring about Palestinian unity, it served as Russia’s political debut in a conflict that has fallen squarely within the American geopolitical space.

    Since then, Russia has remained very involved through well-structured efforts championed by Putin’s Special Envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov. These efforts are channeled through three different areas: inner Palestinian dialogue, Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and, of late, dialogue within the Fatah movement itself. The latter, especially, is indicative of the nature of Moscow’s involvement in the multi-layered conflicts at work in the region.

    Even when Palestinian groups are finalizing their previous agreements in Cairo, top Palestinian officials continue to coordinate their actions with Moscow and with Bogdanov, personally.

    Russia’s credibility among Palestinian groups is boosted by similar credibility among ordinary Palestinians as well, especially as it emerged in January that they will be receiving the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, scheduled to be available in the Occupied Territories in the near future.

    Moreover, while Washington publicly declared that it will not roll back any of Trump’s actions in favor of Israel, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is pushing for an international peace conference on Palestine, to be held in the coming months.

    The US now has no other option but to slowly retreat from its previous commitments to the peace process: in fact, the region as a whole. As is often the case, any American retreat means a potential opening for Russia, which is now laying claim to the role of peace broker, a seismic change that many Palestinians are already welcoming.

    This article was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2021 at 1:22am and is filed under Israel, Joe Biden, Palestine, President Vladimir Putin, Russia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.