Fourteen former diplomats and intelligence officials branch off into new territory in their attempt to characterize journalism and political speech with which they disagree as acts of subversion on behalf of a foreign power.
Dutch ‘no’ on Ukraine pact would force rethink, minister says (Reuters)
The Dutch government would be obliged to reconsider its position on an EU pact establishing closer ties with Ukraine if it loses an upcoming referendum on the issue, the country’s foreign minister said, but he stopped short of saying a “no” vote would scupper the treaty.
Philip Bump: There’s still little evidence that Russia’s 2016 social-media efforts did much of anything
As it stands, the public evidence doesn’t support the idea that the Russians executed a savvy electoral strategy on social media to ensure Trump’s victory.
Clinton Stokes Fears Of Russians Coming To The Baltics, When They’re Actually Leaving (Kenneth Rapoza)
For the past year, there has been a debate in Washington as to whether or not the Russians were going to roll tanks into the Baltics. They took over Crimea “at gun point,” the saying goes, so their ex-Soviet enclaves along the Baltic Sea were surely next. It is no surprise then that presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated that concern during Thursday’s debate with Bernie Sanders.
Matthew Walther: The most respectable conspiracy theory in Washington
The Russia thing is a tedious and lurid spectacle, a shooting match, like Whitewater before it, in which armed participants are allowed to circle endlessly, at taxpayers’ expense, around invisible targets that they mysteriously never manage to hit but whose existence is as obvious to one group of partisan onlookers as it is unthinkable to the other.
Why Russian-Turkish Hostility Makes Sense (George Friedman)
STARTFOR’s George Friedman writes “Turkey and Russia are now both at critical points. Russia is trying to maintain its balance economically and strategically. Turkey is intersecting, simply by geography, with four destabilizing regions: Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Central Asia. Both countries have profound vulnerabilities and are therefore hyper-sensitive to the moves of the other.”
Andrew McCarthy: Was the Steele Dossier the FBI’s ‘Insurance Policy’?
While there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign.
Thousands flee as Russian-backed offensive threatens to besiege Aleppo (Reuters)
Tens of thousands of Syrians fled an intensifying Russian assault around Aleppo on Friday, and aid workers said they feared the major city could soon fall under a full government siege.
Nadezhda Azhgikhina: The Abyss Between Russian and US Media Just Got Wider
Hasty decisions made on both sides of the Atlantic are causing irreparable damage to journalism as a whole.
POPE, RUSSIAN ORTHODOX PATRIARCH TO MEET IN HISTORIC STEP (AP)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis and the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church will meet in Cuba next week in a historic step to heal the 1,000-year-old schism that divided Christianity between East and West, both churches announced Friday.
Doug Bandow: Donald Trump Prepares to Escalate Confrontation with Russia over Ukraine
Most Americans were told Donald Trump won the presidential election last year. But his policy toward Russia looks suspiciously like what a President Hillary Clinton would have pursued.
New RAND Report Claims If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose (FP)
If Russian tanks and troops rolled into the Baltics tomorrow, outgunned and outnumbered NATO forces would be overrun in under three days. That’s the sobering conclusion of war games carried out by a think tank with American military officers and civilian officials.
Politico: Macron and Merkel urge peaceful solutions to Ukraine crisis
The statement from the French and German leaders came in response to an uptick in ceasefire violations in Eastern Ukraine.
Russia and Turkey trade accusations over Syria (Reuters)
Russia said on Thursday it suspected Turkey was preparing a military incursion into Syria, as a Syrian army source said Aleppo would soon be encircled by government forces with Russian air support.
Jackson Lears: What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking
Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes, like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections, they are not retracted even after they have been discredited.
Ukraine Launches First Military UAV To Combat Insurgents (Defense News)
WARSAW — The Ukrainian state-owned defense company Ukroboronprom has built the country’s first military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to bolster Ukraine’s combat against Russia-backed insurgents in the country’s east.
WNYC’s On the Media Interviews Glenn Greenwald on Media Malpractice
Bob Garfield talks to Glenn Greenwald about his article on the CNN debacle and why the media need to do better if they want to regain public trust.
Kissinger’s Vision for U.S.-Russia Relations
According to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, fresh off a meeting with Vladimir Putin, US-Russian relations “are probably the worst they have been since before the end of the Cold War. Mutual trust has been dissipated on both sides. Confrontation has replaced cooperation.”
Aaron Mate Interviews Luke Harding, Author of ‘Collusion’
Amid news the Mueller probe could extend through 2018, Guardian reporter Luke Harding and TRNN’s Aaron Mate discuss Russiagate and Harding’s new book “Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win”
Economic minister’s resignation plunges Ukraine into new crisis (Guardian)
Ukraine has been thrust into a new political crisis after the economic minister and his team tendered their resignations complaining of ingrained corruption, which has replaced the simmering separatist conflict as the country’s main obstacle to reform.