Answers to journalists’ questions following working visit to Belarus

 Answers to journalists’ questions following a working visit to Belarus.

QUESTION: Mr Putin, what did you discuss with Mr Poroshenko? How did the discussion go?

VLADIMIR #PUTIN: We talked about the whole range of issues in #Russian-#Ukrainian relations, first and foremost, economic cooperation, taking into account that in the expanded meeting, we also talked primarily about this, as well as the situation that has unfolded in Ukraine. We certainly could not avoid this topic. We discussed the need to end bloodshed as quickly as possible, the need to transition to a political settlement of the problems, the whole range of problems, that Ukraine is facing in its southeast region.

For its part, Russia will do everything to promote this peace process if it is launched, and in our view, this process needs to be launched as soon as possible. In this regard, an agreement has been reached – this was during the expanded format meeting, and we confirmed it during our bilateral meeting – that the contact group must renew its work as quickly as possible, perhaps here in Minsk.

Both President Poroshenko and I feel that we need to renew our dialogue on energy, including the gas issue. Frankly, this is a difficult issue, it is in a deadlock, but we still need to talk about it. We agreed that we will renew those consultations. That’s the short version.

QUESTION: Mr Putin, what about the outcome of the five-party meeting with EU representatives, with your Customs Union colleagues and with Mr Poroshenko?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Overall, I give it a positive assessment. I think this meeting in that format was useful. Granted, I do not know how it will all turn out. But in any case, we had another chance to express our concerns. We agreed that we will intensify efforts in the trilateral working group of Russia, Ukraine and EU representatives and will try to draft proposals by September 12, if we can, regarding the concerns expressed by Russia and the Customs Union that I talked about.

We once again pointed out to our partners – both European and Ukrainian partners – that implementation of the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU carries significant risks for the Russian economy. We have shown this in the text of the agreement, directly pointing to specific articles in that agreement.

Let me remind you that this concerns nullifying Ukraine’s customs tariffs, technical regulations, and phytosanitary standards. The standards in Russia and Europe currently do not correspond. But, as you recall, the most classic example is the introduction of EU technical regulations in Ukraine. In that case, we would not be able to supply our goods to Ukraine at all. We have different technical standards. And according to the European Union’s standards, we will not be able to supply our machine-building products there, or any industrial goods. If that happens, we cannot accept Ukrainian agricultural production goods in our territory, because we have different approaches to phytosanitary standards. We feel that many problems would occur.

I must say that our colleagues do not agree with all my arguments, but in any case, we were heard and we agreed that we will intensify our exchange of opinions and try to find at least some resolutions. But I once again said that in order to avoid any surprises, we are constantly discussing this, including at the meeting in Deauville, as you know, where I also talked about this. If we do not achieve any agreements and our concerns are not taken into account, then we will be forced to take measures to protect our economy. And we explained what those measures would be. So our partners must weigh everything and make corresponding decisions. Each nation in this process has the right take any steps within the framework of its competence. All of us are sovereign states and we will respect any choice by our European and Ukrainian partners. We hope that they will treat our measures to protect our economy with the same respect.

QUESTION: Mr Putin, did you discuss the reports from Ukraine about the arrest of Russian paratroopers? If this is true, how did they end up there and what will Russia do about this?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Yes, Mr Poroshenko mentioned this. But you know that Ukrainian service members have ended up on our side as well, and not just 5-10 of them, but dozens; last time, it turned out to be 450 people. I have not yet heard the report by the Defence Minister of the General Staff. But the first thing I heard is that they were patrolling the border, they may have ended up on the Ukrainian side. After all, Ukrainian service members entered our territory with armoured equipment, and we didn’t have any problems. I hope that in this case, there also will not be any problems with the Ukrainian side.

QUESTION: We were not officially told until the last minute whether you will have a bilateral meeting or not. But the meeting occurred. What was the reason, what circumstances served in favour of holding the meeting?

You talked about a ceasefire. Did you speak substantively about the conditions for a ceasefire to be possible?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: No. We did not discuss this matter substantively. Frankly speaking, we cannot discuss any conditions for a ceasefire or possible agreements between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk. This is not our business; it is a domestic matter of Ukraine itself. We can only support the creation of a environment of trust during this possible and, in my view, highly necessary negotiation process. We spoke about this. We spoke, where possible, about what Russia could do to make this process possible. But Russia did not impose any conditions. We cannot do that, we do not have any right to do so. This is a Ukrainian affair; it is up to Donetsk and Lugansk.

We expressed our concern with regard to the humanitarian component. That is true. And, indeed, President Poroshenko does not deny the complexity of the humanitarian situation. It cannot be characterised as anything other than catastrophic. We talked about the possibility – this is another topic, I did not mention it earlier – and the need to provide humanitarian assistance to Donetsk and Lugansk, and we agreed on how we will cooperate in this area. I will not get ahead of myself, but overall, we have certain agreements here as well. We will look into how to do this.

We talked about cooperating in various sectors. Why was this imperative? Currently, we are in a deadlock on the gas issue. You see, this is very serious matter for us, for Ukraine and for our European partners.

It is no big secret that Gazprom has advanced payment for the transit of our gas to Europe. Ukraine’s Naftogaz has returned that advance payment. The transit of our gas to European consumers was just about suspended. What will happen next? This is a question that awaits a painstaking investigation by our European and Ukrainian partners. We are fulfilling all the terms of the contract in full. Right now, we cannot even accept any suggestions regarding preferential terms, given that Ukraine has appealed to the Arbitration Court. Any of our actions to provide preferential terms can be used in the court. We were deprived of this opportunity, even if we had wanted it, although we already tried to meet them halfway and reduced the price by $100.

In other words, we have many specific issues to address and both Russia and Ukraine are interested in resolving these matters, as are our European partners. All this compelled us to meet bilaterally.

Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Kremlin.ru

Russia Wants UN Investigation Into Downed Malaysia Airlines Plane

A man walks past a piece of the crashed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine, July 21, 2014. Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo

Russia is calling for the United Nations Security Council to approve a U.N.-led investigation into what brought down #Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

“We believe that such an inquiry must begin as quickly as possible under the U.N. aegis,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Monday. "To that end the Security Council must make yet one more decision. We are alarmed that some of our partners have been trying to steer practical efforts to organize the inquiry into separate bilateral contacts with the Ukrainian authorities."

The United States has accused pro-Russian rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine of shooting down the plane. #Russia, however, has dismissed the accusations and suggested that Ukrainian authorities were responsible.

“I do not want to attack with accusations too soon, but I hope no one will be trying to cover tracks,” Lavrov said of an investigation facilitated by Kiev.

 In the wake of the Flight 17 disaster, Western countries have increased pressure on Russia to end what they say is an attempt to covertly support pro-Russian rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine.

Investigators have had trouble visiting the site of the downed plane because of nearby fighting. So far, only a small team, led by the Netherlands, has visited the site. The international monitors at the site have raised concerns that significant portions of the wreck have been altered and cut apart, perhaps during the search for remains -- but potentially also to hide evidence.

British intelligence sources told the BBC last week that they had intercepted phone calls suggesting rebels in the area wanted to give the black box fight recorders to Russia. Those recorders were eventually handed to investigators and sent to the United Kingdom for analysis.

PHOTO: Separatists handed over the black boxes from the downed Malaysia Airlines flight to investigators today in Donetsk, Ukraine.

On Monday, Lavrov seemed to confuse the U.S. intelligence images published over the weekend, suggesting they were about Flight 17 when they were about accusations Russia fired into Ukraine last week.

“It appears some images have just been published. Ten days later. We do not know what they did to these images, whether or not they were prepared,” he said, calling the images a “pretext to punish Russia.”

The images, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Sunday, purportedly show evidence that “Russian forces have fired across the border at Ukrainian military forces, and that Russian-backed separatists have used heavy artillery, provided by Russia, in attacks on Ukrainian forces from inside Ukraine.”

One slide provided by U.S. intelligence allegedly showed evidence of “self-propelled artillery only found in Russian military units” aimed at Ukrainian targets.

 In what appeared to have been a contentious phone call Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry urged Lavrov “to stop the flow of heavy weapons and rocket and artillery fire from Russia into Ukraine, and to begin to contribute to deescalating the conflict,” according to a State Department statement.

The unusually blunt statement added that Kerry “did not accept Foreign Minister Lavrov’s denial that heavy weapons from Russia were contributing to the conflict.”

Ukrainian authorities and the United States have sounded the alarm about fighters, weapons and funding crossing into Ukraine from Russia. The White House has warned that unless the Kremlin halts the flow it will face more sanctions. Today, Lavrov said Russia will allow OSCE observers to monitor a few border crossings with Ukraine.

PHOTO: A pro-Russian armed fighter stands in guard on the platform as a refrigerated train loaded with bodies of the passengers departs the station in Torez, Ukraine, near the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, July 21, 2014.

 Lavrov said he was confused by Western demands that Russia change its policies or face consequences.

“I don't know what they mean by policy changes,” he said, adding defiantly that Russia will adapt to sanctions.

“We will overcome the difficulties that will arise in certain parts of our economy. Maybe, we will become more self-reliant and more self-confident. This, too, is useful,” he said.

Lavrov said Russia will not go “eye for an eye” with the West over sanctions because it’s not “worthy of a big country.” ABC News

Putin exploding unsafe nationalist eagerness: US general

Russian President Vladimir Putin's military intervention in Ukraine is fanning nationalist sentiments that could spread across the region with dangerous, unpredictable consequences, the US military's top officer said Thursday (July 24).

Russia's President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow. (AFP/File/Alexei Nikolsky)

WASHINGTON: Russian President Vladimir #Putin's military intervention in #Ukraine is fanning nationalist sentiments that could spread across the region with dangerous, unpredictable consequences, the US military's top officer said Thursday (July 24).

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Putin was pursuing an "aggressive" agenda that flouts sovereignty and seeks to address alleged grievances harbored by Moscow since the demise of the Soviet Union. "If I have a fear about this, it's that Putin may actually light a fire that he loses control of," Dempsey said at a security conference in Aspen, Colorado.

Speaking hours after US officials accused Russia of firing artillery across the border at Ukrainian troops, Dempsey said Putin has appealed to Russian-speaking enclaves and bolstered his country's military in a bid to reassert Russian power.

"There's a rising tide of nationalism in Europe right now that's been created in many ways by these Russian activities that I find to be quite dangerous," Dempsey said in remarks broadcast by the Pentagon. Nationalism "can be a very dangerous instinct and impulse," he said. "My real concern is, having lit this fire in an isolated part of Eastern Europe, it may not stay in Eastern Europe," he said.

Under Putin, the Russians "are clearly on a path to assert themselves differently," not only in Eastern Europe but towards the rest of Europe and the United States, he said. "And he's very aggressive about it. He's got a playbook that has worked for him a few times," Dempsey said. "If you're asking me if there's a change in the relationship (with Russia), I would have to say absolutely," the general said.

Since 2008, Russia's armed forces have increased their combat readiness while investing in "strategic" weapons such as long-range aircraft and cruise missiles, according to Dempsey.

Even amid international outrage over the downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, which Western governments suspect was shot down by pro-Russian separatists armed by Moscow, Dempsey said Putin is "actually taking a decision to escalate" instead of defusing the conflict.

He said senior US government officials were weighing what assistance to provide the Ukrainian government, which has asked for weapons and electronic jammers to counter missiles employed by the separatists. "That debate is ongoing," Dempsey said.

Washington was also discussing with its NATO partners how to respond to Moscow's "provocation" by strengthening allied military forces across Europe, he said. There is "a recognition that we've been a little bit complacent about Europe for probably the last 10 or 15 years," Dempsey said.

- AFP/nd

MH17: US intelligence says Russia 'created conditions' for plane disaster

US officials stop short of blaming crash directly on Moscow and say separatists likely shot down plane by accident

Pro-Russia rebels guard the area around the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 during monitoring by investigators. Photograph: Rob Stothard/Getty

US intelligence officials accused Moscow of "creating the conditions" that resulted in the death of 298 people aboard the #Malaysian Airlines jet shot down last week over a part of #Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

But in a partial declassification of US intelligence on Tuesday, officials stopped short of laying the blame for the disaster directly at the door of Russia. The assessment of the US intelligence community is that the separatists shot the plane down by accident.

The newly declassified information largely reaffirmed an account given last Friday by Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations, saying that a missile from an SA-11 anti-aircraft battery in separatist territory shot down the plane.


Officials said training given by #Russia to its separatist proxies on air-defense weapons, which they have used in recent weeks to shoot down about a dozen aircraft, was a contributing factor. Ukrainian forces fighting the separatists have yet to fire a surface-to-air missile, intelligence officials said, as their conflict is on the ground.

MH17 shootdown graphic from US intelligence report on the downing of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine. Photograph: US intelligence community

Some of the evidence provided by US intelligence – whose fiscal 2013 budget was $68bn – included Facebook posts. "After it became evident that the plane was a civilian airliner, separatists deleted social media posts boasting about shooting down a plane and possessing a Buk (SA-11) surface-to-air missile system," a senior intelligence official said in the briefing, held on condition of anonymity. The Guardian was not invited to the briefing, a transcription of which was later made available.

Despite enormous international opprobrium placed on Moscow since the crash, intelligence officials said that they believed Russia continues to arm the separatists. They alleged that rocket launchers, other artillery pieces and tanks have transited through a "training facility" in south-west Russia associated with supplies for the separatists.

While the Guardian cannot independently confirm the allegation, satellite imagery released by US intelligence and dated Monday from the Rostov base seems to depict columns of materiel not present in a photo dated two days earlier.

Images of Russian training facility near Ukraine border, from a US intelligence report on the downing of MH17. Photograph: US intelligence community

An account by US intelligence of the Buk missile's trajectory puts its origin at the town of Snizhne, not far from the Russian border. Images posted on social media from Snizhne seem to depict a mobile Buk system.

A still from the 'social media overview' section of a US intelligence report into the downing of MH17. Photograph: US intelligence community

An investigation into the destruction of MH17 has barely got under way. Separatists handed over the flight recorder of the plane to Malaysian authorities late on Monday.

US intelligence officials indicated that their timed release of preliminary information was designed to counter claims from the Russian military they consider obfuscatory.

"We are seeing a full-court press by the Russian government to instruct affiliated or friendly elements to manipulate the media," an intelligence official said.

On Tuesday, international experts began the process of identifying the bodies of those who died in the disaster, after a train carrying their remains arrived in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Interpol, the international police agency, said one of its teams had begun preliminary identification work on the remains, which will all be flown to the Netherlands this week for fuller identification.

The train, which included three refrigerated wagons, had been loaded by rebels and local emergency workers at Torez station, near the crash site. The rebels said there were 282 bodies and 87 "other fragments" on board and that 16 bodies are yet to be found.

However, on Tuesday night Dutch officials said only 200 bodies had arrived in Kharkiv.

The European Union said on Tuesday that it would expand its sanctions blacklist to target Vladimir Putin's inner circle and draw up further broad measures including an arms embargo and financial restrictions on Russian businesses. The Guardian

Putin Sanctions Abu Ghraib Soldiers and Guantanamo Officials

Moscow has retaliated against #Obama in an awfully odd way – by sanctioning the abusive soldiers of Abu Ghraib and the officials in charge of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

If former Abu Ghraib prison guard Lyndee England ever wants to vacation in Russia, she is set to be disappointed – #Russian President Vladimir Putin just banned her from ever entering the country.

England, who lives in Fort Ashby, WV since being paroled after serving time for torturing Iraqi prisoners and posing for photos, was added to the Russian list of U.S. officials, lawmakers, friends of President Obama, and Democratic donors who are banned from traveling to Russia. The list was announced Saturday in Russia in response to the latest round of U.S. sanctions on Russian defense, energy, and financial entities.

Putin also sanctioned Charles Graner – the father of England’s child – as well as Abu Ghraib prisoner abusers Ivan Frederick, Javal Davis, Sabrina Dawn Harman, Jeremy Sivits, and Israel Rivera. Janis Leigh Karpinsky, the commander of the prison at the time of the abuse, and Steven L. Jordan, who led the interrogations there, are also on Putin’s sanctions list.

Retired Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003-2004, is now also banned from traveling to Russia, as is Rear Adm. Richard Butler, the current commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the military command in charge of the Cuban prison.

Putin also sanctioned Senior Judge for the U.S. District Court Gladys Kessler, who the Kremlin said Saturday “recognized the legitimacy of forceful termination of the hunger strike in special prison ‘Guantanamo.’” But Moscow may have aimed its fire at the wrong person.

Kessler ruled on motions in 2006 and 2013 brought by Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strikes who argued that their force feeding constituted torture. While she ruled that she did not have jurisdiction to stop the force feeding, she urged the president to end the practice.

“The President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority—and power—to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay," she wrote in her 2013 ruling. "It is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as statements from the organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating and degrading process.”

Moscow knows the new sanctions on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo officials won’t have much practical effect. But the fact the measures were made public shows that Putin is trying to bolster his argument that the U.S., rather than Russia, is the country that's egregiously violating human rights and international law.

“We are often told our actions are illegitimate, but when I ask, ‘Do you think everything you do is legitimate?’ they say ‘yes,’ Putin said at a press conference in March. “Then, I have to recall the actions of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, where they either acted without any UN sanctions or completely distorted the content of such resolutions, as was the case with Libya."

Putin added, "Our partners, especially in the United Sates, always clearly formulate their own geopolitical and state interests and follow them with persistence. Then, using the principle ‘You’re either with us or against us’ they draw the whole world in. And those who do not join in get ‘beaten’ until they do.” The Deaily Beats

Putin: Taskforce at Malaysia MH17 crash site not enough, full-scale intl team needed

Russian President Vladimir Putin.(AFP Photo / Alexei Nikolsky)

The tragic Malaysian #MH17 flight crash must not be politicised and the international experts on the scene should be able to carry out their work in complete safety, Russian President Vladimir #Putin said.

“There are already representatives of #Donetsk and Lugansk working there, as well as representatives of the emergencies ministry of Ukraine and others. But this is not enough,” Putin said officially commenting on the tragic event on Sunday.

“This task force is not enough,” Putin emphasized. “We need more, we need a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of ICAO, the relevant international commission.”

“We must do everything to provide security for the international experts on the site of the tragedy,” Putin stressed, adding that Russia will also do everything in its power to help shift the Ukrainian conflict from a military phase into a political discussion.

“We need to do everything to provide its [ICAO commission’s] safety, to provide the humanitarian corridors necessary for its work,” Putin added.

“In the meantime, nobody should and has no right to use this tragedy to achieve their ‘narrowly selfish’ political goals,” Putin stated.

“We repeatedly called upon all conflicting sides to stop the bloodshed immediately and sit down at the negotiating table,” the President reminded. “I can say with confidence that if military operations were not resumed on June 28 in eastern Ukraine, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened.”

In the meantime, Russia has introduced its own draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for an impartial investigation of Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in Ukraine, Russia’s ambassador to UN Vitaly Churkin said.

‘Yes, we did it,” Churkin told reported answering the question about Russia’s draft. “Just to show what we are talking about. The difference is that in our draft it is absolutely clear it is indeed an impartial international investigation under the under the guidance of ICAO.”

According to the latest figures from the Donetsk authorities, 247 out of 298 bodies have been recovered from the crash site. OSCE confirmed that a train with bodies of the victims is being stationed at a railway station in Torez and is set to depart for Donetsk. The bodies are being kept in especially refrigerated cars.

A team of ISCE experts and four Ukrainian forensics analysts are the only experts who have so far reached the area and are working on the investigation. A team of 12 Malaysian experts is yet to arrive at the crash site. Experts from other European nations, including the Netherlands, France. Germany and the UK are en route to Donetsk.

The OSCE team has claimed that the black boxes have not been recovered, yet Aleksandr Boroday, the republic’s prime minister, told reporters that DPR might potentially be in possession of the MH17 black boxes. "What we have is just some components of the plane. We are not experts; we think that they may be black boxes but we're not sure." RT

US prosecutors refuse to review jailed Russian pilot’s case

Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko (RIA Novosti)

Prosecutors in New York City rejected a request to review the case of #Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence. The petition asked them to consider unlawful actions that have allegedly taken place during his detention.

"The Prosecutor's Office claims that even taking into account the new evidence, the court should not conduct additional investigation or have another hearings on Yaroshenko’s case," defense lawyer Aleksey Tarasov told RIA Novosti.

The violations during Yaroshenko’s arrest included torture, abduction, and backdated fabrication of his deportation order by the US.

The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said in a 30-page reply that even if the facts presented by Yaroshenko’s defense are all true, his sentence should remain in place.

"We will have an opportunity to object to prosecutors conclusion in court before June 30. We will definitely be submitting our written objections,” Tarasov said.

The defense lawyer added that he is flying to Moscow on Thursday to meet with the Russian Foreign Ministry and Yaroshenko’s family, to decide what the next step should be.

Yaroshenko was abducted by American special agents in Liberia back in 2010 and forwarded to the US without notification to Russian authorities or his family. In September 2011, he was found guilty of conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the US and sentenced to 20 years behind bars. Moscow believes the pilot was unjustly imprisoned.

Yaroshenko is currently in prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey, and has been complaining about his health.

The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed “indignation” with the lack of medical attention the pilot was receiving. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted that Yaroshenko be fully examined by medical professionals from a Russian diplomatic facility.

Following a number of complaints and diplomatic pressure, Yaroshenko was examined by five US doctors in February. RT

Russian Lawmakers Cancel Resolution Allowing Use Of Military In Ukraine

MOSCOW (AP) — On Russian President Vladimir #Putin's request, the upper house of #Russian parliament on Wednesday canceled a resolution allowing the use of military in #Ukraine.

The vote comes a day after Putin asked lawmakers to rescind his earlier request for using troops in Ukraine. He said that his move is intended to help support peace process in Ukraine, which began a weeklong cease-fire Friday.

Putin needs to show his support for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's peace plan ahead of Friday's European Union summit to avoid further Western sanctions. The EU has warned it could introduce new sanctions that would target entire sectors of the Russian economy if Moscow fails to help de-escalate the crisis.

On Tuesday, Putin urged Ukraine to extend the truce and sit down for talks with the rebels. He argued that the Ukrainian demand that the insurgents lay down their weapons within a week was unrealistic, explaining that they would be reluctant to disarm for fear of government reprisals. He also called on Ukraine to adopt constitutional amendments and other legal changes that would protect the rights of Russian-speakers in the east.

The cease-fire has been repeatedly broken by sporadic clashes, and it was violated again Tuesday when rebels used a shoulder-fired missile to down a Ukrainian military helicopter, killing nine. The attack, which came after the rebels pledged to respect the cease-fire, prompted Poroshenko to warn that he may end the truce ahead of time.

Putin's March 1 request to parliament for the use of military in Ukraine came days after Ukraine's pro-Russian president was chased from power following months of street protests. Russia sent troops that quickly overran Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, setting the stage for Russia to annex it after a hastily called referendum.

In April, a mutiny erupted in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian insurgents seized official buildings, declared their regions independent and fought government troops. Huffington Post

Russia launches Baltic war games alongside NATO’s

RIA Novosti / Igor Zarembo

The Baltic Sea and skies are getting crowded as #Russia launches military training of its assault forces in the exclave of Kaliningrad in answer to the double war-games being conducted by joint #NATO forces on the territory of the three #Baltic States.

 NATO’s decision to conduct dual war games next to Russian borders in the Baltic has not been left unaddressed by Russia’s Defense Ministry, which prepared a surprise training of first strike forces – marines, paratroopers and long-range bombers - right in the backyard of the NATO military maneuvers.

“We conduct military training simultaneously with the international war games that have started in Europe, Saber Strike-2014 and BALTOPS-2014,” said the ministry’s press service.

Zubr air-cushioned landing craft (RIA Novosti / Igor Chuprin)

 Defense Ministry noted that the military might engaged in training in the Kaliningrad Region is by all means comparable with the NATO’s forces concentrated on the nearby territory of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where Saber Strike-2014 is conducted on June 9-20 and sea-based BALTOPS-2014 training held in the Baltic on June 6-21.

The Russian maneuvers involve the use of naval groups, marines, landing operations of airborne forces, air defense training and firing exercise of front-line aviation.

“All-arms naval groups will maintain border and sea communication defense, and will perform training to search and destroy hypothetical aggressor’s submarines and combat ships,” the ministry commented to RBC news outlet.

Russian army amphibious ship RFS Kaliningrad approaches the dock (Reuters / Agencja Gazeta)

 The paratrooper division from Pskov will be training operational deployment to Kaliningrad, whereas marines will be training defending the coastal line from possible sea-borne landing and will also perform isolation and elimination of illegal armed groups.

The Air Force is to provide fire support with Su-34 fighter-bombers and Mi-24 assault helicopters.

Su-34.(RIA Novosti / Vladimir Astapkovich)

 Deployment of supersonic Tu-22M3 long-range strategic maritime strike bombers, some of which have just the day before finished training in the Black Sea, has also been announced. Together with the air defense forces they will patrol the area to make sure the airspace of the training is securely sealed off.

NATO’s training in the Baltic is an annual event yet this time the number of troops taking part has been augmented considerably. In 2013 there were 1,800 troops involved, while Saber Strike 2014 has become the largest-ever, with 4,700 troops and over 800 military vehicles, such as M2 Bradley, M1126 Stryker, and various APCs: XA-180, XA-202 and M113 taking part in the training.

Besides the two NATO war-games, the Baltic States are holding Baltic Host 2014 military cooperation training of their own near Riga.

Mi-24.(RIA Novosti / Pavel Lisitsyn)

 Saber Strike 2014 has hosted troops from Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Great Britain, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and the US.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already dubbed even the rotational military build-up near the Russian borders as an act of hostility directly violating the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, Lavrov’s First Deputy Vladimir Titov told Interfax.

With the background of developments in Ukraine, the beef-up of NATO’s military presence near Russian borders, “just like during the 08.08.08 war in the North Caucasus, it rather creates additional problems instead of helping to solve them, Titov said.

On Monday Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after meeting his Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja that, “The artificial attempt to continue NATO's eastward expansion, progression of the military infrastructure to the east, closer to Russia's borders, is counterproductive.”
Source: RT

Putin denies trying to destabilise Ukraine

President Vladimir #Putin may have been excluded from the G7 but he is still making his presence felt.

He has given an interview to French journalists which was recorded in Sochi – the venue where the G8 should have been before the Ukraine crisis.

Various issues were covered including Syria, sanctions and relations with Europe. But it was Ukraine which was the main topic of conversation.

He was asked for his response to US claims of having proof that #Russia was trying to destabilise its neighbour.

“If they have proof they have to show it. Everybody has seen the US Secretary of State showing at the UN Security Council the proof of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. He showed then a tube with a substance that could well have been washing powder. To say something is one thing, to provide proof is another,” answered Putin.

Despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the condemnation of the Kyiv government Putin did not rule out meeting Ukraine’s president-elect (Petro Poroshenko) when he attends the D-Day commemorations.

“I think that Mr. Poroshenko has a unique opportunity,” Putin said. “His hands are still clean, he can still stop this reprisal operation and start a direct dialogue with the citizens of the East of his own country.” Euro News

Eurasian Economic Union: ‘Trade not politics’

The pact is intended to boost co-operation between the ex-Soviet neighbours so they can exploit their economic potential and strengthen their positions in global markets.

There were supposed to be four flags shown on the banks of giant TV screens at the signing ceremony held in Kazakhstan’s oil-funded boomtown capital Astana, but the yellow and blue of Ukraine was missing undermined Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dream of drawing the former Communist states closer together.

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev stressed this was about trade, not politics: “The union is economic and doesn’t touch on questions of independence, the political sovereignty of the states taking part in the integration process.”

Moscow admits the new alliance will cost it dear. #Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said Belarus and Kazakhstan received about $6 billion (4.4 billion euros) annually from Russia in direct and indirect support, and said that could increase by $30 billion (22 billion euros) if all trade restrictions were lifted in 2015.

But Russia’s #Putin thinks it is worth it. He told the audience in Astana: “The mutual-benefit of the integration process is already proving itself in practice: the economic cooperation of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is widening; the structure of trade is developing, the proportion of high-technical goods is expanding in the general structure; the competitive edge of our countries in the world economy is getting stronger.”

With a population of 170 million, the countries in the Eurasian Economic Union have combined GDP the equivalent of 1.7 trillion euros.

By comparison the European Union has 505 million people and their economies total 13 trillion euros.

But Kazakhstan and Russia have one-fifth of the world’s natural gas reserves and 15 percent of global oil reserves.

The creation of a common energy market is for the future, but the new union reinforces Putin’s drive to show Russia that will not be isolated by sanctions, a message he underlined by reaching a 300 billion euro gas supply deal with China last week.

The Eurasian Economic Union – which follows years of tense and difficult negotiations – guarantees the free transit of goods, services, capital and workforces and coordinates policy for the members’ financial systems, but it stops short of introducing a single currency.

Independent analysts have said the trio’s hopes of economically rivalling the European Union, United States or China are unrealistic, even when the single market starts operating fully in 10 years time.
Source: Euro One

Demonstrators in Abkhazia Storm Presidential Building

Thousands of opposition demonstrators were reported to have gathered to protest against the government of Abkaz President Alexander Ankvab.

Demonstrators have stormed the presidential headquarters in Georgia's #Russian-backed breakaway province of Abkhazia, demanding the resignation of a leader they accuse of corruption and misrule, a news report said.

Several thousand opposition supporters gathered Tuesday in the capital of the Black Sea coastal region to vent anger at #President Alexander Ankvab's government and demand reforms, Interfax reported.

Some opposition representatives later held talks with Ankvab in his office but others broke windows and doors and about 30 entered the building through a shattered window, it said. They later left the building.

Interfax quoted the head of the country's Security Council, Nugzar Ashuba, as saying Ankvab had also left, but the chief of the military, Mirab Kishmarai, was quoted as saying talks were continuing.

Raul Khadzhimba, an opposition leader who lost a presidential election to Ankvab in 2011, said the president had agreed to dismiss his cabinet but that opponents would press for Ankvab himself to step down, Interfax reported.

"We will not leave until we get what we want," Khadzhimba was quoted as telling opposition supporters.

Abkhazia broke from Georgian rule in a 1992-1993 war after the Soviet collapse. Moscow recognized it as an independent state after Russia fought a five-day war with Georgia in 2008, and at the same time strengthened control over the region.

Only a handful of other nations recognize Abkhazia as an independent state.

Opponents of Ankvab, a former prime minister and vice president who has survived several reported assassination attempts, accuse him of corruption and authoritarian rule over the lush region that borders the Russian resort city of Sochi.

Some critics including Khadzhimba have also accused Ankvab's government of mishandling the relationship with Russia and relying too much on Moscow, while others want Abkhazia to become part of Russia.

Abkhazia "cannot keep going with the flow, relying exclusively on subsidies from the Russian Federation. This is a road to nowhere," Interfax quoted parliamentary deputy Akhra Bzhania as saying.
The Moscow Times

Russia will respond to increased NATO activity near border: top general

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will retaliate against increased NATO activity near its border, its top general said on Friday, in the latest sign of tensions with the western alliance over Ukraine.

Since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March, NATO has moved to reassure its nervous eastern European allies by stepping up military exercises in the region and temporarily deploying additional ships and planes.

"NATO's military groupings in the Baltic states, Poland and Romania are being built up, as well as the military presence of the bloc in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Sea," General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff of the Russian armed forces, told a defense conference in Moscow.

"The intensity, the operational and combat readiness of the alliance's troops is being increased near the Russian border. In these circumstances ... we have to take retaliatory measures."

A NATO spokeswoman said the measures were purely defensive.

Russia has always opposed NATO enlargement in eastern Europe, a process that has expanded the alliance's membership to 28 nations including three former Soviet republics and a handful of other ex-Warsaw Pact states once dominated by Moscow. President Vladimir Putin said last month that his annexation of Crimea was partly influenced by NATO enlargement.

Russia has concentrated tens of thousands of troops across the border from eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists have declared independence from Kiev, but its deputy defense minister said on Friday they would all be pulled back within days.

Asked to comment on Gerasimov's remarks, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said NATO had taken appropriate measures to enhance its members' collective security "in light of the new security situation created by Russia's illegal aggression against Ukraine".

"These are defensive measures, fully in line with our international obligations. NATO's core job is to defend allies and this is what we are doing," she said.

She said NATO urged Russia to respect its international commitments, pull back all its forces from close to the Ukraine border and stop destabilizing Ukraine.

The crisis in Ukraine, which holds a presidential election on Sunday, has left ties between Russia and the Western alliance at their lowest ebb since the Cold War.

#NATO last month suspended all practical cooperation with #Russia to protest its absorption of Crimea.

But despite tension over Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said earlier this month that the bloc did not expect to base large numbers of new combat troops in eastern Europe. -- Yahoo News

‘Nonsense!’ Putin slams Kiev’s stance on detained Russian reporters

Accusations of illegally transporting weapons and “aiding terrorism” against Russian journalists detained in eastern Ukraine are “nonsense and delirium,” President Vladimir told reporters, calling the situation “unacceptable.”

“It’s absolutely unacceptable what is happening with the journalists, because the LifeNews journalists are now being accused of all mortal sins, including that they were selling weapons, which is nonsense, utter nonsense,” Vladimir Putin told the media in Shanghai, where he was for a two-day visit.
Kiev’s crackdown on reporters working in Ukraine will affect Moscow’s relations with “new Ukrainian authorities,” Putin warned.

“There are also foreign citizens who work for Russian mass media being detained. This is unacceptable,” Putin said, adding that from the beginning this situation will call into question the legitimacy of “all these political procedures.”
 
“In any case, political process, including going on legitimization of the existing authorities, is of course a positive step. At the same time, it will be difficult for us to build relations with people who come to power amid the ongoing punitive [military] operation in the south-east of Ukraine and hinder the work of press,” he said, adding that they not only “hinder, but behave more and more aggressively.”
 
“From the point of view of objectivity of the results, this will raise questions and I really hope that our partners in Europe and the US will hear and understand, eventually, that is going on,” Putin added.

May 21, 2014. President Vladimir Putin talks to Russian journalists in Shanghai. (RIA Novosti/Alexei Druzhinin)

The two journalists, Oleg Sidyakin and Marat Saichenko, working for #Russia’s LifeNews TV channel, were detained by Kiev loyalist troops on Sunday, presumably near Kramatorsk in the Donetsk Region.
While the correspondents’ whereabouts are currently unknown, they are “alive, healthy and safe”, a member of Russia’s presidential Human Rights Council negotiating with Kiev authorities, Maksim Shevchenko, RIA Novosti reports.

Kiev accuses the two reporters of aiding “terrorists,” claiming that portable anti-aircraft missiles were found in the trunk of their car.

LifeNews dismissed the accusations as “unfounded speculations” and assumed that the detention of its staff came in revenge on their people for releasing footage showing Ukrainian troops using a UN-badged strike helicopter in the Donetsk Region.

On Wednesday, a video message from Saichenko emerged on YouTube. In this clip, Saichenko confesses that he and his colleague concealed the fact that they were journalists while at the border control in Borispol Airport outside Kiev, because they were afraid of being “expelled from the country.”

“We said we were going to attend a concert,” Saichenko says in the video. “At the same time, we left our journalist credentials in Moscow to hide this [profession],” he continues.

“From Kiev we came to Donetsk. We got credentials and a journalism license from the Donetsk People’s Republic representative to cover the referendum,” Saichenko says.

While working in the region, Sidyakin and Saichenko “were in contact with self-defense forces and citizens” and “didn’t have any contacts with Ukrainian army and authorities.”
 
“We were detained by Ukrainian army officers on May 18," Saichenko says in the video.
However, LifeNews General Director Ashot Gabrelyanov, commenting on the video, would not rule out that it had been recorded under pressure. Gabrelyanov, who also reposted the video, compared SBU to terrorists saying they were “acting like Al-Qaeda.”
 
"It is not clear who posted this video, but I think it was SBU (Security Service of Ukraine)," he said, according to ITAR-TASS. "Lawyers and even international observers were not allowed to the journalists. They may have been drugged." He also stressed that the correspondents had all the necessary documents for border crossing.

LifeNews has sent a letter to the US State Department, which parroting Kiev’s position, questioned whether the detainees are journalists at all.

“The Ukrainian Security Services, according to reports, have detained a number of people who were in possession of fake journalist credentials issued by the non-existent Donetsk People’s Republic,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a daily press briefing.

State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)

LifeNews offered to provide the State Department with any information on the detainees' journalistic record that it might want.

"The management of the LifeNews television channel has reacted to a statement by Jennifer Psaki, a spokesperson for the US State Department, in which she expressed doubt that Oleg Sidyakin and Marat Saichenko are reporters. In a statement issued in response, [the LifeNews managers] drew the attention of the American diplomatic service to factual evidence of the abduction of the LifeNews reporters and use of violence against them," LifeNews said in a press release.

It urged the State Department to "weigh all the facts and make a decision on the basis of that sacred principle that is defended in American society so zealously the principle of freedom of expression."

The statement also stressed that no evidence had yet been offered to back the Ukrainian Security Service's allegations that the purpose of the visit by Sidyakin and Saichenko to Ukraine was to "aid terrorists."

Russia has accused the US of turning a blind eye to the crimes committed against journalists opposing the Kiev regime and justifying the arrests of foreign journalists in Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the British Foreign office has confirmed that its citizen, RT-contributing #journalist Graham Phillips, has been detained in #Ukraine.

Phillips was detained at a checkpoint in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, on Tuesday and was taken to Kiev overnight by the Ukrainian National Guard.  ---RT

Replies to journalists’ questions following a visit to China

Replies to journalists’ questions following a visit to China

Vladimir Putin answered journalists’ questions at the end of his official visit to the People’s Republic of China.

QUESTION: Mr President, what are the gas contract’s main points and what was the stumbling block that made the talks take so long? What was the final price agreed on?

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR #PUTIN: Let me say a few words first about #Russia and China’s bilateral relations. There are plenty of visits, but yesterday’s visit and its practical continuation today were very big events in bilateral relations between the People’s Republic of #China and the Russian Federation, and produced many concrete agreements that reflect our increased political cooperation too. I am referring here to the signing of the political memorandum and the establishment of new mechanisms for cooperation between our two countries and coordinating our positions, and also to our economic cooperation, which focuses above all on particular regions of the Russian Federation.

In this particular case we are looking above all at Central Russia, Russia’s western regions, and at economic cooperation that concerns a broad range of production sectors. Here, the newly signed agreements – 51 in total – represent a value of tens of billions of dollars, and as I said, this concerns different production sectors.
As for the contract you asked about, yes, this is indeed a historic event for Russia’s gas sector. It is historic even looking back to the Soviet era too. This is the biggest contract in terms of sale by volume to any one country in the sector’s entire history, whether the Soviet period or modern Russia.

Reaching this stage really did require some very complicated work at the expert level. Our Chinese friends drive a hard bargain as negotiators. As you know, the work went on yesterday until half past three in the morning, and today, almost right from the morning, they were back at centre field once more.
But through mutual compromises we managed to settle on contract terms that are not just acceptable conditions but actually satisfy both sides. In the end, both sides were happy with the compromises made on the price and other conditions.

The relevant decisions still need to be adopted at government level in both the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, but the deal has been done now.
I also note that this project’s implementation will see us create what will be with no exaggeration one of the biggest construction sites in the world over the next four years. On the Russian side alone, we will need to carry out work at new fields on our territory, and these are very big fields – the gas fields of Kovykta and Chayanda. Total proven recoverable resources at these fields come to three trillion cubic metres of gas, and in actual fact the resources there are even higher.

They ensure us guaranteed supplies for 50 or so years, and I want to stress that this includes supplies for the domestic market. Russia alone will invest a total of around $55 billion in this project. It is hard to give an exact figure, but I think we will see at least $20 billion in investment from China too.

This is not just about developing gas production but also about the gas-chemical industry, a helium plant, new companies, new infrastructure, thousands of new jobs – and this is not exaggerating – thousands of modern, high-tech new jobs, and infrastructure development at the production sites and along the transport routes.
This infrastructure will be used not only by the gas industry and gas transporters, but also by the local authorities for other economic sectors in the regions concerned. Therefore, this is a big event in the gas sector, not just in Russia but it would be no exaggeration to say it is a major event for the entire global energy sector and certainly for Asia.

We should note too that, first, now that the contract has been signed, work will begin immediately, and second, this gives us the chance to start work on our next project with our Chinese partners, namely, planning a western supply route from the resource base in Western Siberia.

Finally, and also very importantly, this gives us the chance to carry out our plans to develop Russia’s gas sector by linking the eastern and western production regions and connecting them with the necessary infrastructure, thus making it possible if need be to diversify supplies from west to east and east to west.

QUESTION: And the price?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: The price satisfies both sides. It is pegged to the gas price and gas fuel price, as is the case with all of our international contracts with our Western partners, our partners in Western Europe. This is a balanced general formula for calculating the price. The final price will be calculated using this formula, and this satisfies Gazprom and our Chinese partners. 

QUESTION: Mr President, Ukraine is the thorniest issue in global politics at the moment. You instructed the Defence Ministry to withdraw Russian forces from the Ukrainian border and have them return to their garrisons. But the West (the Pentagon and NATO) do not yet see evidence of this withdrawal. Could you explain the situation and say what is actually happening?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Our forces were not on the border anyway. They were indeed quite close to the border, as you probably heard. Some time ago, I gave the Defence Ministry the order to withdraw them to the training sites, the test grounds. These sites are also in neighbouring regions, in Rostov Region, quite near to the border. But now the Defence Ministry has received a new order to withdraw them from these test grounds too.

Let me stress once more that we are doing this not because we do not dare to keep our forces in those regions – after all, we are a sovereign state and can station our forces where we wish. We are doing this as an additional step to help create a favourable environment for the upcoming presidential election in Ukraine. We made this decision so as to put an end to speculations on this subject.
If someone cannot see what is happening there, perhaps they should take a closer look. The fact of the matter is that there is quite a large number of forces there, quite a lot of hardware. Just withdrawing them all requires some serious preparation in itself, including organising their transportation. But I think that with the good weather, they will soon be able to see all of this from space.

QUESTION: Mr President, let me come back to the presidential election in Ukraine. Do you think the election will go ahead and who do you think might win?
Let me ask another second question, if I may. Two of my colleagues, a cameraman and a reporter for LifeNews were detained in Ukraine. They are accused of terrorism. They are journalists but are being accused of terrorism, interrogated, handcuffed, have sacks put over their heads. Can anything be done here?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: On the first issue, you have no doubt heard my position already. My view is that what is important is not the election itself but to organise relations with all of Ukraine’s regions so that people, whether in the west, south, east or north of the country all feel that they are full-fledged citizens, and so that ethnic minorities have full rights as citizens, including the right to use their native language.
In this context, in my view, given that the Ukrainian constitution still legally in force at this moment does not make it possible to hold an election when the country has a president, President Yanukovych, still legally in office – and I stress that in legal terms he is still the president in office – it would seem easier in this situation to first hold a referendum on all the basic issues, hold a referendum on the constitution and adopt it, and then on the basis of the new constitution elect a president and a parliament and form a government.

I think this would be a lot more logical and would bring greater stability. But, with the support of European countries and the United States, the Ukrainian authorities have made a different decision. In any case the political processes underway, including on legitimising the current authorities, are a positive step of course.
At the same time, it will be very difficult for us to build relations with those who come to power with punitive operations still underway in southeast Ukraine, and who obstruct the media’s work. What’s more, they are not just obstructing the press but are behaving more and more aggressively.

In terms of legitimacy and objectivity of the results, this will raise big questions for us of course. I hope very much that our partners in Europe and the United States will finally hear and understand what is going on.
What is happening now with journalists is unacceptable. The journalists from LifeNews are being accused of all manner of heinous crimes, including that they were carrying weapons, but this is utter nonsense and complete rubbish. Foreign citizens working for Russian media outlets are also being detained. This is completely unacceptable. Of course, there will be big questions right from the start on the legitimacy of all of these political procedures.
To be continued. . . . . .  Kremlin.ru

Far Right Fever for a Europe Tied to Russia

Aymeric Chauprade of the National Front has said that Russia “has become the hope of the world against new totalitarianism.” Credit Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

LE CHESNAY, France — At a rally last week near the Palace of Versailles, France’s largest far right party, the National Front, deployed all the familiar theatrics and populist themes of nationalist movements across Europe.

A standing-room-only crowd waved the national flag, joined in a boisterous singing of the national anthem and applauded as speakers denounced freeloading foreigners and, with particular venom, the European Union.

But the event, part of an energetic push for votes by France’s surging far right ahead of elections this week for the European Parliament, also promoted an agenda distant from the customary concerns of conservative voters: why Europe needs to break its “submission” to the United States and look to Russia as a force for peace and a bulwark against moral decay.

While the European Union has joined Washington in denouncing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the chaos stirred by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Europe’s right-wing populists have been gripped by a contrarian fever of enthusiasm for Russia and its president, Vladimir V. #Putin.

“Russian influence in the affairs of the far right is a phenomenon seen all over Europe,” said a study by Political Capital Institute, a Hungarian research group. It predicted that far right parties, “spearheaded by the French National Front,” could form a pro-Russian bloc in the European Parliament or, at the very least, amplify previously marginal pro-Russian voices.

Pro-Russian sentiment remains largely confined to the fringes of European politics, though Mr. Putin also has more mainstream admirers and allies on both the right and the left, including Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, and Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor. Mr. Putin’s authoritarian leanings and pugnacious nationalism have generated widespread and diverse opposition to him across Europe; at a gay pride event in Brussels on Saturday, marchers wore masks featuring Mr. Putin’s face, colored pink and daubed with blue eye shadow and red lipstick.

Even among far right groups, the sympathy for Russia and suspicion of Washington are in part tactical: Focused on clawing back power from the European Union’s bureaucracy, they seize any cause that puts them at odds with policy makers in Brussels and the conventional wisdom of European elites.

But they also reflect a general crumbling of public trust in the beliefs and institutions that have dominated Europe since the end of World War II, including the Continent’s relationship with the United States.

“Europe is a big sick body,” said Alain de Benoist, a French philosopher and a leading figure in a French school of political thought known as the “new right.” Mr. de Benoist said Russia “is now obviously the principal alternative to American hegemony.” Mr. Putin, he added, is perhaps “not the savior of humanity,” but “there are many good reasons to be pro-Russian.”

Some of Russia’s European fans, particularly those with a religious bent, are attracted by Mr. Putin’s image as a muscular foe of homosexuality and decadent Western ways. Others, like Aymeric Chauprade, a foreign policy adviser to the National Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen, are motivated more by geopolitical calculations that emphasize Russia’s role as a counterweight to American power.

Russia has added to its allure through the financing, mostly with corporate money, of media, research groups and other European organizations that promote Moscow’s take on the world. The United States also supports foreign groups that agree with it, but Russia’s boosters in Europe, unlike its leftist fans during the Cold War, now mostly veer to the far right and sometimes even fascism, the cause Moscow claims to be fighting in Ukraine.

Hungary’s Jobbik, one of Europe’s most extreme nationalist parties and a noisy cheerleader for Moscow, is now under investigation by the Hungarian authorities amid allegations that it has received funding from Russia and, in a case involving one of its leading candidates for the European Parliament, that it has worked for Russian intelligence.

No longer dismissed, as they were for decades, as fringe cranks steeped in anti-Semitism and other noxious beliefs from Europe’s fascist past, the National Front and like-minded counterparts elsewhere on the Continent are expected to post strong gains in this week’s election, which begins on Thursday in Britain and the Netherlands and then rolls across Europe through Sunday.

But they are unlikely to form a cohesive bloc: Nationalists from different countries tend to squabble, not cooperate.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, a group zealously opposed to the European Union, and a critic of American foreign policy, is already engaged in a bitter feud with Ms. Le Pen.

But Mr. Farage and Ms. Le Pen have at least found some common ground on Russia. The British politician recently named Mr. Putin as the world leader he most admired “as an operator but not as a human being,” he told a British magazine.

Ms. Le Pen has also expressed admiration for Mr. Putin and called for a strategic alliance with the Kremlin, proposing a “Pan-European union” that would include Russia.

 

In general, said Doru Frantescu, policy director of VoteWatch Europe, a Brussels research group, the affections of far right Europeans for Mr. Putin are simply opportunistic rather than ideological, “a convergence of interests toward weakening the E.U.”

This convergence has pushed the far right into a curious alignment with the far left. In European Parliament votes this year on the lifting of tariffs and other steps to help Ukraine’s fragile new government, which Russia denounces as fascist but the European Union supports, legislators at both ends of the political spectrum banded together to oppose assisting Ukraine.

“Russia has become the hope of the world against new totalitarianism,” Mr. Chauprade, the National Front’s top European Parliament candidate for the Paris region, said in a speech to Russia’s Parliament in Moscow last year.

When Crimea held a referendum in March on whether the peninsula should secede from Ukraine and join Russia, Mr. Chauprade joined a team of election monitors organized by a pro-Russian outfit in Belgium, the Eurasian Observatory for Elections and Democracy. The team, which pronounced the referendum free and fair, also included members of Austria’s far right Freedom Party; a Flemish nationalist group in Belgium; and the Jobbik politician in Hungary accused of spying for Russia.

Luc Michel, the Belgian head of the Eurasian Observatory, which receives some financial support from Russian companies but promotes itself as independent and apolitical, champions the establishment of a new “Eurasian” alliance, stretching from Vladivostok in Russia to Lisbon in Portugal and purged of American influence. The National Front, preoccupied with recovering sovereign powers surrendered to Brussels, has shown little enthusiasm for a new Eurasian bloc. But it, too, bristles at Europe’s failure to project itself as a global player independent from America, and looks to Russia for help.

The European Union, said Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a member of the French Parliament and the niece of Marine Le Pen, “is the poodle of the United States.”

Russia offers the prospect of a new European order free of what Mr. Chauprade, in his own speech, described as its servitude to a “technocratic elite serving the American and European financial oligarchy” and its “enslavement by consumerist urges and sexual impulses.”

The view that Europe has been cut adrift from its traditional moral moorings gained new traction this month when Conchita Wurst, a bearded Austrian drag queen, won the annual Eurovision Song Contest. Russian officials and the Russian Orthodox Church bemoaned the victory — over, among others, singing Russian twins — as evidence of Europe’s moral disarray.

At the National Front’s pre-election rally, Mr. Chauprade mocked the “bearded lady” and won loud applause with a passionate plaint that Europeans had become a rootless mass of “consumers disconnected from their natural attachments — the family, the nation and the divine.”

Source: NY Times

Train derails near Moscow, killing five

Moscow (CNN) -- A cargo train derailed Tuesday and crashed into a passenger train near Moscow, killing five people and injuring 15, according to preliminary information from the scene, Russia's Interior Ministry said.

The accident took place at Naro-Fominsk, southwest of Moscow, the Emergency Ministry said.

The cargo train crashed into the last three carriages of a passenger train that was traveling from Moscow to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. A total of 394 tickets were purchased for the passenger train, the Interior Ministry said.