“Russian President Vladimir Putin likely directed an effort by Moscow to try to swing the 2020 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump, according to an American intelligence report released on Tuesday that linked the Kremlin and allies of the former president.”
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“The report also punctured a counter-narrative pushed by Trump’s allies that China was interfering on Biden’s behalf, concluding that Beijing “did not deploy interference efforts.”
“China sought stability in its relationship with the United States and did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk blowback if caught,” the report said.
U.S. officials said they also saw efforts by Cuba, Venezuela and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to influence the election, although “in general, we assess that they were smaller in scale than those conducted by Russia and Iran.”
The Russian, Chinese and Cuban Embassies in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The Iranian mission to the United Nations and the Venezuelan Ministry of Information also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Moscow, Beijing and Tehran routinely deny allegations of cyberespionage and election interference.
The report assessed that Russian leaders “preferred that former President Trump win re-election despite perceiving some of his administration’s policies as anti-Russia,” with its authors adding, “We have high confidence in this assessment.””
“Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed Tuesday to extend the New START nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which is due to expire next month, according to Kremlin and White House summaries of a phone call between the leaders.
“They discussed both countries’ willingness to extend New START for five years, agreeing to have their teams work urgently to complete the extension by February 5,” the White House said.”
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“Formally called the “New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” the agreement limits Washington and Moscow’s deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each. It was signed in 2010, entered force on February 5, 2011 and was set to expire on its 10th anniversary.
New START is the last remaining nonproliferation agreement between the former Cold War superpower rivals, after another key nuclear accord, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, expired in August 2019.”
““The Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the report, which was co-signed by both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate committee, says. “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president” to WikiLeaks.
Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chair, comes under heavy criticism in the report for his “willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services” — this “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”
However, the report goes further than special counsel Robert Mueller did — it claims some information suggests Manafort and a longtime associate of his, Konstantin Kilimnik, were “connected” to the Russian government’s effort to hack and leak Democrats’ emails. These details are redacted, though.
The report also retells the story of how Roger Stone tried to get inside information on WikiLeaks’ plans at the behest of the Trump campaign. “Stone obtained information indicating that John Podesta would be a target of an upcoming release,” the report says. It also describes Jerome Corsi’s claims that Stone tried to get WikiLeaks to time the release of Podesta’s emails to distract from the Access Hollywood tape.
There are many other topics addressed in the report, including some criticism for how the FBI handled the “Steele dossier” allegations about Trump. There are also matters that remain murky — most notably, the purpose and extent of Manafort’s communications with Kilimnik, and the exact nature of the information Stone got regarding WikiLeaks.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic is lying in a coma in a Siberian hospital from a suspected poisoning — and his family and supporters allege Putin and his government are behind it.
They have good reason to suspect that. The Kremlin has a long, sordid history of poisoning political dissidents, defectors, and other enemies of the state. Indeed, this is actually the second time Navalny — the leader of Russia’s splintered opposition — is suspected of having been poisoned in just a little over a year.
On Thursday, Navalny drank some tea at a Siberian airport before boarding a flight to Moscow. He became ill on the aircraft, with a video purportedly showing the politician moaning and needing immediate medical attention.
The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, near Kazakhstan, where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital. But Navalny’s condition worsened, and he fell into a coma before he arrived at the facility.
Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Navalny is currently being treated, has since become the site of a frustrating standoff between Navalny’s family and supporters and the doctors overseeing his care. Navalny’s wife and supporters allege the doctors are controlled by the Kremlin and trying to cover up the poisoning attack instead of properly treating their patient.
The physicians say Navalny wasn’t poisoned but instead suffers from a “metabolic disorder” that leads to low blood sugar. “Poisons or traces of their presence in the body have not been identified,” Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief doctor at the Omsk emergency hospital, told reporters on Friday. “The diagnosis of ‘poisoning’ remains somewhere in the back of our minds, but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning.””
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“A medical plane sent by the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation arrived in Omsk on Friday to take the opposition leader to Germany for treatment. The Russian doctors initially blocked the transfer, saying Navalny wasn’t stable enough to travel, before finally allowing the German physicians to take a look at the patient’s condition.”
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“Late on Friday, the Russian physicians granted the transfer request, but the earliest he’d be transported would be Saturday morning, his team said.
Hanging over all the drama, though, are two pressing questions: Was Navalny actually poisoned? And if so, did Putin have anything to do it?
As of right now, we don’t have definitive answers to those questions — and we may never get them.”
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“Plausible deniability is baked into the cake of his authoritarian system. Everyone who works in the government knows what Putin wants without him having to explicitly ask. That means Kremlin operatives have the green light to pursue some of those goals — like knocking off a political rival — while officially keeping Putin out the loop.
That, in a sense, is how he gets what he wants without having his fingerprints on the government’s dirtiest actions.
So Putin could have ordered Navalny dead himself, but it’s equally possible that someone who wanted to make Putin happy did it on their own initiative.”
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“things aren’t looking too great for Putin right now. He’s overseeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, facing protests that question his leadership, and watching as his ally in Belarus faces nationwide calls to step down. With all that instability, Putin may have wanted to target his main political rival to send a strong message.”