Report Russia

Suspicions that the arrests of alleged cyber spies that have been taking place in Moscow since the middle of December are in some way connected to the US intelligence community’s allegations of Russian hacking of the DNC and Podesta have received more support from a report by the Russian news agency Interfax that Sergey Mikhailov – a former FSB officer – and Dmitry Dokuchaev – now also revealed to be an FSB officer and apparently Mikhailov’s deputy – are being charged with passing on information to the CIA.

Readers of The Duran may recall that back in October the British bank NatWest announced that it was withdrawing banking services to RT’s London branch.  At the time there was widespread speculation – and in the British media a great deal of gloating – that RT’s London branch might be forced to close.
At the time the withdrawal of banking services was announced I predicted it would fail to close RT’s London branch down

News reports which say that Dutch investigators are claiming that they are unable to decipher radar information provided them by the Russians in connection with the MH17 investigation, will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the MH17 investigations carefully.

The single most important fact known for certain about US President Trump’s and Russian President Putin’s first telephone conversation, with took place yesterday Saturday 28th January 2017, is that it lasted for a whole hour.
That is an unusually long time for two busy leaders such Trump and Putin to spend talking to each other.  It shows that they not only took the call seriously but that they used it to discuss the full range of US-Russia relations, and – perhaps most important of all – to become acquainted with each other.

The dragnet in Moscow of cyber experts caught up in what is increasingly looking like a spy inquiry continues to widen with news that a third individual – named as Dmitry Dokuchaev, whom The London Times calls “a cyber-spy and former hacker” (whatever that means) – has also been arrested on treason charges.

Russian President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has confirmed that President Putin is speaking over the telephone to US President Donald Trump tomorrow Saturday 28th January 2017.
This will be the first contact between the two Presidents since President Trump’s inauguration,
In the meantime President Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News has reiterated his intention to seek good relations with Russia, and to forge an alliance with Russia to fight ISIS together

Russian President Putin has conducted a video conference with the MiG Bureau today in connection with the commencement by the Russian military of the flight of the MiG-35 fighter.

The extent of Russia’s determination to prevent ISIS from overrunning the Syrian army’s defences in the besieged eastern desert town of Deir Ezzor is becoming increasingly clear.

The Russian media is reporting today that Ruslan Stoyanov, a manager working at the Kaspersky Lab, Russia’s leading cyber security and anti-virus provider, has been arrested by Russia’s counter-intelligence agency the FSB.
The FSB’s involvement, and the fact that Stoyanov is apparently being charged with treason, inevitably provokes speculation that he was providing information to the intelligence agency of some foreign government.

Reports from Deir Ezzor are sketchy, and it is clear that the crisis there is far from over.  However over the last few days there have been mounting indications that the worst of the crisis may be over, with the Syrian army apparently succeeding in seizing local hilltop positions and strongpoints from ISIS, as it seeks to break ISIS’s siege of Deir Ezzor’s vital airport.