Report Russia

Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister Yury Borisov on Thursday let slip some information about ongoing Russian weapons programmes.

On the last full day of his Presidency, US President Obama was unable to resist meddling once more in the future policies of the incoming Donald Trump administration.
Obama’s comments unsurprisingly once more bring together his criticisms of the two men in the world whom he most viscerally objects to, and who it is clear in his own mind he has conflated: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has today confirmed that the Russians have extended an invitation to the US to join the Syrian peace talks in Astana, which is due to start on Monday.
It is not yet certain that US President Trump – due to be inaugurated tomorrow – will accept this offer, but the likelihood is that he will.

As Donald Trump edges towards the White House and calls for a deal with Russia, it might help him to assess what sort of deal the Russia would be looking for from him.
There is a vast pall of misunderstanding in the West about this subject in large part because Western coverage of Russia over the last decade has been so intense and distorted that it has distorted the understanding of even the most hardheaded of Western policy makers.
Firstly it is essential to put aside some of the common myths that become encrusted around this subject.

This article is published with the permission of the author, first published by The Saker.
In my recent article “Risks and Opportunities for 2017” I made a statement which shocked many readers. I wrote:

With Palmyra still under ISIS control, and with ISIS threatening to capture Deir Ezzor, the Russian military has once against blamed the military crisis in eastern Syria on the US.
The Russian military first did so in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Palmyra in December when it complained – rightly – that the reason ISIS was able to send troops to Palmyra from Mosul and Raqqa was because ISIS is under no real pressure there.

Following weeks of reports that the Russian air force was quietly providing air support to the Turkish army fighting ISIS in the strategic Syrian town of Al-Bab, confirmation has now finally come from Russia that this is indeed happening.
Indeed the Russians have confirmed that the Russian and Turkish air forces for the first time engaged in a joint air strike.

One of the most striking – though unreported – aspects of Donald Trump’s interview with The London Times and Bild-Zeitung is what Trump had to say about the state of the US military and of the US defence budget.

Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his long silence today, both about the Trump Dossier and about the campaign which has raged in the US around the alleged Russian involvement in the Clinton leaks.

The degree of paranoia within some parts of the US intelligence community about Donald Trump is best illustrated by what seem to be authoritative news reports that US spies have warned their Israeli counterparts against sharing Israeli secrets with Donald Trump’s administration lest it be leaked to the Russians.
The clear implication is that some parts of the US intelligence community do genuinely believe that Trump is somehow under the Kremlin’s control, or that the Kremlin has leverage over him.