As both President elect Trump’s and Russian President Putin’s press spokesmen both deny a claim published by the London Times of a planned Putin-Trump summit in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik – Trump’s spokesman called it “100% false” – the London Times incredibly still continues to lead with the story, which it sources to the usual anonymous officials.
One of the big unanswered questions about Russian economic policies which has baffled economic commentators since former Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin was reappointed to an advisory post by Russian President Putin a few months ago was what his plan for the Russian economy would be
It has also been interesting to see how it would differ from what the Russian government is already doing.
As was easily predicted, with every passing day the tissue of nonsense which is the Trump Dossier falls apart further.
Its many factual errors made that inevitable.
Perhaps the most interesting refutation of some of the facts it claims appears in an article in The Guardian by Andrei Soldatov
Russian President Putin and Turkish Erdogan had a further telephone conversation today, in what has now become a regular series of such calls.
As Washington descends into hysteria over the Russian hacking claims and the Dossier into Donald Trump’s supposed Russian connections, Moscow – the other capital involved in the scandal – remains calm.
Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s spokesman, denied the allegations in the Trump Dossier yesterday, just as the Russians have previously denied the hacking claims and the claims that they leaked the DNC and Podesta emails to Wikileaks.
Disclosure that the author of the ‘Trump Dossier’ is a former British intelligence agent comes just days after media reports circulated that it was British intelligence that first alerted US intelligence in October 2015 of Russia’s supposed interference in the US Presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.
This in turn begs the question of what if any role Britain has had in the whole scandal?
Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, gets grilled t0da7 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – on every foreign policy issue, with Russia dominating the conversation.
Tillerson however, broke rank with President-elect Trump, saying that Russia’s recent actions “disregarded American interests.” He went on to say that Russia has ‘no legal claim’ to Crimea and that “Russia today poses a danger” to the US.
That the so-called “dossier” on Donald Trump, which Buzzfeed has published in full, is largely the inventions of a single individual is easily established by reading its contents.
Whilst US President Obama in the last weeks of his Presidency churns out ever more sanctions against Russia, a group of 10 US Senators including five Republicans is said to be preparing to codify some of Obama’s Ukraine related sanctions into law.
Obama’s sanctions were made by Executive Order so without a formal law passed by Congress Trump as President can simply cancel them with the stroke of a pen.
Barack Obama remains determined to exit the Presidency in a blaze of petulance.
Yesterday he announced a further set of sanctions against Russia, using as his legal authority the Magnitsky Act.
