The tragic plane crash near Sochi that claimed the lives of the majority of the Alexandrov choir, the flight crew and young journalists, also claimed the life of Elizaveta Glinka, known affectionately around the world as “Dr. Liza”.
The Russian government has given its first response to the US intelligence community report about alleged Russian interference in the US Presidential election. The response comes from Russian President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov (pictured), who is reported to have said the following
I’ve given up hoping that the mainstream media will ever produce anything beyond propaganda/fake news. In that spirit I’d like them to meet me half way.
Can you please produce entertaining propaganda as opposed to propaganda that is totally boring and unconvincing?
During the Cold War neither side would ever admit to any weakness and certainly not in public.
Russia, together with much of the Orthodox world, celebrates Christmas today 7th January 2017.
This is not due to theological difference. The Russian Orthodox Church retains the Julian Calendar, and by its reckoning today is 25th December 2016 ie. Christmas Day. Russia continued to use the Julian Calendar until February 1918, when the new Bolshevik government switched to West’s Gregorian Calendar, which is why the “October Revolution” which brought the Bolsheviks to power actually took place – according to the West’s calendar and to Russia’s present calendar – in November.
The French commentator Natalie Nougayrède has written an extraordinary piece in The Guardian, which hints that even if Donald Trump lifts US sanctions on Russia…
Angela Merkel will try to keep EU sanctions in place:
A week ago, following release of Grizzly Steppe, the FBI/Homeland Security report supposedly substantiating the US intelligence community’s report that Russian intelligence was behind the hacking of the DNC and of Podesta, I said that the Russian hacking scandal is starting more and more to resemble the Iraq WMD debacle, with one dodgy dossier succeeding another.
Following the Syrian army’s victory in Aleppo the Russian Defence Ministry has confirmed that the Russian fleet sent to the eastern Mediterranean earlier in the autumn, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the nuclear powered missile battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky, are being withdrawn to Russia.
This was always the plan. There was never any suggestion that the deployment was intended to be anything other than a temporary one.
The Senate hearings into the Russian hacking scandal that took place on Thursday 5th January 2017 came across to me as something of a damp squib.
Director James Clapper provided no actual evidence to support the allegation that Russia was responsible for the Clinton leaks, and refused to go along with Senator McCain’s wildly over-the-top claim that Russia’s alleged interference in the election was an “act of war”.
Britain’s The Banker magazine has named Russian Central Bank Chair Elvira Nabiullina Europe’s Central Banker of 2016.
The award is being linked to the Russian Central Bank’s success in bringing inflation in Russia down from 12.7% in 2015 to a post-Soviet low of below 6% in 2016 (the actual final figure will probably be 5.5% or 5.6%).
The Lithuanian government has confirmed the presence of US special forces in the country.
According to the Lithuanian Defence Ministry spokeswoman, Asta Galdikaite, the dozens 0f US forces training Lithuanian special forces would remain there as long as they see Russia as a ‘threat’ or however long they see fit.
From Antimedia.org:
