Russia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican Covid lies follow foreign strongmen’s lead – and are deadly for it | Robert Reich

      by

      A hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, is being charged under the country’s National Security Act for sounding the alarm over a lack of oxygen that resulted in Covid deaths. The hospital’s owner and manager says police have accused him of “false scaremongering”, after he stated publicly that four patients died on a single day when oxygen ran out.Since Covid-19 exploded in India, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, seems to be trying to the control the news more than the outbreak. On Wednesday, India recorded nearly 363,000 cases and 4,120 deaths, about 30% of worldwide deaths that day. But experts say India is vastly understating the true number. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, estimates at least 25,000 Indians are dying from Covid each day.The horror has been worsened by shortages of oxygen and hospital beds. Yet Modi and his government don’t want the public to get the true story.One big lesson from the Covid crisis: lying makes it worse.Vladimir Putin is busily denying the truth about Covid in Russia. Demographer Alexei Raksha, who worked at Russia’s official statistical agency, Rosstat, but says he was forced to leave last summer for telling the truth about Covid, claims daily data has been “smoothed, rounded, lowered” to look better. Like many experts, he uses excess mortality – the number of deaths during the pandemic over the typical number of deaths – as the best indicator.Trump wants the credit for developing the vaccine. Then he also gets the blame for so few of his voters taking it“If Russia stops at 500,000 excess deaths, that will be a good scenario,” he calculates.Russia was first out of the gate with a vaccine but has fallen woefully behind on vaccinations. Recent polling puts the share of Russians who don’t want to be vaccinated at 60% to 70%. That’s because Putin and other officials have focused less on vaccinating the public than on claiming success in containing Covid.The US is suffering a similar problem – the legacy of another strongman, Donald Trump. Although more than half of US adults have received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, more than 40% of Republicans have consistently told pollsters they won’t get vaccinated. Their recalcitrance is threatening efforts to achieve “herd immunity” and prevent the virus’s spread.Like Modi and Putin, Trump minimized the seriousness of the pandemic and spread misinformation about it. Trump officials ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downplay its severity. He declined to get vaccinated publicly and was noticeably absent from a public service announcement on vaccination that featured all other living former presidents.Trump allies in the media have conducted a scare campaign about the vaccines. In December, Fox News host Laura Ingraham posted a story on Facebook from the Daily Mail purporting to show evidence that Chinese communist party loyalists worked at pharmaceutical companies that developed the coronavirus vaccine.As recently as mid-April, Fox News host Tucker Carlson opined that if the vaccine were truly effective, there’d be no reason for people who received it to wear masks or avoid physical contact.“So maybe it doesn’t work,” he said, “and they’re simply not telling you that.”Why then should anyone be surprised at the reluctance of Trump Republicans to get vaccinated? A recent New York Times analysis showed vaccination rates to be lower in counties where a majority voted for Trump in 2020. States that voted more heavily for Trump are also states where lower percentages of the population have been vaccinated.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz says Trump bears responsibility for the hesitancy of GOP voters to be vaccinated.“He wants to get the credit for developing the vaccine,” Luntz said. “Then he also gets the blame for so few of his voters taking it.”Trump’s Republican party is coming to resemble other authoritarian regimes around the world in other respects as well – purging truth tellers and trucking in lies, misinformation and propaganda harmful to the public.This week the GOP stripped Liz Cheney of her leadership position for telling the truth about the 2020 election. At last week’s congressional hearing about the 6 January attack on the Capitol, one Republican, Andrew Clyde, even denied it happened.“There was no insurrection,” he said. “To call it an insurrection is a bold-faced lie … you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”Biden says he plans to call a summit of democratic governments to contain the rise of authoritarianism around the world. I hope he talks about its rise in the US too – and the huge toll it’s already taken on Americans. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Blinken Jousts With China and Russia in United Nations Meeting

      by

      President Biden’s top diplomat said the United States would uphold international rules and “push back forcefully” against those who don’t, a sharp contrast to the Trump years.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, meeting with counterparts from both China and Russia on Friday, said that the United States would “push back forcefully” against breakers of international rules, even as he acknowledged his own country’s violations under the Trump administration.Mr. Blinken’s counterparts, Foreign Ministers Wang Yi of China and Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia, took their own diplomatic swipes at the United States, accusing it of hypocrisy and of defining international rules in terms designed to assert Western dominance in the world.The exchanges came at a United Nations Security Council meeting, convened by China and held virtually via videoconference link, on the theme of multilateral cooperation against the pandemic, global warming and other common threats.It was in some ways a rematch between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Wang, who was part of a top Chinese delegation that brusquely lectured the United States at a meeting in Alaska two months ago. That unscripted confrontation was regarded heroically in China, where the government has stoked rising anti-Americanism and nationalism.Although the terms and tone used in the Friday meeting were more diplomatic, the differences were stark in the world views espoused by Mr. Blinken and his counterparts. Those differences suggested that the gridlock among the big powers of the Security Council would not ease anytime soon.The session was held the same week that Mr. Blinken, meeting with the foreign ministers of the Group of 7 nations in Britain, emphasized what he described as the importance of “defending democratic values and open societies” — a signal of the Biden administration’s intent to challenge China and Russia on human rights, disinformation and other issues that had been de-emphasized or ignored by the administration of President Donald J. Trump.In another clear signal from the Biden administration, Mr. Blinken also visited Ukraine, where he pledged support for its fight against a Russian-backed insurgency that has claimed 13,000 lives since 2014.Mr. Blinken asserted in his Security Council remarks that the United Nations remained a critical force for good in the world, responsible since its founding at the end of World War II for the most peaceful and prosperous era in modern history, but was now under severe threat.“Nationalism is resurgent, repression is rising, rivalries among countries are deepening — and attacks against the rules-based order are intensifying,” Mr. Blinken said. “Some question whether multilateral cooperation is still possible. The United States believes it is not only possible, but imperative.”Mr. Blinken said the United States would work with any country on the global threats presented by the coronavirus and climate change, “including those with whom we have serious differences.”At the same time, he said, in a clear warning to China and Russia, that the United State would “push back forcefully when we see countries undermine the international order, pretend that the rules we’ve all agreed to don’t exist, or simply violate them at will.”He did not lay out any new positions but clearly sought to emphasize that the Biden administration was committed to reversing the foreign-policy legacy of President Donald J. Trump, who frequently disparaged the United Nations and led the United States down what critics called a destructive, unilateral path.“I know that some of our actions in recent years have undermined the rules-based order and led others to question whether we are still committed to it,” Mr. Blinken said. “Rather than take our word for it, we ask the world to judge our commitment by our actions.”He enumerated how the Biden administration had rejoined the Paris Climate accord, halted Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization and was seeking to rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council.“We’re also taking steps, with great humility, to address the inequities and injustices in our own democracy,” he said. “We do so openly and transparently, for people around the world to see. Even when it’s ugly. Even when it’s painful.”Mr. Wang, whose country holds the rotating Security Council presidency for May, sought to depict China as a responsible global citizen that adhered to international law. Without mentioning the United States by name, he chided countries that he said had defined international rules as a “patent or privilege of the few.”He also declared that “no country should expect other countries to lose,” reflecting a Chinese accusation that the United States is seeking to suppress China’s ascendance — an accusation that Mr. Blinken and others have denied.Mr. Lavrov was more direct in his criticisms of the United States and its allies, describing Mr. Blinken’s references to a “rules-based order” as a guise for Western efforts to repress other countries.He was especially critical of the economic sanctions that the United States and European Union have imposed on Russia and others they disagree with, which Mr. Lavrov said were designed to “take opponents out of the game.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Blinken Will Visit Ukraine in Show of Support Against Russia

      by

      The secretary of state will first meet with British officials and other American allies in London.WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will travel to Kyiv next week, a clear signal of the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine’s government against threats from Russia.In a statement announcing the trip, the State Department said Mr. Blinken would “reaffirm unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression.”Mr. Blinken will meet in Kyiv on Wednesday and Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, senior officials and civil society representatives. His visit will be preceded by a three-day stop in London.Mr. Blinken will be the most senior American official to visit Kyiv since Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled there in February 2020, soon after Congress impeached and acquitted President Donald J. Trump on charges that he abused his power by leveraging U.S. policy toward the country in an effort to incriminate Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a Democratic candidate for president, and his son, Hunter.As president, Mr. Biden has offered strong support for Ukraine against Moscow, which annexed Crimea in 2014 — an act the United States has never recognized — and fomented a Russian-backed separatist rebellion in the country’s east that has claimed more than 13,000 lives.But Russia has tested that support, intensifying its military intimidation of Ukraine this spring with a huge troop buildup along the countries’ shared border, which many analysts said could be a precursor to an invasion. Russia announced plans to withdraw many of those forces this month. But earlier this week, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that it was “too soon to tell and to take at face value” Russia’s claim.Mr. Blinken will begin his trip with his first visit as secretary to London, the site of a Group of 7 foreign and development ministers’ meeting that will lay the groundwork for a gathering of the leaders of the Group of 7 countries in Cornwall in June.The State Department framed Mr. Blinken’s visit as part of a global defense of democracy that Mr. Biden, in an address to Congress and the nation on Wednesday night, called vital to countering the rise of authoritarian China. The State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said Mr. Blinken would be “discussing the democratic values that we share with our partners and allies within the G7.”The meeting of Group of 7 ministers, planned for Tuesday, will open with a session specifically devoted to China, Erica Barks-Ruggles, the senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, said in a news briefing.Mr. Price added that the foreign ministers would also address the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, as well as issues including human rights, food security and gender equality.Joining the ministers from the Group of 7 countries — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada — in London will be representatives from Australia, India, South Africa, South Korea and Brunei.Their attendance reflects a growing interest on the part of western nations to collaborate more closely with fellow democracies around the world as part of the broader competition with China and other countries exporting authoritarian values, including Russia.Officials from those nations will join ones from the Group of 7 for a discussion on Wednesday about open societies, including media freedom and combating disinformation, Ms. Barks-Ruggles added. Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, will join sessions on how to ensure a sustainable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.During his stay in London from Monday to Wednesday, Mr. Blinken will meet with Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and his foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral honoring soldiers killed in World War II.Even as Biden administration officials have stressed their support for Ukraine’s government, they have also pressured Kyiv to complete reforms within the country’s notoriously corrupt political system. The State Department said that would be a priority for Mr. Blinken, and that progress in that area “is key to securing Ukraine’s democratic institutions, economic prosperity and Euro-Atlantic future.”Briefing reporters on Thursday, Mr. Price said that the United States was “deeply concerned” by a recent move by Ukrainian cabinet ministers to replace the management of the country’s leading energy company, Naftogaz. Mr. Price called the actions “just the latest example of ignoring best practices and putting Ukraine’s hard-fought economic progress at risk.”The trip will be Mr. Blinken’s third overseas since taking office as in-person diplomacy slowly resumes even as the coronavirus ravages much of the world. This month, he visited Brussels and Kabul, and in March he traveled to Asia and then met with Chinese officials in Alaska. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Administration Says Russian Intelligence Obtained Trump Campaign Data

      by

      A Treasury Department document shed more light on links between the campaign and Russian spies.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration revealed on Thursday that a business associate of Trump campaign officials in 2016 provided campaign polling data to Russian intelligence services, the strongest evidence to date that Russian spies had penetrated the inner workings of the Trump campaign.The revelation, made public in a Treasury Department document announcing new sanctions against Russia, established for the first time that private meetings and communications between the campaign officials, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and their business associate were a direct pipeline from the campaign to Russian spies at a time when the Kremlin was engaged in a covert effort to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.Previous government investigations have identified the Trump aides’ associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, as a Russian intelligence operative, and Mr. Manafort’s decision to provide him with internal polling data was one of the mysteries that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, sought to unravel during his two-year investigation into Russia’s election meddling.“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” the Treasury Department said in a news release. “Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”The Biden administration provided no supporting evidence to bolster the assessment that the Russian intelligence services obtained the polling data and campaign information. And the release shed no light on why Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates gave polling data to Mr. Kilimnik, although previous government reports have indicated that Mr. Manafort thought Trump campaign strategy information could be a valuable commodity for future business deals with Kremlin-connected oligarchs.Having the polling data would have allowed Russia to better understand the Trump campaign strategy — including where the campaign was focusing resources — at a time when the Russian government was carrying out its own efforts to undermine Donald J. Trump’s opponent.Mr. Gates said in a statement on Thursday that the Treasury Department had failed to provide any evidence to back up its claim, adding that “the polling data passed periodically to Kilimnik at Paul Manafort’s direction was simplistic and outdated, never in real time.”“It was from both public and internal sources,” Mr. Gates said. “It was not massive binders full of demographics or deep research. It was ‘topline’ numbers and did not contain any strategic plans.”The new sanctions against Russia are in response to the Kremlin’s election interference, efforts to hack American government agencies and companies, and other acts of aggression against the United States.The sanctions now make it extremely difficult for Mr. Kilimnik, who was indicted by the Justice Department in 2018 on charges of obstruction of justice, to engage in financial transactions that may involve the United States.It is unclear how long American spy agencies have held the conclusion about Mr. Kilimnik. Senior Trump administration officials, fearing Mr. Trump’s wrath, repeatedly tried to keep from the public any information that seemed to show Mr. Trump’s affinity for Russia or its president, Vladimir V. Putin.Mr. Kilimnik had been a longtime business partner during Mr. Manafort’s time as a political consultant in Ukraine. In 2018, prosecutors for Mr. Mueller’s office announced that Mr. Kilimnik had “ties to Russian intelligence” and that Mr. Manafort had instructed Mr. Gates to pass the polling and campaign information to Mr. Kilimnik.The Senate Intelligence Committee went further last August in its bipartisan report that scrutinized the links between the Trump campaign and Russia — calling Mr. Kilimnik a “Russian intelligence officer.”The report contained several significant redactions that appeared related to Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik but said that Mr. Manafort’s willingness to share the information with him “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”The report called the relationship between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik “the single most direct tie between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.”The Senate report portrayed a Trump campaign stacked with businessmen and other advisers who had little government experience and “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”A New York Times article in 2017 said that there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the year before the election. F.B.I. officials had disputed the report, but both the Senate report and the Treasury Department document confirm the article’s findings.The assertion that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that sought to disrupt the 2016 election has long been both a Kremlin talking point and a claim by Mr. Trump that foreign actors tried to help his opponent, Hillary Clinton, rather than him.Mr. Trump’s obsession over Ukraine’s supposed role in the election was the impetus for a 2019 phone call with the Ukrainian president that was central to the first impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump.Mr. Manafort was brought into the Trump campaign in March 2016, at a time when Mr. Trump had largely sewn up the Republican presidential nomination.Mr. Manafort and his longtime business associate, Mr. Gates, joined the Trump campaign after years of doing political consulting work in Ukraine, where they met Mr. Kilimnik, a Russian Army-trained linguist.The two men met with Mr. Kilimnik several times after joining the campaign, and in June 2016, Mr. Manafort became the Trump campaign chairman.Details about Mr. Manafort’s relationship with Mr. Kilimnik were revealed in 2018 as the government prosecuted Mr. Manafort and charged Mr. Kilimnik with obstruction of justice for trying to coach potential witnesses in the investigation.Mr. Kilimnik never came to the United States to face charges. He is wanted by the F.B.I., and the bureau is offering $250,000 for information that could lead to his arrest. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden to unveil Russia sanctions over SolarWinds hack and election meddling

      by

      The US is set to announce new sanctions against Russia as soon as Thursday in retaliation for Moscow’s elections interference, alleged bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan, and cyber-espionage campaigns such as the SolarWinds hack, according to reports in US and international media.Ten Russian diplomatic officials are to be expelled from the US and up to 30 entities will be blacklisted, officials said, in the largest sanctions action against Russia of Joe Biden’s presidency.Additionally, the White House may issue an executive order barring US financial institutions from purchasing rouble bonds issued by Russia’s government, targeting the country’s sovereign debt and its broader economy. That could begin as soon as June, according to some reports.Q&AWhat was the SolarWinds hack?ShowIn early 2020, malicious code was sneaked into updates to a popular piece of software called Orion, made in the US by the company SolarWinds, which monitors the computer networks of businesses and governments for outages.That malware gave hackers remote access to an organisation’s networks so they could steal information. Among the most high-profile users of the software were US government departments including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state department, and the justice department.Described by the Microsoft president, Brad Smith, as “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen”, US intelligence agencies have accused Russia of launching the attack.SolarWinds, of Austin, Texas, provides network monitoring and other technical services to hundreds of thousands of organisations around the world, including most Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.Its compromised product, Orion, is a centralised monitoring tool that looks for problems in an organisation’s computer network, which means that breaking in gave the attackers a “God view” of those networks.Neither SolarWinds nor US cybersecurity authorities have publicly identified which organisations were breached. Just because a company or agency uses SolarWinds as a vendor does not necessarily mean it was vulnerable to the hack.Kari Paul and Martin BelamUnnamed officials told the New York Times the new sanctions were meant to cut deeper than previous attempts to punish Moscow for its attacks on US institutions and allies. Some Russian officials have laughed off being added to the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions lists, comparing it to being elevated to an elite club. The threat of the ban on purchasing Russian debt has already depressed prices on the rouble and rouble-denominated OFZ treasury bonds.The sanctions will add tension to an already strained relationship between Russia and the US. Since last month, Moscow has been engaged in the largest troop buildup on its border with Ukraine since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, provoking fears of an invasion. Biden called Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to urge him to de-escalate tensions with Ukraine and proposed a summit in a third country. The Kremlin gave a frosty account of the telephone call, and did not say whether Putin had agreed to the meeting.Earlier this year, Biden had agreed with a reporter when asked if Putin was “a killer”. Those remarks were replayed widely on Russian television. Putin responded by wryly wishing Biden “good health”, which was seen as a nod to Biden’s age.The US president’s tough approach differs considerably from that of the Trump administration, which largely sought to avoid confronting Russia over a CIA assessment that Moscow had offered and paid bounties for foreign fighters to kill US troops in Afghanistan. Trump said he doubted the evidence behind the reports.He similarly sided with Putin over an FBI assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 elections during a summit in Helsinki two years later.The planned sanctions were said to be retaliation for Russian interference in the 2020 elections, during which US intelligence agencies concluded that the Kremlin had backed Trump over Biden.Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe sanctions would also be a response to a massive and sophisticated cybersecurity breach against SolarWinds Corp that affected software used by US government agencies. The US has blamed Russia for the attack.Peskov this week said that “the hostility and unpredictability of America’s actions force us in general to be prepared for the worst scenarios”. More