Syria

Live Updates: Zelensky Asks G7 Nations for Better Air Defense Systems After Russia Strikes

A top British intelligence official will warn in a speech on Tuesday that while Russia’s aggression has created an urgent threat, China’s expanding use of technology to control dissent and its growing ability to attack satellite systems, control digital currencies and track individuals pose far deeper challenges for the West.

In an interview on Monday ahead of his address, the official, Jeremy Fleming, who heads GCHQ — the British electronic intelligence-gathering and cyber agency made famous for its role in breaking the Enigma codes in World War II — also said he was skeptical about how far China would go to support Russia’s aggression.

“I don’t think that this is a ‘relationship without limits,’” he said, using the term that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China employed when they met at the Beijing Olympics early this year, just before the invasion of Ukraine. In light of Russia’s dismal battlefield performance and its brutality, he said, China “needs to be weighing up the advantages and disadvantage of continuing to align themselves strongly with Russia.”

Mr. Fleming’s agency — formally called Government Communications Headquarters, the counterpart to the National Security Agency in the United States — plays an increasingly central role in tracking Russian communications and preparing for the day when China’s advances in quantum computing may defeat the kinds of encryption used to protect both government and corporate communications.

A three-decade veteran of the British intelligence services, Mr. Fleming rarely speaks in public. But in recent months, several of Britain’s spy chiefs have deliberately taken a carefully crafted public role in describing future security threats.

Mr. Fleming has gone further, detailing the capabilities and rules surrounding Britain’s use of offensive cyber capabilities, which it employed in Syria against terror groups and reportedly against Russian forces in Ukraine, a subject Mr. Fleming declined to discuss.

Yet in the interview, he described Russia as “a disrupter” that was “unpredictable in its actions at the moment.” But he said the performance of Russia’s military had revealed deep weaknesses, and excerpts from his forthcoming speech describe Mr. Putin’s decision-making as “flawed,” its forces as “exhausted” and its reliance on mobilizing 300,000 “inexperienced conscripts” as evidence of Mr. Putin’s “desperate situation.”

“The Russian population has started to understand that, too,” he argued. “They’re seeing just how badly Putin has misjudged the situation.”

He added, “They’re fleeing the draft, knowing their access to modern technologies and external influences will be drastically restricted.”

But Mr. Fleming’s warning is another reminder of the speed at which the Western allies have come to view themselves as in direct competition, and sometimes in conflict, with both of the world’s other major nuclear superpowers. Of the two, he clearly regards Russia as the more manageable.

Until recent years, most European nations have been muted in their public critiques of Beijing and its ambitions, because trade with China became critical to growth, especially for Germany. Britain even permitted Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that the United States fears could pose a security threat, to provide some 5G equipment to Britain’s communications network — under some strict conditions — until sanctions imposed on the company by the United States made that impossible.

Mr. Fleming’s warnings about the strategies behind China’s investment in new technologies, and its effort to create “client economies and governments,” sound much like speeches given by his American counterparts for the past five or more years. But he spoke just before the opening of a Communist Party congress starting in Beijing on Sunday at which Xi Jinping is expected to be named to a third five-year term as the country’s top leader.

Mr. Fleming said that in the case of China, this could be “the sliding-doors moment in history,” in which the United States and its allies may soon discover that they are too far behind in a series of critical technologies to maintain a military or technological edge over Beijing.

He described China’s move to develop central bank digital currencies that could be used to track transactions as a shift that could also “enable China to partially evade the sort of international sanctions currently being applied to Putin’s regime in Russia.” He said that was one example of how China was “learning the lessons” from the war in Ukraine, presumably to apply them if it decided to move against Taiwan and prompted further efforts by the U.S. and its allies to isolate it economically.

Mr. Fleming also described China’s moves to build “a powerful antisatellite capability, with a doctrine of denying other nations access to space in the event of a conflict.” And he accused China of trying to alter international technology standards to ease the tracking of individuals, part of its effort to repress dissent, even the speech of Chinese citizens living abroad.

But his biggest warning surrounded dependence on Chinese companies that are closely linked to the state, or that would have no choice but to turn over data on individuals upon demand by the Chinese authorities. The Huawei experience, he said in the interview, “opened our eyes to the extent to which even the biggest businesses in China are ultimately wrapped up with the Chinese state” and have no choice but to comply “because of the way in which the Communist Party works and the national security laws operate.”

Yet in the Huawei case, the United States and its European partners have yet to offer truly competitive alternatives for much of the company’s networking equipment, officials from many countries say. “We have to be able to provide alternatives,” Mr. Fleming said. When pressed on whether Europe and the United States had provided those alternatives in the years since the campaign against Huawei gained traction, he acknowledged, “No, we don’t.”

Last week, the Biden administration announced sweeping new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, hoping to cripple Beijing’s access to critical technologies that are needed for supercomputers, advanced weapons and artificial intelligence applications.

It was a sign of how fast the world’s two largest economies had become engaged in a clash over technological advantage, with the United States trying to establish a stranglehold on advanced computing and semiconductor technology that China views as essential to its own ambitions.

But Mr. Fleming conceded that over the next few months, he would be focused — as American leaders are — on the question of whether Russia might seek to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine to make up for its failures on the battlefield.

“This is a concerning moment,” he said. But he noted that Mr. Putin had been cautious and “has been careful not to escalate beyond the borders of Ukraine.”

“He’s been careful not to escalate in terms of the types of weapons they’re using,” he said.

He added: “We’re in a situation where escalation risks are very real.” But if “Putin decided he would make use of tactical nuclear weapons,” he said, it would be a “complete departure” from his past action and from Russian military doctrine.

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Deadly Strikes Hit Key Southern City as Russia Restores Some Traffic on Damaged Bridge

Credit…Maxar Technologies

Within hours of a blast that damaged the sole bridge linking Crimea with Russia early Saturday, hard-line military bloggers and Russian officials were calling for a swift and strong response from Moscow.

One high-level politician said that anything less than an “extremely harsh” response would show weakness from the Kremlin, which is facing continued losses on the battlefield and mounting criticism at home.

For President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who presided over the bridge’s opening in 2018, the explosion seemed to be a highly personal affront, underscoring his failure to get a handle on a relentless series of Ukrainian attacks.

Some news media commentators demanded that Russia destroy Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and the transportation systems used to import Western armaments.

Evgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for the state RT outlet, said that nobody in the Ukrainian leadership seemed to fear Russia anymore.

“The enemy has stopped being afraid, and this circumstance needs to be corrected promptly,” he wrote in RT’s Telegram channel. “Commanders of formations, heads of intelligence agencies, politicians of the Kyiv criminal regime sleep peacefully, wake up without a headache and in a good mood, without a sense of inevitability of punishment for crimes committed.”

KERCH

STRAIT

Sevastapol

Kerch Strait

Bridge

◀ Crimea

Tuzla Island

Area of

explosion

Krasnodar, Russia ▶

Four-lane

roadway

Outer two lanes

collapsed here.

Two

railroad

tracks

Several tanker cars

of a train could be

seen burning here.

Sevastapol

Kerch Strait

Bridge

KERCH

STRAIT

◀ Crimea

Tuzla

Island

Area of

explosion

Krasnodar, Russia ▶

Four-lane

roadway

Outer two lanes

collapsed here.

Two

railroad

tracks

Several tanker cars

of a train could be

seen burning here.

Aleksandr Kots, a war correspondent for the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, wrote on Telegram that disabling the bridge bodes ill for Moscow’s already troubled efforts to hold onto territory in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine — and most likely foreshadowed a future attack on Crimea itself.

He described the “consistency” that Ukraine was showing in the war as “enviable” and called for Russia to “hammer Ukraine into the 18th century, without meaningless reflection on how this will affect the civilian population.”

While there were no official claims of responsibility, Ukrainian officials, who in the past have said the bridge would be a legitimate target for a strike, indicated that the explosion was no accident and made no secret of their satisfaction.

“Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday. “Everything illegal, must be destroyed. Everything stolen returned to Ukraine. All Russian occupiers expelled.”

The explosion is emblematic of a Russian military in disarray. Russian forces were unable to protect the road and rail crossing despite its centrality to the war effort, its personal importance to Mr. Putin and its potent symbolism as the literal connection between Russia and Crimea.

For Russia, the rail crossing “has played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during the invasion,” the British defense intelligence agency wrote in its daily assessment on Sunday. It added that although the extent of the damage to the rail line was uncertain, “any serious disruption to its capacity will highly likely have a significant impact on Russia’s already strained ability to sustain its forces in southern Ukraine.”

Hours after the explosion, the Kremlin appointed Gen. Sergei Surovikin, yet another new commander, to oversee its forces in Ukraine. Previous leadership shake-ups have done little to right the military’s floundering performance.

General Surovikin, 55, has long had a reputation for corruption and brutality, military analysts said.

“He is known as a pretty ruthless commander who is short with subordinates and is known for his temper,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at C.N.A., a defense research institute based in Virginia.

His appointment was quickly praised by some of the biggest supporters of the war, including Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group that was deployed heavily in Syria. He made a rare public endorsement of the general, calling him “legendary.”

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In Lebanon, Boat Tragedy Kills 89 But Others Plan To Migrate

By Associated Press
September 24, 2022

The incident was the deadliest so far as a surging number of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians have been trying to flee Lebanon by sea to Europe.

Thousands of Palestinians held prayers on a small soccer field in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon on Saturday, to mourn one of the scores of migrants who died after their boat sank off Syria’s coast this week, even as others vowed to undertake the same perilous voyage.

Abdul-Al Abdul-Al, 24, kissed his father goodbye Tuesday before boarding a crowded boat leaving from a nearby town seeking a better life in Europe. It was his 14th attempt to flee the crisis-hit Mediterranean country, this time ending with the return of his dead body. He was to be buried in the camp where he was born, his father, Omar, told The Associated Press during the funeral procession.

The head of al-Basel Hospital in Syria’s coastal city of Tartus said Saturday that the death toll has reached 89, adding that of the 20 others who were receiving treatment at the medical center, six were discharged.

The Lebanese army announced Saturday that troops have detained the man who allegedly organized the deadly trip.

The incident was the deadliest so far as a surging number of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians have been trying to flee Lebanon by sea to Europe in search of jobs and stability. In Lebanon, tens of thousands have lost their jobs while the the national currency has dropped more than 90% in value, eradicating the purchasing power of thousands of families and pulling three-quarters of the population into poverty.

Alongside 1 million Syrian refugees, the small country of Lebanon is home to tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Many live in the dozen refugee camps that are scattered around the country. Palestinians suffer wide discrimination in Lebanon where they are deprived from doing specific jobs or own property and since the end of the 1975-90 civil war many have migrated.

After noon prayers were held at Nahr el-Bared, hundreds of people gathered in a yard used to play football where Abdul-Al’s coffin was placed in the middle. Prayers were held before the body was carried to a nearby cemetery where thousands of people had gathered to witness the young man being laid to rest.

Omar Abdul-Al said that his son had tried to leave Lebanon before but did not succeed as sometimes the migrant boats he took had technical problems or faced high seas. Sometimes he had to swim back to shore, the man said.

“We don’t want to live here anymore. We want to leave,” said Omar Abdul-Al, adding that he encouraged his late son to leave and now he is encouraging his four other sons to leave Lebanon. He added that his sons are all well educated but they cannot find jobs.

“We are passing through a severe crisis. There is no medication or bread or anything,” the father said. He added that many other Palestinians were planning to go on the boat but it did not fit more people.

Another relative of Abdul-Al screamed that “there is a disaster in Nahr el-Bared” saying that there are about 30 people missing from the camp who were on the boat. He said people are selling their homes and cars in order to go.

Several others have been buried since Friday.

There were conflicting reports on how many people were on board the boat when it sank, with some saying at least 120. Details about the ship, such as its size and capacity, were also not clear.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the Lebanese army said troops stormed Friday the homes of several suspected smugglers, detaining eight people involved in trafficking people abroad.

Residents in northern Lebanon say that people pay about $6,000 for an adult and $3,000 for a child to reach Europe.

At the morgue, Omar Abdel-Al said he found his son’s body “intact” though it was difficult to identify many of the dozens of other corpses kept there.

“Anyone that comes with a boat, people are ready to go,” he said.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Exclusive: With a Russian nudge, Turkey and Syria step up contacts

Any normalisation would reshape decade-long Syria war
Intelligence chiefs held meetings over last few weeks
Focused on Ukraine, Moscow urges political solution in Syria

ANKARA/BEIRUT, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Turkey’s intelligence chief has held multiple meetings with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus over the last few weeks, a sign of Russian efforts to encourage a thaw between states on opposite sides of Syria’s war, four sources said.

A regional source aligned with Damascus told Reuters that Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), and Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk met as recently as this week in the Syrian capital.

The contacts reflect a Russian policy shift as Moscow steels itself for a protracted conflict in Ukraine and seeks to secure its position in Syria, where its forces have supported President Bashar al-Assad since 2015, according to two Turkish officials and the regional source.

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Any normalisation between Ankara and Damascus would reshape the decade-long Syrian war.

Turkish backing has been vital to sustaining Syrian rebels in their last major territorial foothold in the northwest, after Assad defeated the insurgency across the rest of the country, aided by Russia and Iran.

But rapprochement faces big complications, including the fate of rebel fighters and millions of civilians, many of whom fled to the northwest to escape Assad’s rule.

Turkey, a NATO member country, has troops on the ground across the area, deemed occupying forces by Assad.

During the meetings, Fidan – one of President Tayyip Erdogan’s closest confidants – and Mamlouk evaluated how the two countries’ foreign ministers could eventually meet, according to a senior Turkish official and a Turkish security source.

“Russia wants Syria and Turkey to overcome their problems and achieve certain agreements…which are in the interest of everyone, both Turkey and Syria,” said the Turkish official.

One big challenge is Turkey’s desire to include Syrian rebels in any talks with Damascus, the official added.

RUSSIAN SHIFT

The Turkish security official said Russia has gradually withdrawn some military resources from Syria in order to focus on Ukraine, and had asked Turkey to normalise relations with Assad to “accelerate a political solution” in Syria.

The Damascus-allied source said Russia had nudged Syria to enter talks as Moscow seeks to nail down its position and that of Assad in the event it must redeploy forces to Ukraine. Russia has sustained stunning losses on the ground in Ukraine over the past week.

The most recent meetings – including a two-day visit by Fidan to Damascus at the end of August – had sought to lay the ground for sessions at a higher level, the source said.

The senior Turkish official said Ankara does not want to see Iranian or Iran-backed forces – already widely deployed in government-controlled parts of Syria – plugging gaps left by Russian withdrawals.

The Turkish security official said neither did Russia want to see Iranian influence expand as it reduces its presence.

A diplomat based in the region said Russia had pulled a limited number of troops out of Syria’s south earlier this summer, particularly in areas along the border with Israel that were later filled by Iran-aligned forces.

While Fidan and Mamlouk have spoken intermittently over the last two years, the pace and timing of recent meetings suggests a new urgency to the contacts.

The regional source allied to Damascus and a second senior pro-Assad source in the Middle East said the Turkish-Syrian contacts had made a lot of progress, without giving details.

A third regional source aligned with Damascus said Turkish-Syrian relations had begun to thaw and were advancing to a stage of “creating a climate for understanding”.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the contacts, which have not been publicly disclosed.

The Russian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Turkey’s MIT declined to comment and the foreign ministry did not immediately comment. The Syrian information ministry did not immediately reply to emailed questions from Reuters.

UNTHINKABLE BECOMES THINKABLE

Turkish-Syrian rapprochement seemed unthinkable earlier in the Syrian conflict, which spiralled out of an uprising against Assad in 2011, killing hundreds of thousands of people, drawing in numerous foreign powers, and splintering the country.

Erdogan has called Assad a terrorist and said there could be no peace in Syria with him in office, while Assad has called Erdogan a thief for “stealing” Syrian land.

But in an apparent change of tone last month, Erdogan said he could never rule out dialogue and diplomacy with Syria. read more

Erdogan faces tight elections next year in which a key issue will be repatriating some of the 3.7 million Syrian refugees now in Turkey. read more

The Turkish-Syrian contacts come against the backdrop of a flurry of meetings between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, including one planned on Friday in Uzbekistan.

In July, Turkey helped seal a U.N.-backed deal that lifted a blockade on grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports which had prevailed since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of its neighbour.

After a recent visit to Moscow, Erdogan said Putin had suggested Turkey cooperate with Damascus along their joint border, where Ankara has waged several offensives into areas where Syrian Kurdish groups have carved out autonomy since 2011.

Turkey has been threatening to launch another offensive against the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, which Ankara deems a national security threat. Russia has signalled opposition to such an incursion.

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Reporting by Orhan Coskun in Ankara and Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Jonathan Spicer and Mark Heinrich

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Why Is It So Difficult To Bring Detained Americans Home?

There are over 50 Americans that are wrongfully detained in several countries, and many wonder why is it hard to negotiate their release.

If you ask American diplomats and military leaders, Trevor Reed never should have been in that nightmare, wasting away in a Russian prison.

“Every day that I was in prison there, I never fully was able to accept that that was real. You kind of wake up and you’re like, maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe I’m not, you know, like a political prisoner here. Maybe this didn’t happen,” said Reed.

Russian officials arrested the marine corps veteran in 2019 and accused him of assaulting local police — charges U.S. officials criticized as “absurd.”

In 2020, a Russian court sentenced Reed to nine years in prison.

He would spend nearly 1,000 days there.

1,000 days he thought might be his last.

“I was losing so much weight, I thought ‘Okay, I’m not going to make it,’ said Reed.

Reed’s interview with our station in Waco, Texas was only possible because the Biden administration agreed to a prisoner swap in April.

It sent a Russian pilot convicted of drug smuggling to Moscow in exchange for bringing Reed home.

TODD UNGER: You’re about to cross that tarmac. And you’re thinking what?

TREVOR REED: I just thought the whole thing was like extremely surreal.

But Reed’s story is the exception. He is one of the few Americans recently detained overseas who made it back to their families.

The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation says at least 67 U.S. citizens are detained overseas and nine out of 10 of them are wrongly detained.

Diane Foley is the organization’s founder. She named it after her son James Foley who went missing in November of 2012 while reporting in Syria. Nearly two years later ISIS posted a video online showing his murder. Foley was one of what his mother calls “bargaining chips” for foreign powers.

“We fear that the 67 public cases are a tip of the iceberg, if you will. We suspect is hundreds more,” said Foley. “Often they want various concessions that we don’t want to give. The whole process of negotiation is the part that’s essential. I think too often in the past, because this is not pleasant or difficult or easy. It’s been avoided, frankly.”

The Foley Foundation advocates for hostages and journalist safety.

Foley says countries including Iran, China and Russia are currently wrongfully detaining U.S. nationals or U.S. lawful permanent residents.

“They usually have an agenda and they often will make hold us hostage as the government,” said Foley.

The arrest and sentencing of women’s basketball superstar Brittney Griner thrust the issue back into international headlines.

The U.S. State Department is escalating its efforts to bring Griner home and considers her “wrongfully detained.”

“We are doing everything we can, almost all of it unseen, almost all of it unsaid in public,” said Ned Price, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department.

Advocates, like Foley, believe the calls for urgency in these situations are good — but it can also up the ante for the captors.

“The publicity helps our administration to recognize and do what it must do, to negotiate and bring them home. But the downside is it can increase the value of that particular person who’s been detained. And that’s always a risk,” said Price.

The White House is weighing a prisoner swap to bring Griner and another wrongfully imprisoned American, Paul Whelan, back to the U.S.

Political experts and opinion columnists have said such a move could set a dangerous precedent. It would give foreign adversaries a motivation to detain Americans on trumped up charges again.

Others like Trevor Reed say a swap may be necessary.

“The Russians took Paul Whelan, and immediately asked for a prisoner exchange. The U.S. said ‘oh no, they could extort the United States’ and if that’s your argument would be they didn’t take more Americans hostage, but they did. After that, they took me,” said Reed.

Russian police arrested Whelan, a former marine, in 2018 and accused him of espionage.

Whelan’s family disputes the charges and says he’s being held as leverage in a geopolitical dispute.

“It is going to be an ongoing problem for Americans traveling around the world. Not just in Russia not just with Paul’s case. And the delays that the U.S. government suffers when they decide who to handle it just makes it worse for the particular family involved,” said David Whelan, Paul’s brother.

Griner and Whelan’s cases are in the hands of a State Department Office President Obama set up in 2015 to negotiate releases for hostages and wrongfully detained Americans.

It’s called the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs.

“There was really, you know, a lot of pressure on the Obama administration to find out why what are we doing with hostage families,” said Foley.

In July, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to increase the consequences for people tied to wrongful detainment.

The move builds on the 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage Accountability Act which made permanent that State Department Office President Obama set up.

The law’s namesake was a retired FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

His family says he died in Iranian custody as the longest-held hostage in American history.

Iran denies involvement in Levinson’s disappearance or detention.

President Biden’s order will now allow officials to sanction and place entry restrictions on those it believes wrongfully detained Americans.

The State Department is also adding a “D” indicator on travel advisories to show the risk of detention in a country.

Right now the department has “D”s listed for Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.

“We weigh the totality of circumstances in every case, whether it’s the case of Brittney Griner, whether it’s the case of Paul Wheelan, whether it’s the case of Americans in Iran. There’s going to be unique factors in each and every one of those cases,” said Price.

Families, like Trevor Reeds’ and James Foleys’, say the government needs to be more transparent with families when their loved one is imprisoned abroad.

“The United States government did not recognize my son as wrongfully detained for almost a complete year. We need them to declare Americans wrongfully detained much quicker,” said Joey Reed, Trevor’s father.

“I would hope that it could become evermore a priority and have more assets applied to bringing people home, as opposed to needing to pick up the pieces after horrific executions,” said Foley.

Trevor Reed says he’s grateful for the Biden administration’s work.

But believes the White House can do more to help Griner, Whelan and the dozens of others held abroad against their will.

UNGER: What is your message to them?

REED: You know, my message to them is, do whatever you have to do there to survive. And if you have hope, then then don’t give that up.

Source: newsy.com

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U.S.: Russia Is Buying Rockets, Artillery Shells From North Korea

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
September 6, 2022

North Korea has sought to tighten relations with Russia as much of Europe and the West has pulled away, blaming the U.S. for the Ukraine crisis.

The Russian Ministry of Defense is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for its ongoing fight in Ukraine, according to a newly downgraded U.S. intelligence finding.

A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence determination, said Monday that the fact Russia is turning to the isolated state of North Korea demonstrates that “the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions.”

U.S. intelligence officials believe that the Russians could look to purchase additional North Korean military equipment in the future. The intelligence finding was first reported by The New York Times.

The U.S. official did not detail how much weaponry Russia intends to purchase from North Korea.

The finding comes after the Biden administration recently confirmed that the Russian military in August took delivery of Iranian-manufactured drones for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The White House said last week that Russia has faced technical problems with Iranian-made drones acquired from Tehran in August for use in its war with Ukraine.

North Korea has sought to tighten relations with Russia as much of Europe and the West has pulled away, blaming the United States for the Ukraine crisis and decrying the West’s “hegemonic policy” as justifying military action by Russia in Ukraine to protect itself.

The North Koreans have hinted interest in sending construction workers to help rebuild Russian-occupied territories in the country’s east.

North Korea’s ambassador to Moscow recently met with envoys from two Russia-backed separatist territories in the Donbas region of Ukraine and expressed optimism about cooperation in the “field of labor migration,” citing his country’s easing pandemic border controls.

In July, North Korea became the only nation aside from Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of the territories, Donetsk and Luhansk, further aligning with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.

The North’s arms export to Russia would be a violation of U.N. resolutions that ban the country from exporting to or importing weapons from other countries. Its possible dispatch of laborers to the Russian-held territories in Ukraine would also breach a U.N. resolution that required all member states to repatriate all North Korean workers from their soil by 2019.

There have been suspicions that China and Russia haven’t fully enforced U.N. sanctions on North Korea, complicating a U.S.-led attempt to deprive North Korea of its nuclear weapons.

The provocative move by North Korea comes as the Biden administration has become increasingly concerned about stepped-up activity by North Korea in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

North Korea has test-fired more than 30 ballistic missiles this year, including its first flights of intercontinental ballistic missiles since 2017, as leader Kim Jong-un pushes to advance his nuclear arsenal despite U.S.-led pressure and sanctions.

Russia, along with China, has called for the easing of U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests. Both countries are members of the U.N. Security Council, which has approved a total of 11 rounds of sanctions on the North since 2006. In May, Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-led bid to impose new economic sanctions on North Korea over its high-profile missile tests this year.

Some experts say that Kim could likely bolster his resolve to retain his nuclear weapons because he may think the Russian attack happened because Ukraine had signed away its nuclear arsenal.

Relations between Moscow and Pyongyang go back to the 1948 foundation of North Korea, as Soviet officials installed young, ambitious nationalist Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong-un, as the country’s first ruler. Since then, Soviet aid shipment had been crucial in keeping North Korea’s economy afloat for decades before the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Moscow had since established formal diplomatic relations with Seoul as part of its hopes to draw South Korean investment and allowed its Soviet-era military alliance with North Korea to expire. But after his election in 2000, Putin actively sought to restore his country’s ties with North Korea in what was seen as an effort to regain its traditional domains of influence and secure more allies to better deal with the United States.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Ukraine Steps Up Strikes in the South

Credit…Iranian Army, via Associated Press

Iran delivered to Russia the first batch of two types of military drones this month as part of a larger order totaling hundreds of the aerial war machines, according to an Iranian adviser to the government and two U.S. administration officials who were not authorized to speak on the record.

American officials said Russia could deploy the Iranian-made drones in its war against Ukraine to conduct air-to-surface attacks, carry out electronic warfare and identify targets.

Iran has officially said that it would not provide either side of the conflict with military equipment but has confirmed that a drone deal with Russia was part of a military agreement that predated the invasion of Ukraine.

Over several days in August, Russian transport aircraft loaded the drone equipment at an airfield in Iran and subsequently flew to Russia, according to the two U.S. officials.But the first shipments of Iranian-supplied drones, the American officials said, have had mechanical and technical problems.

The drone shipment, and the mechanical problems, was earlier reported by The Washington Post.

Iran’s military deal with Russia is part of a larger strategy by the Islamic Republic to pivot toward forming strategic economic partnerships with China and security partnerships with Russia.

This shift, analysts say, accelerated after President Donald J. Trump exited the nuclear deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran. European companies, fearing secondary sanctions by the United States, then ended nearly all business transactions and investments with Iran, prompting the country to look east and north.

“From Iran’s perspective, relations with the U.S. cannot be improved, and the Europeans are not powerful enough to protect Iranian interests,” said Sina Azodi, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council, an international affairs research institute. “But Russia and China can help Iran counter the West.”

Russia, for its part, has found a welcome new ally in Iran to help it evade the sanctions imposed by much of the world after its invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin traveled to Iran in July to meet with the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior officials.

The two types of drones being provided to Russia are the Iranian-manufactured Mohajer-6 and Shahed series. Russian operators are receiving training on the drones in Iran, according to the Iranian adviser and American officials familiar with the transfer.

The Mohajer-6 has the capability to carry out surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and the Shahed series is considered among the most capable of Iran’s military drones, according to comments made by the Iranian military to local news media.

Iran is a pioneer in drone technology, with at least four decades of design and manufacturing experience, and it has been providing combat drones to military groups and proxy militia in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

Officials in Israel, the United States and some Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia have said they are increasingly concerned that Iran’s advancing drone technology could destabilize the region and empower militias backed by Iran.

In the shadow war between Iran and Israel, Iranian drones have been involved in attacks on ships and have targeted U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria. Israel has also attacked a secret facility in western Iran where hundreds of drones were believed to have been stored.

Iran has quietly ramped up its drone sales far beyond the region as it seeks to be a global player in the drone market. Iran has sold drones to Ethiopia, Sudan and Venezuela; in May, it inaugurated a joint drone-manufacturing factory in Tajikistan.

The United States has been warning since last month that Russia intended to receive drones from Iran. The Russian military is experiencing major supply shortages in Ukraine, in part because of sanctions and export controls, forcing Russia to rely on countries like Iran for supplies and equipment.

The terms of the Iran-Russia drone deal were not immediately clear. The adviser to the government said no money had yet been exchanged.

Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, will travel to Moscow on Wednesday to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, to discuss the latest negotiations for a nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign ministry announced on Monday.

— Farnaz Fassihi and Julian E. Barnes

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Russia To Hold Sweeping Joint War Games With China, Others

By Associated Press
August 29, 2022

The exercise, taking place from Sept. 1-7, will involve more than 50,000 troops and over 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships.

Russia said Monday it will launch sweeping military drills in the country’s east that will involve forces from China — a show of increasingly close defense ties between Moscow and Beijing amid tensions with the West over the Kremlin’s action in Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise will be held Sept. 1-7 in various locations in Russia’s Far East and the Sea of Japan and involve more than 50,000 troops and over 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships.

The ministry released a video of Chinese troops arriving in Russia in preparation for the exercise.

The drills will be conducted at seven firing ranges in far eastern Russia and will engage troops from several ex-Soviet nations, China, India, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Syria.

The ministry said that units of Russian Airborne troops, long-range bombers and military cargo planes will take part in the drills along with other forces.

While first announcing the exercise last month, the Russian military emphasized that it’s part of planned combat training that is continuing despite Moscow’s military action in Ukraine. It hasn’t disclosed the number of troops engaged in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” there.

The ministry noted that as part of the maneuvers, the Russian and Chinese navies in the Sea of Japan will “practice joint action to protect sea communications, areas of marine economic activity and support for ground troops in littoral areas.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Fomin specified that the naval drills would take part in the northern and central part of the Sea of Japan.

“The exercise isn’t directed against any specific countries or military alliances and is purely defensive,” Fomin said at a meeting with foreign military attaches.

The drills reflect increasing defense ties between Moscow and Beijing, which have grown stronger since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. China has pointedly refused to criticize Russia’s action, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking Moscow, and has blasted punishing sanctions imposed on Moscow.

Russia, in turn, has strongly backed China amid the tensions with the U.S. that followed a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Speaking earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin drew parallels between U.S. support for Ukraine and Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, charging that both were part of alleged American efforts to foment global instability.

Russia and China have held a series of joint war games in recent years, including naval drills and patrols by long-range bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. Last year, Russian troops for the first time deployed to Chinese territory for joint maneuvers.

Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have developed strong personal ties to bolster a “strategic partnership” between the former Communist rivals as both Moscow and Beijing face increasing tensions with the West.

Even though Moscow and Beijing in the past rejected the possibility of forging a military alliance, Putin has said that such a prospect can’t be ruled out. He also has noted that Russia has been sharing highly sensitive military technologies with China that helped significantly bolster its defense capability.

While first announcing the drills last month, the Russian Defense Ministry emphasized that it’s part of planned combat training that is continuing despite Moscow’s military action in Ukraine. It hasn’t disclosed the number of troops engaged in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” there.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Ukraine Braces for Attacks on Civilians as It Celebrates Independence Day

Credit…Dmitry Serebryakov/Associated Press

Daria Dugina, the hawkish commentator who was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow on Saturday, did not only have a following in Russia because of her frequent appearances on state television. She was also an activist who cultivated ties with European right-wing networks, according to several figures from the French far right.

Ms. Dugina was particularly connected in France, moving between ultraconservative intellectual circles long frequented by her father — Aleksandr Dugin, an ideologue whose nationalist views have influenced President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — and far-right movements on the rise, including the party of the presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

“She was pursuing a political goal in which she obviously wanted to promote her father’s ideas,” said Pascal Eysseric, the managing editor of Éléments, a national-conservative French magazine, who knew Ms. Dugina through her father. “She was on a mission. That’s undeniable.”

There has long been an affinity for Mr. Putin among affiliates of the French far right, who admire the Russian leader’s muscular stance and opposition to what they view as Western decadence. In 2014, Ms. Le Pen’s party, then known as the National Front, secured a $9.3 million loan from a Czech-Russian bank. The same year, it was the only French political party to support Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Ms. Dugina, 29, studied philosophy for a year in France between 2012 and 2013 at a university in the western city of Bordeaux. It was around that time, Mr. Eysseric said, that she got in touch with GRECE, a French ethnonationalist think tank with which her father has collaborated.

She built ties with “anti-liberal, anti-Western and conservative political forces in Europe,” Mr. Eysseric said, describing her as spirited and highly educated.

Ms. Dugina promoted Ms. Le Pen through articles and appearances directed at a Russian audience. She was particularly active in the run-up to the 2017 French presidential election, according to a former member of Ms. Le Pen’s party with ties to the Kremlin, and interviewed several figures of the French far right around that time.

The former party member, who declined to be named for fear of retribution for his ties to Russia, said that Ms. Dugina met with members of Ms. Le Pen’s close circle. Hervé Juvin, a senior member of Ms. Le Pen’s party, now known as the National Rally, said he had met Ms. Dugina on several occasions but had lost track of her in recent years.

“She certainly played a role in generating sympathy for Marine Le Pen’s candidacy among a number of Russian news media,” Mr. Juvin said, “and she certainly established a link between the ideas that belonged to Russian patriots at the time and the ideas that belonged to the National Rally.”

In 2019, Ms. Dugina joined several French far-right activists in signing a petition praising the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and describing the conflict in Syria as “planned and orchestrated” by the West and Israel.

Far-right French figures have mourned her on social networks. Éléments published a tribute to Ms. Dugina, saying she was killed because the West had long targeted her father.

“To speak with her for an hour was to have the strange impression that the (counter-)revolution was really underway and that we were really preparing to topple the established order,” David L’Épée, the editor of the conservative magazine Krisis, wrote in the article, noting her “open conspiratorial nature that so fascinated her interlocutors.”

He said that the last time he saw Ms. Dugina, she had just returned from a meeting with associates of Matteo Salvini, the Italian far-right leader.

— Constant Méheut

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Syria Denies It Is Holding American Journalist Austin Tice

By Associated Press
August 17, 2022

In May, President Biden met Tice’s parents and reiterated his commitment to working toward “Austin’s long overdue return to his family.”

Syria denied on Wednesday it is holding U.S. journalist Austin Tice or other Americans after President Joe Biden accused the Syrian government of detaining him.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Damascus “denies it had kidnapped or is holding any American citizen on its territories.”

“The U.S. issued last week misleading and illogical statements by the American president and secretary of state that included baseless accusations against Syria that it had kidnapped or detained American citizens including former U.S. Marine Austin Tice,” the statement said.

President Biden’s comments last week came in a statement released by the White House to mark the 10th anniversary of Tice’s abduction, which took place when he was in Syria covering its lengthy conflict. President Biden’s remarks were the clearest indication so far that the U.S. is certain Tice is being held by the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We know with certainty that he has been held by the Government of Syria,” President Biden said in his statement last week. “We have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home.”

State Department Spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Tuesday that the U.S. government has pushed Syria to return every American. On Tice’s case specifically, he said, the Biden administration has “engaged extensively — and that includes directly — with Syrian officials and through third parties.”

“Syria has never acknowledged holding him,” Price said of Tice, adding that “we are not going to be deterred in our efforts. We are going to pursue every avenue for securing Austin’s safe return.”

The Syrian Foreign Ministry denied in its statement having any secret contacts with U.S. officials on the missing Americans, adding that “any official dialogue with the American government will only be public based on the respect of Syria’s sovereignty.”

In May, top Lebanese security official Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim met with U.S. officials in Washington as part of mediation efforts between the U.S. and Syria for Tice’s release. Ibrahim, the chief of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate, has mediated complicated hostage releases in the past.

In May, President Biden met Tice’s parents and reiterated his commitment to working toward “Austin’s long overdue return to his family.”

In the final months of the Trump administration, two U.S. officials — including the government’s top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, a former Army Special Forces officer — made a secret visit to Damascus to seek information on Tice and other Americans who have disappeared in Syria. It was the highest-level talks in years between the U.S. and Assad’s government, though Syrian officials offered no meaningful information on Tice.

Tice went missing shortly after his 31st birthday on Aug. 14, 2012, at a checkpoint in a contested area west of the capital of Damascus. A video released a month later showed him blindfolded and held by armed men, saying, “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since.

Tice is one of two Americans who went missing in Syria. The other is Majd Kamalmaz, a psychologist from Virginia, who vanished in Syria in 2017.

Tice is from Houston and his work had been published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and other outlets. He went to Syria to cover the conflict that started in 2011. The war has left hundreds of thousands dead and displaced nearly half of the pre-conflict population of 23 million. More than 5 million of those are outside the country.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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