Obama Threatens Consequences If Law Enforcement Officers Don't ... - Daily Caller: President Barack Obama used a TV interview to describe law enforcement officials as soldiers under his direct command, and he threatened to ... | Obama: Immigration Will Reshape America's Politics In-Depth-Daily Caller | Washington--Pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine will likely wait until the spring to attack the port of Mariupol, US intelligence chief James Clapper predicted Thursday, adding such a move did not seem imminent. - US intel chief sees spring attack on Ukraine port - Peninsula On-line | Top US intelligence official backs arming Ukraine forces against Russia - Washington Post: James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said providing weapons to Ukraine would likely trigger a “negative reaction” from the Russian government, which Western officials are hoping will ensure that separatists stick to a European-brokered ... | Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are the top nation-state cyber threats, the intelligence assessment found. Traditionally, China had been first on that list, but Russia was listed first this year for the first time.
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Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are the top nation-state cyber threats, the intelligence assessment found. Traditionally, China had been first on that list, but Russia was listed first this year for the first time.
...
"Homegrown violent extremists continue to pose the most likely threat to the homeland," Clapper said.
...
"Homegrown violent extremists continue to pose the most likely threat to the homeland," Clapper said.
Cyber Threats Expanding, New US Intelligence Assessment Says - NYTimes.com
The top U.S. intelligence official on Thursday gave a drastically different assessment than Secretary of State John Kerry of the terror threat -- declaring 2014 the deadliest year for global terrorism ever recorded, after Kerry claimed that threat was diminishing.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, testifying on Capitol Hill, catalogued the growing terror-fueled violence in stark terms.
"When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such data has been compiled," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He offered statistics that would appear to challenge other administration officials' claims that the country and world are safer today.
A day earlier, Kerry testified at a separate hearing that, "Despite ISIL, despite the visible killings that you see and how horrific they are, we are actually living in a period of less daily threat to Americans and to people in the world than normally; less deaths, less violent deaths today, than through the last century."
That prompted a quick response from lawmakers and from inside the intelligence community.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn , former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Fox News that Kerry is "out of touch with reality, he clearly is not listening to the entire U.S. intelligence community."
Clapper on Thursday said that in 2013, about 11,500 worldwide attacks killed about 22,000 people. But in the first nine months alone of 2014, he said, preliminary data from a University of Maryland research unit show nearly 13,000 attacks killed 31,000 people.
Half of those attacks and fatalities were in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said. He said the Islamic State conducted more attacks than any other terror group in those first nine months.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, asked Thursday about the apparent discrepancy in the two officials' remarks, said he thinks Kerry was referring to the success in pressuring ISIS leadership.
"Pressure has been applied and has reduced the ability of ISIL to expand its reign of terror," he said.
Earnest said that doesn't mean the threat has been eliminated.
The Clapper testimony came as Congress focused attention Thursday on what's being done to defeat the Islamic State -- at all levels of government -- as more cases surface of westerners trying to link up with the terror network, including a disturbing case out of New York City.
Clapper said Thursday that about 180 Americans have been involved in various stages of traveling or trying to travel to fight in the region. He said more than 3,400 total western fighters have gone to Syria and Iraq.
He spoke after the Justice Department announced Wednesday that three New York City residents plotted to travel to Syria to join ISIS militants and "wage jihad."
One of the defendants also offered to kill the president of the United States if ordered to do so, the criminal complaint alleged.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, has forged ahead with a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS, with the help of Middle East allies. At the same time, though, President Obama has downplayed the threat. In a recent interview with <a href="http://Vox.com" rel="nofollow">Vox.com</a>, he accused the media of overplaying the issue.
"If it bleeds, it leads, right?" he said.
FBI Director James Comey has said his bureau is investigating possible ISIS supporters in all 50 states.
Aside from Clapper's testimony, a House judiciary subcommittee was holding a separate hearing on Thursday on the threat of ISIS in America. FBI and other local law enforcement officials were set to testify.
Fox News' Bret Baier contributed to this report.
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· · · ·
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· · · · · ·
WASHINGTON — China is expanding its outposts in the South China Sea to include stationing for ships and potential airfields as part of its "aggressive" effort to exert sovereignty, the U.S. intelligence chief said Thursday.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on worldwide threats. His comments underscore U.S. concern over land reclamation activities that could fuel tensions between China and its neighbors over disputed islands and reefs.
"Although China is looking for stable ties with the United States it's more willing to accept bilateral and regional tensions in pursuit of its interests, particularly on maritime sovereignty issues," Clapper said. He described China's claims traced by a so-called nine-dash line — a rough boundary covering more than 80 percent of the South China Sea — as "exorbitant."
The U.S. is not a claimant of territory in the South China Sea but does claim a national interest in the peaceful resolution of the disputes in a region crucial for world trade. China says its territorial claims have a historical basis and objects to what it consider U.S. meddling.
Sen. John McCain, the committee's Republican chairman, displayed commercial satellite imagery showing expansion of the Chinese-occupied Gaven Reef in the Spratly Islands in the past year. He said China's expansion could allow it to employ weaponry, including anti-air and other capabilities.
Clapper said China was still in a construction phase so it was unclear what weaponry or forces it might deploy there. He said such Chinese activities in the past year-and-a-half, combined with oil drilling near disputed islands that caused conflict with Vietnam, was a "worrying trend."
The Center for Strategic and International Studies last week said Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have over the years modified existing land masses in the South China Sea, and the Philippines is planning to upgrade an airport and pier on an island it occupies. But among the claimants, China is unusual in how it has been "dramatically changing the size and structure of physical land features," the think tank said.
China has had a troop and supply garrison at Gaven Reef since 2003, but it began significant construction there last year, building a new artificial island, more than 18 acres in size. The main building on the new island appears to have an anti-aircraft tower, the center said.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. has elevated its appraisal of the cyber threat from Russia, the U.S. intelligence chief said Thursday, as he delivered the annual assessment by intelligence agencies of the top dangers facing the country.
"While I can't go into detail here, the Russian cyber threat is more severe than we had previously assessed," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, as he presented the annual worldwide threats assessment.
As they have in recent years, U.S. intelligence agencies once again listed cyber attacks as the top danger to U.S. national security, ahead of terrorism. Saboteurs, spies and thieves are expanding their computer attacks against a vulnerable American internet infrastructure, chipping away at U.S. wealth and security over time, Clapper said.
If there is good news, he said, it is that a catastrophic destruction of infrastructure appears unlikely.
"Cyber threats to U.S. national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact," the written assessment says. "Rather than a 'Cyber Armageddon' scenario that debilitates the entire US infrastructure, we envision something different. We foresee an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber attacks from a variety of sources over time, which will impose cumulative costs on U.S. economic competitiveness and national security."
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are the top nation-state cyber threats, the intelligence assessment found. Traditionally, China had been first on that list, but Russia was listed first this year for the first time. Previously, intelligence officials have said that hackers linked to China have been probing the U.S. electrical grid in an effort to lay the groundwork for attack.
Clapper did not elaborate on his cryptic comment about Russia's cyber capabilities, but the written assessment he delivered said that Russia's defense ministry is establishing its own cyber command responsible for offensive activities, "including propaganda operations and inserting malware into enemy command and control systems." The U.S. Cyber Command plans its own offensive operations, about which little is known.
The intelligence assessment noted public reports that detail how "Russian cyber actors" are developing the ability to remotely hack into industrial control systems that run electric power grids, urban mass-transit systems, air-traffic control networks and oil and gas pipelines. "These unspecified Russian actors have successfully compromised the product supply chains of three (control system) vendors so that customers download exploitative malware directly from the vendors' websites along with routine software updates, according to private sector cyber security experts," the assessment said.
The U.S. and Israel are widely cited as having launched a cyber attack on Iran's nuclear programthrough an industrial control system. The Stuxnet virus reportedly damaged Iranian nuclear centrifuges, proving that a remote computer attack could cause physical destruction.
The assessment noted that U.S. intelligence agencies have improved their ability to figure out who is perpetrating cyber attacks, despite the many ways such attacks can be disguised. Still, the lack of international norms makes the behavior difficult to deter, the assessment says.
What's more, "the muted response by most victims to cyber attacks has created a permissive environment in which low-level attacks can be used as a coercive tool short of war, with relatively low risk of retaliation."
The assessment said officials are increasingly concerned that cyber attackers will seek to change or destroy crucial data in a way that could undermine financial markets and business confidence.
Beyond cyber, the assessment surveyed an increasingly uncertain world, noting the existence of more terrorist safe havens than at any time in recent history.
"Unpredictable instability is the new normal," Clapper said.
On terrorism, the assessment noted that "Sunni violent extremists" such as the Islamic State group are "gaining momentum" and that the groups "challenge local and regional governance and threaten U.S. allies, partners, and interests."
"The threat to key US allies and partners will probably increase, but the extent of the increase will depend on the level of success that Sunni violent extremists achieve in seizing and holding territory," the assessment says.
Another variable is "the durability of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria," the assessment says.
"Homegrown violent extremists continue to pose the most likely threat to the homeland," Clapper said.
Six months into the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Clapper described a stalemate, with neither side able to "achieve its territorial ambitions."
The growing prominence of Shiite militias in Iraq, and their campaign of "retribution killings and forced displacement of Sunni civilians," threatens to undermine the fight against the Islamic State group, the assessment said.
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
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Clapper said, “When the final counting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such a data has been compiled. About half of all attacks as well fatalities in 2014 occurred in just three countries: Iraq, Pakistan and ...
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The likelihood that the US will suffer from a "catastrophic" cyber attack is unlikely, the nation's top intelligence officer said Thursday. Instead, the country will be peppered with "low-to-moderate level cyber attacks," James Clapper, the director of national ...
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· · ·
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper speaks during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill February 25, 2015 in Washington, D.C. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. has elevated its appraisal of the cyber threat from Russia, the U.S. intelligence chief said Thursday, as he delivered the annual assessment by intelligence agencies of the top dangers facing the country.
"While I can't go into detail here, the Russian cyber threat is more severe than we had previously assessed," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, as he presented the annual worldwide threats assessment.
As they have in recent years, U.S. intelligence agencies once again listed cyber attacks as the top danger to U.S. national security, ahead of terrorism. Saboteurs, spies and thieves are expanding their computer attacks against a vulnerable American internet infrastructure, chipping away at U.S. wealth and security over time, Clapper said.
If there is good news, he said, it is that a catastrophic destruction of infrastructure appears unlikely.
"Cyber threats to U.S. national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact," the written assessment says. "Rather than a `Cyber Armageddon' scenario that debilitates the entire US infrastructure, we envision something different. We foresee an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber attacks from a variety of sources over time, which will impose cumulative costs on U.S. economic competitiveness and national security."
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are the top nation-state cyber threats, the intelligence assessment found. Traditionally, China had been first on that list, but Russia was listed first this year for the first time. Previously, intelligence officials have said that hackers linked to China have been probing the U.S. electrical grid in an effort to lay the groundwork for attack.
Clapper did not elaborate on his cryptic comment about Russia's cyber capabilities, but the written assessment he delivered said that Russia's defense ministry is establishing its own cyber command responsible for offensive activities, "including propaganda operations and inserting malware into enemy command and control systems." The U.S. Cyber Command plans its own offensive operations, about which little is known.
The intelligence assessment noted public reports that detail how "Russian cyber actors" are developing the ability to remotely hack into industrial control systems that run electric power grids, urban mass-transit systems, air-traffic control networks and oil and gas pipelines. "These unspecified Russian actors have successfully compromised the product supply chains of three (control system) vendors so that customers download exploitative malware directly from the vendors' websites along with routine software updates, according to private sector cyber security experts," the assessment said.
The U.S. and Israel are widely cited as having launched a cyber attack on Iran's nuclear program through an industrial control system. The Stuxnet virus reportedly damaged Iranian nuclear centrifuges, proving that a remote computer attack could cause physical destruction.
The assessment noted that U.S. intelligence agencies have improved their ability to figure out who is perpetrating cyber attacks, despite the many ways such attacks can be disguised. Still, the lack of international norms makes the behavior difficult to deter, the assessment says.
What's more, "the muted response by most victims to cyber attacks has created a permissive environment in which low-level attacks can be used as a coercive tool short of war, with relatively low risk of retaliation."
The assessment said officials are increasingly concerned that cyber attackers will seek to change or destroy crucial data in a way that could undermine financial markets and business confidence.
Beyond cyber, the assessment surveyed an increasingly uncertain world, noting the existence of more terrorist safe havens than at any time in recent history.
"Unpredictable instability is the new normal," Clapper said.
On terrorism, the assessment noted that "Sunni violent extremists" such as the Islamic State group are "gaining momentum" and that the groups "challenge local and regional governance and threaten U.S. allies, partners, and interests."
"The threat to key U.S. allies and partners will probably increase, but the extent of the increase will depend on the level of success that Sunni violent extremists achieve in seizing and holding territory," the assessment says.
Another variable is "the durability of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria," the assessment says.
"Homegrown violent extremists continue to pose the most likely threat to the homeland," Clapper said.
Six months into the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Clapper described a stalemate, with neither side able to "achieve its territorial ambitions."
The growing prominence of Shiite militias in Iraq, and their campaign of "retribution killings and forced displacement of Sunni civilians," threatens to undermine the fight against the Islamic State group, the assessment said.
Read the whole story
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. has elevated its appraisal of the cyber threat from Russia, the U.S. intelligence chief said Thursday, as he delivered the annual assessment by intelligence agencies of the top dangers facing the country....
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had been accused by the prosecutor Alberto Nisman of conspiring to shield Iranian officials from responsibility for the bombing of a Jewish center in 1994.
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London — A scathing report from the House of Lords accused Britain and other EU members of 'sleep-walking into the current crisis.'
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President Barack Obama raised the political pressure on the opposition over immigration Wednesday, telling members of Miami's Latino community that Republicans were to blame for stalling the reform.
"For the next set of presidential candidates," he told a town hall meeting hosted by the Spanish-language TV network Telemundo, "when they start asking for votes, the first question should be, 'Are you really going to deport 11 million people? If not, what's your plan?' "
Obama defended his plan to protect up to 5 million undocumented immigrants and said he disagreed with a federal judge in Texas who blocked his order from taking effect. The president said it could take months for an appeals court to overturn that ruling.
He said he remained confident that he was within his legal rights to protect such a broad group of undocumented immigrants, and he urged those who would qualify for the program to continue preparing their applications.
"Until we pass a law through Congress, the executive actions we've taken are not going to be permanent; they are temporary," he said.
He said he would veto attempts by the GOP leadership to halt his executive orders through a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, which will run out of money Friday if no deal is struck.
"The pressure has to continue to stay on Congress. The pressure has to continue to stay on the Republican Party that is currently blocking the passage of comprehensive immigration reform," he said.
Obama rejected accusations that he failed to act on immigration reform early in his administration while Democrats controlled Congress. He became a little piqued when a member of the public accused Democrats and Republicans of playing "political pingpong" with immigration.
"That's just not true. … Democrats have consistently stood on the side of comprehensive immigration reform," the president said.
The president suggested Americans, particularly young people, who fail to vote have to shoulder some of the blame for the lack of progress on immigration. He pointed out that two-thirds of eligible voters stayed home in the last election, while in some war-torn countries voter turnout can be as high as 60 or 70 percent. "So, my question, not just to the immigrant community, but the country as a whole, is, 'Why are you staying at home? Why are you not participating?' "
But he predicted that the immigration issue eventually would be solved, "because at some point there is going to be a President Rodriguez or Chin," Obama said to applause.
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In July of 2008, candidate Barack Obama arrived in Israel for what many expected to be a politically perilous trip. As he shuttled from Ramallah to the Israel city of Sderot, he at times appeared anxiousto say something tough about Iran, ultimately declaring that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a “game-changing situation not just in the Middle East but around the world.”
Obama was coming off the announcement that, if elected president, he would talk without preconditions to Iran’s government, then led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who once was quoted as calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Although that was a mistranslation of what Ahmadinejad actually said, his evident hostility unnerved Israel, as did apprehension that Obama would be significantly more sympathetic to Palestinian interests than either his opponent John McCain or President George W. Bush.
The most tense and closely watched meeting was still ahead — with Benjamin Netanyahu, then the opposition leader of the rightist Likud party. Netanyahu was leading Israeli opinion polls. Many correctly expected him to soon begin his second tenure as prime minister. And he and Obama harbored very different worldviews. Still, despite the fact that Netanyahu “clearly preferred a McCain victory,” according to author Thomas G. Mitchell, the meeting seemed to indicate common ground on Iran.
Obama defends decision not to meet Netanyahu(1:07)
President Obama says not meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March is standard protocol for foreign leaders running in an election. (Reuters)
“The main focal point of our discussions was the need to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told reporters that day. Obama, Netanyahu stated, “would never seek in any way to compromise Israel’s security, and this would be sacrosanct in his approach to political negotiations.”
But a good relationship between the two men never developed. And today, following years of frostiness, awkwardness and downright hostility, it is worse than ever. Netanyahu’s impending speech before Congress, at the invitation of a Republican speaker who spent the past six years opposing everything Obama proposed, has ushered in a new era of nastiness. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Netanyahu was “wrong,” and national security adviser Susan E. Rice criticized Netanyahu’s “partisanship” as “destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”
“This is clearly the most dysfunctional relationship between an American and Israeli leader,” Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Wilson Center and a former U.S. negotiator and adviser in Republican and Democratic administrations, told The Washington Post. What’s more, he said, “the durability is troubling.”
What he means by “durability” is that it’s always been this way. The mutual disdain between Netanyahu and Obama goes way back, and the animosity apparent today has been years in the making.
There’s no shortage of examples: that time Netanyahu lectured Obama on Israeli history. That time Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy chuckled over how much they didn’t like Netanyahu. The time, in 2010, when Vice President Biden was blindsided on a trip to Israel by an Interior Ministry announcement of new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. And who can forget when senior Obama officials reportedly called Netanyahu “chickens–t” and “Aspergery”?
The dislike appears personal, yes, but there’s reason to believe it goes beyond the visceral. The two have an intellectual suspicion of one another, wrote Peter Beinart, who in 2012 set out the clearest analysis of the fraught relationship in the book “The Crisis of Zionism.”
“Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t trust Barack Obama, and probably never will,” Beinart wrote. “The reason is simple: Obama reminds Netanyahu of what Netanyahu doesn’t like about Jews … their belief that they carried a moral message to the world.”
Beinart argued Obama understands Israel through the lens of liberalism, while Netanyahu understands it through the prism of security and strength. “Obama got his view on Israel from liberal Jews back in Chicago,” wrote Thomas Mitchell in “Likud Leaders,” and that effect on his thinking has been apparent for years. One of those Jews, Beinart noted, was David Axelrod, who, “like many of Obama’s early Jewish supporters, put the ‘progressive social justice tradition’ at the core of his Jewish identity, and in his view, ‘Obama was very much a part of that and was very much a product of it.’ ”
While Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, for example, he criticized Israel’s West Bank security barrier, which the Republican Jewish Coalition later seized upon, according to JTA. Writing in “The Crisis of Zionism,” Beinart called Obama’s criticism “remarkable,” given that 361 members of the House that same year had passed a resolution in support of the barrier.
Even Obama’s reading habits were suspect to some Israel supporters. In an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in May 2008, Obama spoke of the book “The Yellow Wind,” which he read when it first came out in 1988. Written by novelist David Grossman, one of Israel’s most prominent doves, the work offers a searing indictment of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Its impact on Obama had been such that, even decades later, he still recalled it.
“It is difficult to read ‘The Yellow Wind’ without being profoundly disturbed by its portrait of Palestinian life under Israeli rule,” Beinart remarked. “That Obama read it, along with the novels of another famed Israeli dove, Amos Oz, lends further credence to Arnold Wolf’s claim that his pre-presidential years, Obama ‘was on the line of Peace Now.’ ”
Obama’s opinions on Israel have long contrasted with the militant view adopted by Netanyahu’s Likud, a point he made clear during the 2008 campaign, which made some pro-Israel hawks nervous. “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re opposed to Israel, that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel,” Obama said.
These statements weren’t lost on the Israeli public, and in a 2010 Jerusalem Post poll, only 9 percent of respondents said Obama’s administration was pro-Israel. Nearly one-half called it pro-Palestinian. Roughly three-fourths of Israelis who considered themselves right-wing — like Netanyahu — said Obama’s worldview was pro-Palestinian.
Now the differences between Netanyahu and Obama — on matters from settlements to modern Zionism — have come to a crossroads, a showdown set for next week when analysts say all of that building disdain between the men may finally come to a head. It will be a “tense political drama of the kind that House of Cards writers can only dream about,” said Haaretz.
Terrence McCoy
writes on foreign affairs for The Washington Post's Morning Mix. Follow him on Twitter
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(CNN)Much has changed since Russia and the United States were important partners, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov -- right-hand man to President Vladimir Putin -- told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.
"Let's be frank. Quite unexpectedly lots of water has passed under the bridges since that time," he said with a wry laugh.
"We have witnessed a tremendous clash of interests," he said, "in the heart of Europe, in Ukraine."
"So in the front of illegitimate armed takeover, armed coup that occurred in Kiev one year ago, Russia took a position -- quite understandable one -- but very, very frank, very open and very firm."
"The only thing we want is that our national interests, our sovereign rights and sovereign interests ... [are] treated with due respect. As soon as it happens, there will be a time for new renaissance in [our] international relationship."
That relationship, of course, has completely broken down over the civil war in Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatist troops are battling with the Ukrainian military for control of the eastern part of that country.
Two weeks after a ceasefire agreement was signed in Minsk, heavy fighting has continued.
Heavy weaponry now finally appears to be on the move, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says, but it is not sure whether it is being withdrawn (as was agreed to in the ceasefire) or just moved around.
Peskov admitted that the withdrawal is "very shaky" but said that the "militiamen of Donetsk," in eastern Ukraine, had "started to withdraw their heavy artillery."
He said that he had received information that the OSCE "refused to witness the process" of withdrawal.
That runs counter to what OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw told CNN on the phone Wednesday: That his organization was trying to access the areas in question, and that both the separatists and the Ukrainian military were with-holding information about their weaponry, the corridors for their transfer, and where they were being stored.
Moscow denies having any involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
"Russia," Peskov said, "is not a country that is allowing or not allowing separatists to move towards one city or one village or another."
The most eastern Ukrainian hot-spot now is Mariupol, a strategic city on the Black Sea that could eventually help open a corridor between Russian-annexed Crimea and the Russian mainland.
Peskov emphasized that Russia does not control separatists, but said that he did not believe they would move on the city, where the OSCE has reported heavy shelling.
"Those people are responding, are responding to hostile actions, hostile attacks against their own soil, against their own people."
"They are endangered and they are responding."
It was this argument of "endangered" ethnic-Russians that the Kremlin used as justification last year to annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country.
But an article in Russia' Novaya Gazeta newspaper, reported by the New York Times, says that in fact the "Kremlin was advised to annex Crimea and a large swath of southeastern Ukraine weeks before the Ukrainian government fell."
Responding to the allegation, Peskov attacked Novaya Gazeta, a prominent independent paper.
"No, this is not true. This is not true. Or maybe, maybe. I mean, I cannot exclude. Because I don't know the paper. I don't know who is the author of the paper."
"It's a newspaper ... sometimes they make, well, unimaginable publications. And I don't see any reason for us to react. The only thing I can tell you -- even if kind of that paper exists, it has nothing to do with the Kremlin. And it has nothing to do with official papers in Russian government."
As war rages in Ukraine, the Russian military has seemed to taunt the rest of Europe with airplanes or boats that skirt -- or sometimes violate -- national boundaries.
NATO says its members scrambled jets more than 400 times in 2014 -- 50% more than the previous year -- in response to Russian military aircraft.
"Every time they start to make buzz about Russian jets planes or military planes navigating in international corridors, every time they make that buzz, willingly or unwillingly they forget to mention NATO planes, British planes, and American planes doing the same in the same corridor."
"So it's international practice, it's internationally agreed. It's internationally observed. And it's internationally accepted. Let's remember that."
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At the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have told U.S. President Barack Obama that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "in another world." After months of near-constant shuttle diplomacy, a mere 48 hours after Minsk II was concluded, the West had to watch a humiliating Ukrainian rout at Debaltseve.
While on a recent visit to Hungary, Putin gloated, "Obviously it's bad to lose, but life is life and it still goes on." It seems more and more clear that if anyone is living in another world, it is Western leaders.
Minsk and the subsequent Debaltseve collapse revealed the reality of the West's own situation — it negotiated with Putin on his terms and in his world. It is clear that the West has an interlocutor in Putin whose objectives are not transparent, promises are not trustworthy, and who is making decisions that have heightened conflict in the region.
Last December, an international consortium of investigative journalists, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) named Putin their "person of the year" for 2014, "for his work in turning Russia into a major money laundering center for enabling organized crime in Crimea and in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine; for his unblemished record of failing to prosecute criminal activity; and for advancing a government policy of working with and using crime groups."
A runner-up was Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who is on record as wanting to establish an "illiberal democracy" in Hungary.
Most analysts concede the depth of Kremlin thievery and U.S. sanctions specifically target "team Putin." The question however is whether kleptocratic tendencies are central or peripheral to the conduct of Russian policy. Those, like myself, who say they are central agree with opposition activists like Boris Nemtsov that Putin's building and renovation of 20 palaces, his receipt of $700,000 in watches and his unlimited access to yachts, planes, and a Kremlin property management department with a staff of more than 60,000, and an annual presidential office budget of $2.41 billion is costly in terms more than treasure.
It also reveals that at the system's heart is total bespredel — limitlessness. Unconstrained by laws, rules, or any sense of decency, Putin stands astride the world's largest gap between rich and poor.
Credit Suisse noted in 2014 that "inequality in Russia is so far above [all other countries] that it deserves to be placed in a separate category." The top decile of wealth holders owns 85 percent of all household wealth in Russia, while 83 percent of the population has less than $10,000 in personal wealth.
Instead of the state acting as a market regulator and redistributive agent, kleptocratic interests at the top have only fueled the tendency toward monopoly and state capitalism. Allowing Kremlin cronies to raid less protected entrepreneurs has stymied development and encouraged capital flight, exceeding $150 billion in 2014.
Russians can only secure property rights by keeping money in foreign banks or buying apartments abroad. But by doing so, they never develop a vested interest in the emergence of sustainable legal and financial systems in Russia.
The regime increasingly claims legitimacy through Putin and his much-vaunted popularity rating. But polls also express dissatisfaction with dishonest elections, widespread corruption, and government mismanagement.
Transparency International ranks Russia positively in terms of human development but negatively in terms of judicial independence, press freedom and corruption. The population has the skills to make a transition to a law-based society, but the state has taken the country in the opposite direction.
As regimes close politically, the quality of decision-making always declines. And when closeness to the leader also depends on willingness to maintain a tribute system based on gifts, fealty and silence, professional advice takes a backseat to slavish expressions of loyalty.
More and more of the high-ranking posts are going to people not just connected to Putin since the St. Petersburg days, but also his own relatives and relatives of his friends. Sitting on the Scientific Council of Moscow State University and director of Innopraktika — a $1.7 billion project to build a Russian Silicon Valley — is a certain Katerina Tikhonova. Russian opposition figures claimed at the end of January that she is Putin's 28-year-old daughter.
Two sons of Putin's cousins similarly hold positions in the gas industry, as do many other top leaders' children.
In addition to officials being placed in positions less because of their expertise than their relationship to Kremlin officials, decision-making is slowed while everyone waits for Putin. Even in his first year in office a fire in the Ostankino television tower burned out of control until he had given the order to cut the electricity. Three firemen died.
Also in 2000, 118 young men aboard the nuclear submarine Kursk died a slow death at the bottom of the Barents Sea tapping out rescue messages as the military waited for Putin's decision to accept international help. Over the time of Putin's tenure, Kremlin insiders have come to talk less about the "vertical of power" — decisions made along a chain of command, and more about "manual control" — all decisions made at the top.
The pressures of making all the decisions, combined with fear by subordinates of making any, only weaken state response to crisis. One could see this in Putin's rambling answer last December during his annual news conference to a question on the government's response to the ruble and oil price collapse.
"I said that given the most unfavorable foreign economic situation this could last (approximately, because no one can say for certain) for about two years. However, it may not last that long and the situation could take a turn for the better sooner. It could improve in the first or second quarter of next year, by the middle of next year, or by its end. Nobody can tell. There are many uncertain factors."
Should anyone criticize the president for his less than commanding performance, they could easily be branded as an enemy. The reemergence in the official political lexicon of denunciations of opponents as speculators, fifth columnists, traitors, foreign agents and fascists further weaken the quality of decisions.
Those Kremlin elites who came to power to become rich now are faced with sanctions and visa bans that keep them in Russia. It might be hoped that over time they will lobby for real laws to protect their gains. But the state takeover of Sistema's subsidiary Bashneft late last year suggests the Kremlin will continue to consume juicy morsels at will.
It is not encouraging for Russia, for the West or for Ukraine and the Baltic states that Russia is ruled by a leader whose actions he may describe as serving Russia's interests, but which clearly do not in the long run.
Unless we recognize what we are dealing with here — a kleptocratic authoritarian regime which has and will use many levers to undermine, divide and defeat the West, it may be historians who will ultimately write that it was the West and not Vladimir Putin who once lived in another world.
Karen Dawisha is the author of "Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?" and the director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University in Ohio.
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- Nato soldiers and armour took part in a military parade in Estonia
- It took place in the city of Narva, a few hundred yards away from Russia
- 100 British, Dutch, Spanish, Latvian and Lithuanian troops were present
- Two US armoured personnel carriers and Dutch tanks were also there
- Holding display in Narva was seen as a statement of intent by Nato
- Experts said it showed Nato is committed to defending Baltic States
Published: 07:46 EST, 25 February 2015 | Updated: 12:47 EST, 25 February 2015
Nato forces put on a show of strength in Estonia, just yards from the Russian border, with troops, armoured personnel carriers and tanks forming a military parade.
Around 100 British, Dutch, Spanish, Latvian and Lithuanian troops yesterday marched in the snow in the city of Narva, alongside some 1,300 Estonian soldiers, to mark the independence of the formerly Soviet-ruled republic, now a member of the European Union and Nato.
Today Moscow responded by deploying thousands of soldiers on exercise just across Russia's borders with Estonia and Latvia. Russian President Vladimir Putin also lashed Ukraine's decision to cut off gas to its eastern regions, saying the move 'smacks of genocide'.
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Nato forces put on a show of strength in Estonia, just yards from the Russian border, with troops, armoured personnel carriers and tanks forming a military parade. Pictured are US soldiers in M1126 Stryker armoured fighting vehicles
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A US armoured vehicle just yards away from the Russian border in Narva
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The display was held amid heightened tensions between Nato and Russia over Ukraine. Pictured are soldiers from the Netherlands in light tanks
The worsening tension across eastern Europe came as the U.S. bluntly accused Russia of 'lies' and Cold War-style propaganda over its involvement in the bloody conflict in east Ukraine which has claimed thousands of lives.
Rhetoric was also hawkish in Estonia yesterday. 'History has taught us that if we do not defend ourselves, nobody else will,' General Riho Teras, Estonia's chief of staff, said at the parade.
'The events in Ukraine that have kept the entire world awake, demonstrate very clearly that we ourselves must maintain security,' he added.
Putin this week began supplying gas direct to areas of eastern Ukraine which are now controlled by pro-Moscow rebels who are, the West allege, propped up by the Russian army.
He lambasted Kiev for switching off gas to the region, notwithstanding Russian gas monopoly Gazprom's threat to cut Ukraine off entirely - a block which would affect Europe's pipeline supply.
He lambasted Kiev for switching off gas to the region, even though Gazprom has threatened to block supplies to Ukraine, which could then hit Europe's pipeline deliveries.
'It's not enough that there's famine there and the OSCE has reported a humanitarian catastrophe, but then to switch off gas supplies too,' said Putin.
'What do you call that? That already smacks of genocide.'
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Estonian soldiers march in formation during a military parade on the occasion of Estonia's Independence Day, in Narva, Estonia - just 300 yards from the border with Russia
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Soldiers of the Royal Dutch Armed Forces march in formation during the annual parade
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Around 100 British, Dutch, Spanish, Latvian and Lithuanian troops marched in the snow in the city of Narva, alongside some 1,300 Estonian soldiers
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The show of strength took place right on Putin's doorstep
Hot on the heels of Nato's part in Estonia's Independence Day parade in Narva, 2,000 Russian soldiers swooped on Pskov, the Russian region bordering the tiny Baltic state.
Some 500 units of equipment took part in the drills, which continue until Saturday with 1,500 paratroopers parachuting en masse to capture and destroy a fictional enemy's airfield.
Joining Nato's small international contingent in the Narva parade were two US Stryker armoured personnel carriers and a number of Dutch CV90 tanks. Nato has brought the equipment into the Baltics for a wave of exercises in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and subsequent meddling in that country's east.
The annual parade has taken on particular importance this year in the context of jitters in the Baltic countries.
Holding the parade in Narva on the Russian border, where a majority of residents are ethnic Russian, was seen by commentators as sending a strong signal to Moscow about Nato's commitment to collective defence.
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The annual parade has taken on particular importance this year in the context of jitters in the Baltic countries
US Secretary of State John Kerry angrily accused Moscow of lying to his face over Russian involvement in Ukraine.
'They have been persisting in their misrepresentations - lies - whatever you want to call them, about their activities there to my face, to the face of others, on many different occasions,' he told US lawmakers.
He said Russia was also engaging in 'a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I've seen since the very height of the Cold War'
Putin said the gas supplies to Ukraine would be halted if it failed to pay.
Ukraine said it had stopped supplies to the country's east because of pipeline damage due to fighting.
'I don't know for sure whether the pipeline is damaged or not. What I do know is that about four million people live there,' said Putin.
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An Estonian soldier (left) and a soldier of the Royal Dutch Armed Forces salute as they jointly stand in a military vehicle during the parade
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Holding the parade in Narva on the Russian border, where a majority of residents are ethnic Russian, was seen by commentators as sending a strong signal to Moscow about Nato's committment to collective defence
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Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (centre right) inspects soldiers during the parade
General Adrian Bradshaw, Nato's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said last week that Russia could try to seize territory from the alliance's states off the back of fighting in Ukraine.
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon reportedly also told journalists last week that there was a 'real and present danger' to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
However, few ethnic-Russian Narva locals who came to the parade seemed to echo fears of a Russian intervention.
'In my opinion national security is blown up by the press, it's nothing serious, everything is okay, no one is going to attack anyone,' said 55-year-old Yuri Melnikov.
Elvira Neimann, 77, said she's been living in Narva since the end of the Second World War in 1945: 'I feel part of Estonia, not Russia.'
'We're all tolerant people, Russia is our friendly neighbour,' she told AFP.
Lithuania said Tuesday it would return to limited conscription later this year as concern mounts over Russian military exercises near Nato Baltic states.
The Soviet Union annexed the three small states during World War II. They won independence in 1991 and have had rocky ties with Moscow ever since.
LITHUANIA REINTRODUCES NATIONAL SERVICE AMID HEIGHTENED TENSIONS IN UKRAINE
Lithuania has decided to restore compulsory military service for young men as tensions in Ukraine continue to worry the small Baltic nation.
After a meeting of military leaders and top government officials, President Dalia Grybauskaite said Tuesday the measure was necessary because of 'growing aggression' in Ukraine.
Military officials said Lithuania will reinstate national service for five years starting in September, when it will enlist some 3,000 men, ages 19 to 27. They will serve for nine months.
General Jonas Vytautas, the defense chief, says a lack of soldiers posed a 'real threat' to national security.
Lithuania, like its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia, was occupied for five decades by the Soviet Union before regaining independence in 1991. It abolished conscription in 2008, four years after joining Nato.
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For all the alarmist rhetoric about Russian barbarians at the gate, NATO countries are reluctant to put their money where their mouth is. Only the countries closest to Russia's borders are increasing their military spending this year, while other, bigger ones are making cuts. Regardless of what their leaders say about Vladimir Putin, they don't seem to believe he's a real threat to the West.
In a paper released today by the European Leadership Network think tank, Denitsa Raynova and Ian Kearns analyzed this year's spending plans for 14 NATO countries. The U.K., Germany, Canada, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria will cut military expenditure, and France will keep it at last year's level. Only six countries -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania and the Netherlands -- will increase their defense spending. Four of them are Russia's close neighbors, and the fifth, the Netherlands, suffered greatly this year from the Ukraine conflict when an airliner filled with Dutch citizens was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
Among the six, however, only proud little Estonia will spend more than 2 percent of its economic output on defense. Poland, whose spending will be flat, is also close to 2 percent.
Raynova and Kears concentrate on NATO countries' progress toward the 2 percent threshold because in September 2014 they pledged to meet it within a decade -- also promising to halt any decline in defense expenditure. It may be more informative, however, to look at the countries' defense allocations in real dollar terms. Doing so reveals that the increases in eastern Europe are dwarfed by cuts in western Europe (I used current exchange rates both for 2014 and 2015 numbers):
Germany is the biggest budget cutter, despite its armed services' growing problems equipping themselves. The television station ARD reported this month that a group of German soldiers -- a rapid-response force, no less -- was forced to pass off broomsticks as machine guns during a NATO exercise in Norway because the real guns were missing from their armored vehicles. (They painted the broomsticks black to make them look convincing.)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, has never showed a particular affinity for defense spending. At the Munich security conference last month, she looked Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the eye and told him he could not win a war against Russia and dismissed any suggestion of providing Kiev with arms -- a warning that led to peace talks and a shaky ceasefire Merkel brokered jointly with French President Francois Hollande. (France, with the fourth biggest defense budget in NATO, simply cannot afford to spend more on defense: as is, it's unable to keep its deficit to the European Union standard of 3 percent.)
British Prime Minister David Cameron, by contrast, is no dove. He says he's worried that Russia and its proxies won't stop at their recent territorial gains in Ukraine. “People will be looking at Mariupol as the next potential flashpoint, and if that were to happen I think the argument for further action would be overwhelming,” Cameron said earlier this week. “I think that would be the view of countries like Poland, the Baltic states and many others.” Moreover, Cameron announced he would be sending military trainers to Ukraine, promising the U.K. would be the "strongest pole in the tent."
Yet the reality is Cameron has been cutting U.K. defense spending, and budget projections for this year suggest another cut of more than $1 billion. That's more than the combined total that the valiant Baltic dwarfs are adding in military spending (Latvia and Estonia are only able to increase their budgets by about $30 million each). Despite Russian warplanes repeatedly buzzing the U.K., and regardless of Cameron's public statements, military threats clearly aren't keeping the country's political leaders awake at night.
There is no question, however, that Russia's immediate neighbors see Putin's aggression as a clear and present danger. Lithuania, which only spent 0.78 percent of its GDP on defense last year, is bumping up that expenditure by a third and reinstating conscription, probably on the advice of Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who said in an interview in July 2014 that small countries like Estonia's Baltic neighbors were wrong to switch to professional armies. The professional soldiers "are very good," Ilves said, "but how many are they? Two thousand? Everything could end after one battle already. And what will happen to the rest of Latvia?"
Ilves has been the staunchest advocate of preparedness for a Russian invasion. His country of 1.3 million, however, only has a standing military of 18,200, including a large volunteer corps. Its wartime strength is supposed to increase to 30,000 -- about as many personnel as Georgia had in 2008, when a Russian invasion force steamrolled over it and nearly seized the capital, Tbilisi, before a peace deal was struck. So Estonia is keen to show Putin it doesn't stand alone. This week, it held an Independence Day military parade in Narva, a town divided from Russia by a river, and the display of strength featured U.S. combat vehicles and personnel.
Given the obvious divide between the alarmed European border states and the complacent giants of western Europe, the Baltics can only expect meaningful help from the U.S. in deterring or combatting Russian aggression. Washington has not yet established permanent bases in these countries but has been sending troops there on regular rotations. Moreover, the U.S. military budget, at $496 billion, was last year almost nine times as big as that of the U.K., NATO's second biggest defense spender.
It is, however, due to shrink this year because of automatic sequestration to reduce the budget deficit. In its just-released assessment of U.S. military power for 2015, the Heritage Foundation said the county's armed forces "would be ill-equipped to handle two, near-simultaneous major regional contingencies."
Putin's Russia has been ramping up military expenditure to become the fourth biggest spender in the world. Facing him down would require some effort from all NATO members, not just the small ones closest to the Russian borders. "The very nature of membership in a defense alliance is to share the rights and responsibilities for delivering security," Raynova and Kearns wrote. "More defense cooperation among allies is the only realistic way forward."
No one in NATO would disagree with that. But practical steps won't follow unless all alliance members believe Putin poses an existential threat. If Putin were thought to be the Hitler of our time, out to avenge the Soviet Union's fall and rebuild an empire, defense spending would surely increase. But despite events in Ukraine -- where the truce is, apparently, beginning to take -- that still requires a leap of faith. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and even Western hawks recognize that Russia may have a particular interest in it as a buffer state.
Invading the Baltics would be much more of a direct challenge to the West, one that would require from Putin a Hitler-like disregard for his adversaries' considerable combined strength. But there are few signs that Putin is quite so reckless. Perhaps that's why the bigger NATO countries don't feel they need to use up much-needed resources to build a dam against an unlikely flood.
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NATO’s military chief on Wednesday said there's no way to be sure how Russia will react if the U.S. supplies lethal arms to Ukraine’s military.
“Clearly we don’t know what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will do,” Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday
“Clearly we don’t know what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will do,” Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday
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"It could cause positive results, it could cause negative results” but "what we are doing now is not changing the results on the ground,” he said.
"I do not believe Ukrainian forces can stop a Russian advance in Eastern Ukraine," Breedlove said.
He added that even with lethal aid, Ukrainian forces might not be able to stop a Russian advance but it could change Russian "calculations."
Such a move might strengthen Kiev’s forces and allow them to be more effective against pro-Moscow separatists, but the potential concern is that Russia “might then double down” and escalate the violence, added Christine Wormuth, under secretary of defense for policy.
Their comments come as lawmakers in both chambers have stepped up their efforts to force the President Obama to provide lethal weapons to Kiev, a move he has so far declined to take for fear for escalating the conflict.
Earlier this month, the leaders of the Armed Services panel unveiled a bill to provide $1 billion in military assistance for Ukraine.
Breedlove said that his “top concern is a resurgent Russia” attempting to exercise power and influence through the use of force.
More than 1,000 pieces of Russian military equipment have been moved across the border into Ukraine to support pro-Moscow separatists and when rebel offensive have stalled Russian “regular forces themselves intervened,” he said.
Wormuth said DOD officials have “two areas of concern” about what Moscow might do next, including destabilizing non-NATO states, like Montenegro, or potentially creating instability in Baltic countries that have large ethnic Russia populations.
However, she said, officials have not made "significant active steps” toward either.
Breedlove speculated the Kremlin hasn’t accomplished its objective yet inside Ukraine.
He said he has discussed the possibility of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine with the Obama administration.
“I have advised to my chain of command” on the kinds of arms Kiev’s military has requested, he said.
Small arms could be provided in a “very short timeline” but that more sophisticated weaponry might require training and therefore would take longer to get onto the battlefield,” according to Breedlove.
However, he said, “I don’t think we’ve exhausted” all options and that providing lethal assistance is the next step.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the panel’s chairman, admitted that no one can be certain how Putin will react to Washington supplying arms, but that lawmakers have seen what’s happened on the ground with them.
“And that hasn’t gone very well,” he said.
He added that even with lethal aid, Ukrainian forces might not be able to stop a Russian advance but it could change Russian "calculations."
Such a move might strengthen Kiev’s forces and allow them to be more effective against pro-Moscow separatists, but the potential concern is that Russia “might then double down” and escalate the violence, added Christine Wormuth, under secretary of defense for policy.
Their comments come as lawmakers in both chambers have stepped up their efforts to force the President Obama to provide lethal weapons to Kiev, a move he has so far declined to take for fear for escalating the conflict.
Earlier this month, the leaders of the Armed Services panel unveiled a bill to provide $1 billion in military assistance for Ukraine.
Breedlove said that his “top concern is a resurgent Russia” attempting to exercise power and influence through the use of force.
More than 1,000 pieces of Russian military equipment have been moved across the border into Ukraine to support pro-Moscow separatists and when rebel offensive have stalled Russian “regular forces themselves intervened,” he said.
Wormuth said DOD officials have “two areas of concern” about what Moscow might do next, including destabilizing non-NATO states, like Montenegro, or potentially creating instability in Baltic countries that have large ethnic Russia populations.
However, she said, officials have not made "significant active steps” toward either.
Breedlove speculated the Kremlin hasn’t accomplished its objective yet inside Ukraine.
He said he has discussed the possibility of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine with the Obama administration.
“I have advised to my chain of command” on the kinds of arms Kiev’s military has requested, he said.
Small arms could be provided in a “very short timeline” but that more sophisticated weaponry might require training and therefore would take longer to get onto the battlefield,” according to Breedlove.
However, he said, “I don’t think we’ve exhausted” all options and that providing lethal assistance is the next step.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the panel’s chairman, admitted that no one can be certain how Putin will react to Washington supplying arms, but that lawmakers have seen what’s happened on the ground with them.
“And that hasn’t gone very well,” he said.
Wormuth said its possible that stiffer Russia sanctions might "potentially be more effective and have fewer downsides" than arming Ukraine.
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Chris Wattie/Reuters
NATO’s top commander bluntly told the Pentagon on Wednesday that the allied effort to slow Russia’s advance in Ukraine isn’t working. He delivered that message as the Obama administration appeared to back away from earlier indications that the U.S. would arm the Ukrainian army against pro-Putin forces.
“Right now we are not arming the Ukrainians with lethal weapons, and what we see is that Russians continue to provide their force, continues to build the capability,” Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander of NATO and commander of U.S. European Command, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday after testifying before the House Armed Services Committee hours earlier.
A decision to provide that lethal aid “could cause positive results, could cause negative results,” he added. “But what we’re doing now is not changing the results on the ground.”
Breedlove, however, said he was ready with plans for the U.S. to provide military assistance to a beleaguered Ukrainian Army fending off Russian backed rebels—should the Obama administration ever make a decision.
The U.S. has conducted comprehensive studies of Ukrainian military needs, he added, and has a good sense of what it could provide to assist with an effective defense with Russian troops in the east.
Breedlove—once an advocate for a stronger U.S. stance in the Ukraine conflict—painted a bleak picture of a Russia increasingly intervening in the war there, as the West debates whether to help.
“It’s getting worse everyday,” Breedlove told reporters. “We have seen a steady escalation.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s involvement in the conflict had evolved from opaque to direct, Breedlove said. The commander added that Russia had sent “well over” 1,000 combat vehicles.
Breedlove also said Wednesday he could not say “what’s going on in Mr. Putin’s head,” but that Putin’s goal “is to keep Ukraine out of the West and the West out of Ukraine.”
Advocates for arming Ukraine are growing increasingly aghast at the passing time without lethal aid from the United States.
A decision to arm Ukraine “could cause positive results, could cause negative results. But what we’re doing now is not changing the results on the ground.”
“It’s disappointing that it still hasn’t occurred,” Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Daily Beast. “[The Obama administration has] put the decision off. We’ve pressed them in Congress, we’ve passed legislation. It passed unanimously on the Senate floor to authorize them to [provide lethal defensive arms to the Ukrainians].”
Supporters of providing such weapons argue Ukraine cannot defend itself otherwise and Russian aggression cannot go unanswered.
“The West is endangering their own interests by taking so long. If Ukraine is forced to capitulate to Putin’s agenda, then all of those worst fears that the West has will begin to materialize because based on the rhetoric and everything that we hear coming from the Russian state, Ukraine is not the end. Ukraine is just the beginning,” Pavel Yarmolenko, a spokesman for the Ukraine Freedom Support Group, told The Daily Beast.
But there are risks—serious risks—to providing those arms. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry acknowledged that it was impossible to know how Putin might react if the United States were to provide more lethal aid to Ukraine, but retorted that the world has seen “how he has responded without us providing weapons, and that isn’t going very well.”
Breedlove stopped short of advocating for lethal defensive weapons as some has urged in the last few weeks. The administration now appears to have moved away from such a decision in the face of vehement opposition from the U.S.’s NATO partners. Instead, he called the military part of a multifaceted arsenal that includes diplomatic and economic efforts.
“This will not end militarily,” the supreme allied commander told reporters. But Breedlove did not describe his own personal opinion on the issue of lethal aid.
“Gen. Breedlove has supplied his best military advice to the chain of command on options so that Administration can make their decision. To openly discuss his [position] jeopardizes his best advice and our role to inform our leaders on what we assess to be options,” Captain Gregory Hicks, a spokesman for the general, told The Daily Beast.
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Ukraine said it would buy what it called defensive weapons from the United Arab Emirates, bypassing the West’s reluctance to provide arms to help Kiev’s forces against Russia-backed rebels.
President Petro Poroshenko, speaking Tuesday at the International Defense Exhibition and Conference in Abu Dhabi, didn’t specify what type of equipment Ukraine would buy or in what quantities, but said they would help Ukraine protect its territory from the separatists.
The U.A.E. Defense Ministry couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. It didn’t include any Ukraine-related arms deals in its daily contract update for the exposition.
Ukraine has for months requested lethal weapons from its backers in the West, but run into stiff resistance especially from Germany, France and Britain, which fear an escalation in the nearly yearlong conflict.
The Obama administration recently began reconsidering supplying Javelin antitank missiles, small arms and ammunition to Ukraine, but delayed a decision during the latest European peace efforts, which brought a cease-fire agreement on Feb. 12.
Like a similar agreement in September, the truce has failed to fully take hold, as militants overran the strategic, Ukrainian-held town of Debaltseve last week.
In Washington on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. is considering imposing additional sanctions on Russia in the next few days, and that the next round would add Russian officials and entities currently sanctioned by Canada and the European Union.
He indicated at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that this would include Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB.
Mr. Bortnikov, who is already subject to EU and Canadian sanctions, attended last week’s White House summit on extremism, leading the Russian delegation. The U.S. helped arrange for Mr. Bortnikov’s visa and travel.
Mr. Kerry reiterated that U.S. lethal aid to Ukraine is “under active consideration.” However, he also said Mr. Poroshenko and others have acknowledged that Ukraine can’t defeat Russia militarily.
“Nobody, not even Poroshenko … believes that they can get enough materiel that they can win,” Mr. Kerry said. “He believes they might be able to raise the cost and do more damage.”
Mr. Kerry said officials are considering whether it is worth “raising the cost,” a view lawmakers from both parties have pressed.
“I hate to be cynical, but when it comes to Russia, they deserve it,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) at a Senate Appropriations Committee subpanel hearing earlier Tuesday. “I think we need to move and be ready to move quickly.”
Col. Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian security spokesman, said militants continued to shell Ukrainian positions on Tuesday, with one serviceman killed and seven injured in the last 24 hours.
He said that although the frequency of shelling had decreased, a full cease-fire needed to hold for two days before Kiev would pull its heavy weapons from the front lines—the next stage of the peace agreement.
Eduard Basurin, a rebel army commander, said his fighters had withdrawn heavy weapons from some towns on the front lines, but Col. Lysenko said the militants were regrouping elsewhere.
Russian President Vladimir Putin , who helped broker the Feb. 12 truce, said in a television interview in Moscow that “the situation will gradually normalize” if the full cease-fire deal is implemented. That includes a decentralization of power that would hand rebel-held areas greater powers, including the right to create their own police force and appoint prosecutors and judges.
Foreign ministers from Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France reaffirmed their commitment to the accord hashed out by their leaders, calling for “strict implementation” of all provisions.
Meeting in Paris, the envoys discussed the violence around Debaltseve and Mariupol—a Ukrainian port that has also been targeted by separatists—demanding that international monitors receive full access to the disputed areas.
“We call on all parties to cooperate,” the ministers said afterward, without saying which side was blocking the monitors.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is looking to bolster its armed forces, which mostly use aging equipment from the Soviet era, after losing its Crimea region to Russia in March 2014, and then large swaths of its Donetsk and Luhansk regions to pro-Moscow separatists.
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European leaders are hoping the cease-fire they brokered a week ago for Ukraine sticks, even as the U.S. says Russian equipment and troops continue to flow into the country. What’s at stake? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.
But the fighting has caused havoc in the local weapons industry, which has suffered the loss of some facilities as it tries to maintain production of items such as armored combat vehicles.
The U.S. and some allies have provided Ukraine with nonlethal military aid, such as protective vests, night-vision goggles and counter-mortar radar systems.
U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon on Tuesday announced additional nonlethal support “in light of continued Russian-backed aggression,” including medical, logistics, infantry and intelligence capacity-building. He said up to 75 British troops would conduct the training from mid-March in Ukraine, but “well away” from the conflict area.
Prime Minister David Cameron told a parliamentary committee that Britain was “not at the stage of supplying lethal equipment” to Ukraine.
After a meeting with senior U.A.E. officials, Mr. Poroshenko said military technical-cooperation agreements were signed to bolster Ukraine’s arms industry, which he said also managed to secure several export orders. He called the deals “extremely important so we have the money to modernize our armed forces.”
Ukraine has been forced to scrap some foreign orders as it diverts items intended for export to fighting at home, said Lukyan Selsky, spokesman for UkrOboronProm, which represents most of Ukraine’s defense industry. “We had to put all the vehicles in the fight in eastern Ukraine,” he said.
Some production facilities in Crimea and eastern Ukraine also are no longer under government control, he said. Ukrainian officials believe some of the equipment has been relocated to Russia, though they lack proof.
Some personnel who worked in eastern Ukraine have been relocated to other plants. The ability to manufacture explosive powder, for instance, is being rebuilt after a key production site fell into rebel hands, Mr. Selsky said.
Ukraine also is trying to balance military needs with its limited financial resources. The country, for instance, can’t afford its own Oplot main battle tank, Mr. Selsky said. It has decided to continue their export and instead take older tanks that were in storage and upgrade them.
—Felicia Schwartz in Washington contributed to this article.
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Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
MOSCOW — Two weeks ago the editors of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper famous in Russia for its investigative journalism, received an email from a Kremlin insider with a Word document attached. The email said that the document contained instructions on how to break Ukraine apart, and that the Kremlin had received that document from billionaire Konstantin Malofeyev in early February, well before Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych fled to Russia to escape the revolutionary fury of protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed all along that Russia’s sympathy and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine was the result of attacks by the Ukrainian factions that came to power afterYanukovych abandoned the ship of state exactly a year ago this week.
How much did Putin know about this plan? According to the paper’s deputy editor, Sergei Sokolov,Novaya Gazeta does not have conclusive material evidence but does have “a strong sense” from its source that Putin reviewed the document in February 2014. “We’ve trusted that Kremlin insider for many years, he’s never misguided us,” Sokolov told The Daily Beast.
The editors of Novaya Gazeta hinted publicly about the document’s contents last week, andpublished it on Wednesday.
The ostensible author, Malofeyev, is the founder of the international investment fund Marshall Capital Partners and is believed to be close to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is a well-known supporter of Russian nationalist movements, and in this lengthy memorandum he would seem to have put forth seven guidelines suggesting how to legitimize the integration of Ukraine’s regions into Russia itself, or at least into its firm sphere of influence.
The author of the memo advises the Kremlin to recognize the “bankruptcy” of Yanukovych and his ruling “family,” who were rapidly losing control in early February of last year. He advocated a “pragmatic” policy, recognizing that an independent or hostile government in Ukraine could threaten the interests of Gazprom, which sends much of its product to Western Europe through pipelines on Ukraine’s territory. If it were compromised or cut off, that would cause “huge damage the economy of our country,” the author of the paper warned.
The document recognized the fact that Ukraine’s constitution would make impossible a “legitimate” integration of Crimea and the eastern territories into the legal and political sphere of the Russian Federation, so “it seems right to play on the centrifugal aspirations of different regions of the country, with the aim, in one form or another, of initiating the accession of the eastern regions to Russia.”
The document suggests starting with Crimea and Kharkiv, where Russian sentiment was supposed to be strong. In the event, Crimea was taken, but Kharkiv was secured by Kiev.
“There are people inside the red wall [the Kremlin] who feel concerned about the war in Ukraine… people who would like to stop the war but cannot do it themselves.”
In a particularly revealing point (Number 4) the document notes that by taking on the support of Crimea and the eastern regions, Moscow will be incurring some “onerous” financial costs, but “from a geopolitical point of view it will be an invaluable prize,” which the author describes primarily in manufacturing demographic terms. Russia not only will secure the extensive military industries in eastern Ukraine, which “will allow faster and more successful implementation of the program of the Armed Forces,” he writes, it also will be able to “count on the emergence of new Slavic migration flows” to counterbalance the apparently less desirable “Central Asian migration trends.”
Point 5 begins to describe the means of creating a “pro-Russian drift” in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine, with the groundwork laid ahead of time “to create events that can make this process politically legitimate and morally justified.” Much will depend on public relations, says the author of the paper, and that will portray the actions of Russia and the pro-Russian elites in Ukraine as having been forced by events.
The author of the paper suggests Moscow take the line (often heard since) that a “federal” Ukraine will liberate the eastern regions from the “violent nationalist minority population” identified with the Maidan protests. The key phrase: “Strengthening the state-legal ties with Russia, we will strengthen the integrity of the Ukrainian state.” The east should insist it will not be “hostage to Maidan,” and will tell people that to identify with Russia is to be against civil war.
The final point: All this should be reinforced by “a PR campaign” in the Russian and Ukrainian press supporting the accession of the eastern regions and building enthusiasm among the Russian public.
Why would anyone in the Kremlin leak such a document—and why now?
“It is important to understand,” said Sokolov, “that there are people inside the red wall [the Kremlin] who feel concerned about the war in Ukraine, ultra-nationalism and reckless politics, people who would like to stop the war but cannot do it themselves.” They want it done “with somebody else’s hands.”
Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1990, partly with Nobel Peace Prize money donated by Mikhail Gorbachev. Since 2001, six brave journalists and frequent contributors at the newspaper have been murdered, including Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova, and Anastasia Baburova.
Over the last year, the paper’s investigation of Malofeyev’s role connected to financing the war in Ukraine was another major risk Novaya Gazeta thought it was worth taking.
Malofeyev’s involvement in the conflict has been reported since last spring. In early June, The Daily Beast interviewed activists of the Russian nationalist group Light Rus in Luhansk who claimed that they had “broken through” Ukraine’s border specifically to deliver humanitarian help financed by Malofeyev.
Although multiple experts and reports linked Malofeyev with the rebel movement in Ukraine, the billionaire vowed to take Novaya Gazeta to court for trying to blackmail him, Sokolov said.
What seemed “deeply cynical,” Sokolov pointed out, was that the document mentioned nothing about the pseudo state “Novorossia,“ so popular among flag-waving war propagandists. Instead it focused on cold-blooded geopolitics.
“Putin limited the circle of people he took seriously,” according to Sokolov, “but Malofeyev’s document made it to him through the Andrei Pervozvanny Foundation,” a think tank that is “one of the few sources he trusted.”
“Our investigation established a link between Malofeyev and Alexander Borodai, a Moscow public relations expert who later became the DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic] leader,” said Sokolov. “To carry out their plan in Ukraine, Malofeyev and Borodai hired Igor “Strelkov” Girkin to command the operation in Crimea and Donbass. Strelkov was a special service officer fired from the FSB for his connections with the ultra-Nazi Russian Nationalist Fighters Group,” Sokolov said.
So, were Malofeyev and Borodai the real masterminds of this war?
A Moscow-based expert on Kremlin politics. Stanislav Belkovsky, doubts that Putin ever listened to Malofeyev. He says that Putin was offended by Western leaders who did not visit his Sochi Olympics and “now pushes the Westerners to love Russia by force.”
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Though the cease-fire appeared in tatters, the government reaffirmed its support for a deal that could provide a road map to ending the conflict.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) executioner who is believed to have killed several Western hostages in Syria was harassed by British security forces and prevented from moving to his native Kuwait to marry and start a new life in the months before he went to Syria, according to an advocacy organization he was in contact with.
Mohammed Emwazi, 26, was named by the Washington Post and the BBC on Thursday as the masked man who appeared in a series of videos that appeared to show him beheading hostages including American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and Britons David Haines and Alan Henning. U.S. and U.K security agencies declined to confirm the identification.
Media reported that Emwazi, who was brought up in London, was known to British security agencies and had been questioned and detained on a number of occasions since 2009. In 2010, however, he contacted CAGE, a London-based organisation that supports people victimized by security agencies, to complain that he was being made to feel “like a prisoner” in the U.K.
According to CAGE, Emwazi found himself the victim of harassment and abuse by U.K. authorities, which left him “greatly distressed.” In a statement about Emwazi, released on Thursday, CAGE research director Asim Qureshi said, “We now have evidence that there are several young Britons whose lives were not only ruined by security agencies, but who became disenfranchised and turned to violence because of British counter-terrorism policies coupled with long standing grievances over Western foreign policy.”
Emwazi’s first run-in with security officials took place in 2009, when he traveled to Tanzania with two friends, according to his testimony to CAGE. They were detained there and deported to Amsterdam, where he was interrogated by an officer of Britain’s domestic security agency MI5 who accused him of trying to travel to Somalia to join al-Shebab, an Islamist group. The officer then tried to persuade him to work for MI5.
During this time, M15 visited his fiancée in London who later broke off their engagement. Soon after, Emwazi moved to Kuwait, where he worked for a computer company and got engaged to a Kuwaiti woman. He visited London twice during this time, but when he attempted to return to Kuwait after his second visit, in 2010, Emwazi was detained and then barred from leaving the U.K. According to the BBC, Emwazi was being investigated by MI5 “as a suspected core member of an extremist network” operating in London.
In an email sent to CAGE in 2010, after he was prevented from traveling back to Kuwait, Emwazi wrote, “I never got onto the flight, what was the point, I said to myself: I’ll just get rejected. I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But now I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and my country, Kuwait.”
His message continued: “I have been trying to find out the reason for my refused visa issue from my home country Kuwait, and a way to solve the issue. So through my friends in Kuwait, it has been said to me that Kuwait has no problem with me entering, and the reason for my refusal is simply because the U.K. agents have told them to not let me in!!”
CAGE has claimed that MI5 also interviewed Emwazi’s fiancée in Kuwait and knew he was planning to “start a life” there.
Friends of Emwazi’s, who spoke to the Washington Post, said that it was after these incidents that the young man became more radicalized. CAGE’s Qureshi also noted in his statement that “suffocating domestic policies aimed at turning a person into an informant but which prevent a person from fulfilling their basic life needs would have left a lasting impression on Emwazi. He desperately wanted to use the system to change his situation, but the system ultimately rejected him.”
It’s unclear exactly when or how Emwazi left Britain and joined ISIS, though a former hostage told authorities after being released that “Jihadi John” was one of several militants guarding Western captives at a prison in Idlib, Syria, in 2013. Two other militants reportedly had British accents, along with Jihadi John, and the trio became known as “the Beatles.”
British authorities have estimated that as many as 600 Britons have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join groups such as ISIS. Yet while the U.K.’s antiterrorism policies have many critics beyond CAGE, there are others who say that they’re not the cause of radicalization. Jonathan Russell, of the Quilliam Foundation, a counterterrorism think tank, told TIME in November, “I wouldn’t say that counter-terrorism legislation makes people radical. It is a grievance that is exploited by radicalizers.”
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Argentina judge dismisses bombing cover-up case against president by Agencies in Buenos Aires
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was accused of shielding Iran from prosecution over 1994 bombing in case originally brought by deceased prosecutor
An Argentinian judge has dismissed the case against President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for allegedly shielding Iranian officials from prosecution over the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Loretta Lynch won approval from a key Senate committee Thursday to serve as the nation's next attorney general, as divided Republicans clashed over her support for President Barack Obama's immigration policies....
Like countless 19-year-olds, Akhror Saidakhmetov lived much of his life online.
But it was some of the darkest corners of the Internet that most compelled him, according to the authorities. On websites sympathetic to the Islamic State, he could find videos of the group’s beheadings, mass executions and crucifixions, carried out in a campaign to seize territory in Iraq and Syria and establish a fundamentalist Muslim caliphate.
In recent months, according to the authorities, Mr. Saidakhmetov had made up his mind to go to the killing fields and join the fight.
But before he could go off to wage war, he first needed to get his passport back from his mother.
Mr. Saidakhmetov was arrested on Wednesday, along with two other Brooklyn men, Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, 24, and Abror Habibov, 30. They were charged with providing support to the Islamic State, the allegations outlined in a 23-page affidavit prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and filed in court by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
The case marks the first time terrorism charges have been brought publicly against someone in New York City for plotting to travel overseas to fight under the banner of the terrorist group and it intensified concerns about the global threat posed by the organization.
In recent months, the Islamic State has been able to draw on a wide range of sympathizers, from adolescent girls in London to disaffected young men in Arab nations.
The three men arrested in New York do not seem to fit easily into a “type.” They did not stand out in their neighborhood and dressed in western attire. But privately they raged at what they saw as wicked behavior around them. The authorities did not reveal any prior criminal records for the men, but online and in recorded conversations, the men seemed to take pleasure in dreaming up bloody massacres.
While the violence they watched being played out in Syria and Iraq was deadly real, their own plots seemed more fantastical.
At one point, Mr. Saidakhmetov, despairing that he might not be able to get his passport back from his mother, spoke about joining the army so he could help gather information for the Islamic State. If that failed, he could just shoot other soldiers, he said in a conversation recorded by federal agents.
At Wednesday’s arraignments, Mr. Juraboev and Mr. Saidakhmetov looked remarkably young as they were led into the courtroom.
Both had shaggy brown hair and broad faces. Mr. Saidakhmetov wore a kelly-green hooded sweatshirt, jeans and red high-top sneakers, and Mr. Juraboev a pistachio-colored knit cap, gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans.
Mr. Juraboev, a citizen of Uzbekistan, and Mr. Saidakhmetov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, had been living in the United States for several years, and both had permanent resident status.
They shared an apartment leased to the mother of Mr. Saidakhmetov.
In past terrorism cases, one law enforcement official noted, suspects would often try to blend in to their surroundings. That was the case for the Sept. 11 hijackers, the official said, noting that for “the purposes of developing cover, they went to restaurants and strip bars and to Las Vegas.”
“These guys were for not doing much,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. “They were spending a lot of time online, spending a lot of time at work, and that was it.”
Mr. Saidakhmetov’s lawyer, Adam D. Perlmutter, said on Wednesday that the government’s reliance on a paid confidential informant was a concern.
“He was worked over extensively by a confidential informant, according to the complaint,” Mr. Perlmutter said. “He’s a kid. He’s obviously scared. He’s frightened. The ham-fisted tactics of the federal government are in play here, as usual.”
While the men worshiped at several mosques and met the government’s confidential informant at one of those mosques, officials said that there was no evidence that the teachings at any of those places drove their desire to join the Islamic State.
“There was zero indication that any mosque had to do with any radicalization,” the official said. “The mosques had nothing to do with it, other than being houses of worship for these guys.”
The men held jobs, but the jobs did not seem to be of great interest beyond a paycheck.
Mr. Juraboev worked at a Gyro King, earning about $2,000 a month.
Mr. Saidakhmetov, who had bounced between jobs, most recently was working at a mall kiosk repairing cellphones, earning about $1,500 a month.
Mr. Saidakhmetov was employed by the third defendant, Mr. Habibov, whom he had worked for in the past at mall kiosks in Philadelphia; Savannah, Ga.; and Chesapeake, Va., according to court documents.
Mr. Habibov, who was arrested in Florida, is accused of financing the plot to travel to Syria and offering encouragement. An Uzbeki citizen, he arrived in the United States in 2006, but his visa had expired.
Farhod Sulton, the president of the Vatandosh Uzbek-American Federation, which operates a cultural center, a mosque and a newspaper in Gravesend, Brooklyn, knew Mr. Habibov a little bit.
“I met him. He is a religious guy. He was kind of lost. He had no education, in Uzbekistan or in religion or in America,” he said. “He is just one blind follower.”
Mr. Juraboev came to the country in 2011, and Mr. Saidakhmetov came to the country in 2012. They appear to have made few connections since arriving in Brooklyn.
By August, according to court documents, they had become enamored with the Islamic State.
On Aug. 8, Mr. Juraboev posted a message on a website sympathetic with the Islamic State:
“Greetings. We wanted to pledge our allegiance and commit ourselves while not present there, I am in USA now but we don’t have any arms. But is it possible to commit ourselves as dedicated martyrs anyway while here.”
That posting came to the attention of federal agents, who visited Mr. Juraboev. According to court documents, he confessed that he made the posting, identified Mr. Saidakhmetov as someone who felt the same way he did, and even went so far as to tell the agents that he would kill President Obama if told to by the Islamic State.
After two visits to his apartment, the agents did not directly approach Mr. Juraboev again, instead choosing to monitor him and his associates.
Mr. Juraboev was aware that he was being watched, changing some of his behavior and worrying that it would be hard to evade detection when leaving the country, but his goal remained the same, according to the authorities. He wanted to join the Islamic State.
He posted online musings about his increasing discomfort at home and wondered how he could live a pure, Islamic life.
“My parents, in Uzbekistan, sometimes they worship and practice Islam, sometimes they do idolatry,” Mr. Juraboev wrote to an online administrator who the authorities said was a representative of the Islamic State based in Iraq. “My sisters are uncovered, lack knowledge of religion. I wish they knew at least how to cover themselves up. What should I do? I need to sneak out of here with extreme caution without being noticed by them.”
His friend, Mr. Saidakhmetov, had similar worries, especially after his mother grew suspicious of his behavior and took away his passport.
In December, just before Christmas, Mr. Saidakhmetov’s mother visited the apartment and asked how much longer Mr. Juraboev intended to live there.
He told her he was leaving in March, according to court records. When she asked where he was going, he said Uzbekistan, but later confided to the confidential informant that he really planned to use the trip to Uzbekistan as a cover for going to Syria.
Mr. Juraboev and Mr. Saidakhmetov purchased tickets — planning to travel to Turkey and then sneak into Syria — and as the date of their departure neared, they seemed almost eager.
But Mr. Saidakhmetov still needed his passport and on Feb. 19, he called his mother. In a conversation recorded by federal agents, he asked for his passport back. She asked him where he was going. He said to join the Islamic State.
“If a person has a chance to join the Islamic State and does not go there, on judgment day he will be asked why, and it is a sin to live in the land of infidels,” he reportedly told her, according to court documents.
She hung up the phone. It is unclear if he managed to get his passport back later.
But the government’s confidential informant helped Mr. Saidakhmetov secure travel documents. In the days before he left, he told the informant that he felt that his soul was already on its way to paradise.
He stated that when he arrived in Syria he would tear up his documents, ready to start a new life.
On Wednesday morning, federal agents were waiting for him at Kennedy International Airport and arrested him as he made his way down the jetway.
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