With Stepped-Up Syrian Intervention, Putin is Playing a Greater Game | Syria is the next arena on Vladimir Putin’s comeback tour | In Syria, Vladimir Putin is the arsonist playing fireman | U.S. to Begin Military Talks With Russia on Syria
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- With Stepped-Up Syrian Intervention, Putin is Playing a Greater Game
- Syria is the next arena on Vladimir Putin’s comeback tour
- In Syria, Vladimir Putin is the arsonist playing fireman
- U.S. to Begin Military Talks With Russia on Syria
- Russia constructs first foreign camp in Syria for internal refugees — RT News
Russia’s recent military support of Syria is more about Ukraine than the Middle East
LONDON — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that the United States was prepared to engage in military-to-military talks with Russia concerning Syria.
“The president believes that a mil-to-mil conversation is an important next step,” Mr. Kerry said, “and I think, hopefully, will take place very shortly.”
Shortly after Mr. Kerry spoke, the Pentagon announced that Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter had spoken by telephone with Sergei K. Shoigu, the Russian minister of defense. It was Mr. Carter’s first discussion with his Russian counterpart since he became defense secretary seven months ago. The two men agreed to continue discussions on “mechanisms for deconfliction” in Syria, Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.
Mr. Cook described the discussion as “constructive” and said the two men had “talked about areas where the United States and Russia’s perspectives overlap, and areas of divergence.”
The initial purpose of the talks with Russia, Mr. Kerry said in London, will be to help “define some of the different options that are available to us as we consider next steps in Syria.”
Mr. Kerry said that the Obama administration would not change its basic goals in Syria: the defeat of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and a political solution for the conflict there.
But though the administration has long said that President Bashar al-Assad must go for there to be a durable solution to the Syria crisis, Mr. Kerry seemed on Friday to allow for the possibility that Mr. Assad might remain in power in the short term. Mr. Assad has had Russia’s backing throughout the conflict.
“Our focus remains on destroying ISIL and also on a political settlement with respect to Syria, which we believe cannot be achieved with the long-term presence of Assad,” Mr. Kerry said. “But we’re looking for ways in which to try to find a common ground. Clearly, if you’re going to have a political settlement, which we’ve always argued is the best and only way to resolve Syria, you need to have conversations with people, and you need to find a common ground.”
Mr. Kerry made his remarks in London at the start of a meeting with Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Kerry also plans to meet on Saturday with the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, and then will travel to Germany on Sunday for discussions focused mainly on the Syria crisis and the refugee situation in Europe.
Russia has been stepping up its support for Mr. Assad in recent weeks, including deployment of weapons and personnel to an airfield near Latakia, Syria. With Mr. Kerry’s comments on Friday, the Obama administration’s position on the Russian steps has shifted, from objecting vociferously to trying to manage events.
On Sept. 5, Mr. Kerry warned Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, that the Kremlin should not expand its military support for the Syrian government. The Russian buildup, Mr. Kerry said in a telephone conversation with Mr. Lavrov, “could further escalate the conflict” and might even “risk confrontation” with the American-led coalition that is conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, according to a State Department account of the call.
The United States also sought to impede the Russian buildup. Bulgaria closed its airspace to Russian transport planes at the request of the United States. Iraq, however, did not take any action, which has allowed the Russians to keep delivering weapons and equipment to Syria.
Russia made the next diplomatic move. Seeking to rebut Mr. Kerry’s assertion that the Russian deployment could fuel the Syrian conflict, Mr. Lavrov said last week that the Russian military was prepared to coordinate with the Pentagon to avoid “unintended incidents.” He repeated the offer for military-to-military talks in a telephone conversation with Mr. Kerry on Tuesday.
In Moscow, the foreign ministry said it had always welcomed discussions with Washington about Syria. “We have never refused dialogue with the U.S., and we remain open to one now on all issues of mutual interest, including Syria,” Maria Zakharova, the ministry spokeswoman, told the state-run RIA Novosti agency.
A spokesman for the Russian defense ministry, Igor Konashenkov, confirmed the conversation between Mr. Carter and Mr. Shoigu, and said it signaled the resumption of military-to-military contacts that were broken off when Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.
Russia has continued its buildup in Syria. Two large Hip troop-transport helicopters and two Hind helicopter gunships have been sent to the airfield in recent days, a senior United States official in Washington said on Wednesday. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence reports, said that more than 20 Condor transport plane flights had landed and delivered matériel at the air base in the past 10 days.
Russia has also deployed modern T-90 tanks, howitzers, and armored personnel carriers at the airfield, weapons that appear intended to defend the base rather than engage in large-scale ground combat. Russia has also sent 200 marines to the airfield, and temporary housing there for many as 1,500 personnel.
The Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, denied in an interview on Syrian state television Friday that any Russian troops in Syria were involved in combat, but he held out the possibility that his government might ask the Russians for such help in the future. He maintained that the Syrian Army was capable of defending the country, though he said that Russia had “stepped up the pace” of deliveries of weapons and ammunition that the army needs.
Asked about Mr. Moallem’s remarks, Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told reporters in Moscow that if the Syrian government asked Russia to send combat troops, the request would be “discussed and considered.”
In the meantime, some experts said military-to-military talks between Washington and Moscow could be useful in minimizing the risk of inadvertent confrontations in Syria between the Russian forces there and the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State. But some observers also expressed skepticism that such discussions could evolve into more far-reaching cooperation to end the conflict.
“Given coalition operations in Syria, deconfliction is necessary,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But the fact is, the positions of both Moscow and Washington’s proxies are worsening. The Russians are going into Syria because the regime’s position in the north is deteriorating, not improving.”
“Washington is unable to recruit and train a viable opposition to fight the Islamic State because it has been unwilling to commit to a military strategy that would combat ISIS and also remove Assad from power,” Mr. Tabler added. “Given the chasm between Moscow and Washington on the viability of Assad’s dwindling forces and rigid political positions, it’s hard to see how you turn convergence on tactical military issues into a collective and viable political strategy to stabilize Syria and end the war.”
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1. To assert Russia's influence in the Middle East and make it the dominant outside power.
Putin's highest ambition is to avenge and reverse Russia's humiliating loss of superpower status a quarter-century ago. Understanding this does not come easily to an American president who for seven years has been assiduously curating America's decline abroad.
2. To sustain Russia's major and long-standing Arab ally.
Ever since Anwar Sadat kicked the Soviets out of Egypt in 1972, Syria's Assads have been Russia's principal asset in the Middle East.
3. To expand the reach of Russia's own military.
It has a naval base at Tartus, its only such outside of Russia. It has an airfield near Latakia, now being expanded with an infusion of battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, howitzers and housing for 1,500 -- strongly suggesting ground forces to follow.
4. To push out the Americans.
For Putin, geopolitics is a zero-sum game: Russia up, America down. He is demonstrating whom you can rely on in this very tough neighborhood. Obama has given short shrift to the Kurds, shafted America's allies with the Iran deal and abandoned the Anbar Sunnis who helped us win the surge. Meanwhile, Putin risks putting Russian boots on the ground to rescue his Syrian allies.
Obama says Bashar al-Assad has to go, draws a red line on chemical weapons -- and does nothing. Russia acts on behalf of a desperate ally. Whom do you want in your corner?
5. To re-legitimise post-Crimea Russia by making it indispensable in Syria.
It's a neat two-cushion shot. At the U.N. next week, Putin will offer Russia as a core member of a new anti-Islamic State coalition. Obama's Potemkin war -- with its phantom local troops (our $500 million training program has yielded five fighters so far) and flaccid air campaign -- is flailing badly. What Putin is proposing is that Russia, Iran and Hezbollah spearhead the anti-jihadist fight.
Putin's offer is clear: Stop fighting Assad, accept Russia as a major player, and acquiesce to a Russia-Iran-Hezbollah regional hegemony -- and we will lead the drive against the Islamic State from in front.
And there is a bonus. The cleverest part of the Putin gambit is its unstated cure for Europe's refugee crisis.
Wracked by guilt and fear, the Europeans have no idea what to do. Putin offers a way out: No war, no refugees. Stop the Syrian civil war and not only do they stop flooding into Europe, those already there go back home to Syria.
Putin says, settle the war with my client in place -- the Assad regime joined by a few "healthy" opposition forces -- and I solve your refugee nightmare.
You almost have to admire the cynicism. After all, what's driving the refugees is the war and what's driving the war is Iran and Russia. They provide the materiel, the funds and now, increasingly, the troops that fuel the fighting. The arsonist plays fireman.
After all, most of the refugees are not fleeing the Islamic State. Its depravity is more ostentatious, but it is mostly visited upon minorities, Christian and Yazidi -- and they have already been largely ethnically cleansed from Islamic State territory. The European detention camps are overflowing with Syrians fleeing Assad's barbarism, especially his attacks on civilians, using artillery, chlorine gas and nail-filled barrel bombs.
"Kerry and Obama are serially surprised because they cannot fathom the hard men in the Kremlin"
Putin to the rescue. As with the chemical weapons debacle, he steps in to save the day. If we acquiesce, Russia becomes an indispensable partner. It begins military and diplomatic coordination with us. (We've just agreed to negotiations over Russia's Syrian buildup.) Its post-Ukraine isolation is lifted and, with Iran, it becomes the regional arbiter.
In the end, the Putin strategy may not work, but it's deadly serious and not at all obscure. The White House can stop scratching its collective head whenever another Condor transport unloads its tanks and marines at Latakia.
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· · · ·
Syrians hold posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a pro-Syrian goverment protest in front of the Russian Embassy in Damascus. (Muzaffar Salman/AP)
Once again, President Obama and his foreign policy team are stumped. Why is Vladimir Putin pouring troops and weaponry into Syria? After all, as Secretary of State John Kerry has thrice told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, it is only making things worse.
But worse for whom? For the additional thousands of civilians who will die or flee as a result of the inevitably intensified fighting. True, and I’m sure Lavrov is as moved by their plight as by the 8,000 killed in Russia’s splendid little Ukrainian adventure.
Charles Krauthammer writes a weekly political column that runs on Fridays.
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Kerry and Obama are serially surprised because they cannot fathom the hard men in the Kremlin. Yet Putin’s objectives in Syria are blindingly obvious:
1. To assert Russia’s influence in the Middle East and make it the dominant outside power. Putin’s highest ambition is to avenge and reverse Russia’s humiliating loss of superpower status a quarter-century ago. Understanding this does not come easily to an American president who for seven years has been assiduously curating America’s decline abroad.
2. To sustain Russia’s major and long-standing Arab ally. Ever since Anwar Sadat kicked the Soviets out of Egypt in 1972, Syria’s Assads have been Russia’s principal asset in the Middle East.
3. To expand the reach of Russia’s own military. It has a naval base at Tartus, its only such outside of Russia. It has an airfield near Latakia, now being expanded with an infusion of battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, howitzers and housing for 1,500 — strongly suggesting ground forces to follow.
4. To push out the Americans. For Putin, geopolitics is a zero-sum game: Russia up, America down. He is demonstrating whom you can rely on in this very tough neighborhood. Obama has given short shrift to the Kurds, shafted U.S. allies with the Iran deal and abandoned the Anbar Sunnis who helped us win the surge. Meanwhile, Putin risks putting Russian boots on the ground to rescue his Syrian allies.
Obama says Bashar al-Assad has to go, draws a red line on chemical weapons — and does nothing. Russia acts on behalf of a desperate ally. Whom do you want in your corner?
5. To re-legitimize post-Crimea Russia by making it indispensable in Syria. It’s a neat two-cushion shot. At the United Nations next week, Putin will offer Russia as a core member of a new anti-Islamic State coalition. Obama’s Potemkin war — with its phantom local troops (our $500 million training program has yielded five fighters so far) and flaccid air campaign — is flailing badly. What Putin is proposing is that Russia, Iran and Hezbollah spearhead the anti-jihadist fight.
Putin’s offer is clear: Stop fighting Assad, accept Russia as a major player and acquiesce to a Russia-Iran-Hezbollah regional hegemony — and we will lead the drive against the Islamic State from in front.
And there is a bonus. The cleverest part of the Putin gambit is its unstated cure for Europe’s refugee crisis.
Wracked by guilt and fear, the Europeans have no idea what to do. Putin offers a way out: No war, no refugees. Stop the Syrian civil war and not only do they stop flooding into Europe, those already there go back home to Syria.
Putin says, settle the war with my client in place — the Assad regime joined by a few “healthy” opposition forces — and I solve your refugee nightmare.
You almost have to admire the cynicism. After all, what’s driving the refugees is the war and what’s driving the war is Iran and Russia. They provide the materiel, the funds and now, increasingly, the troops that fuel the fighting. The arsonist plays fireman.
After all, most of the refugees are not fleeing the Islamic State. Its depravity is more ostentatious, but it is mostly visited upon minorities, Christian and Yazidi — and they have already been largely ethnically cleansed from Islamic State territory. The European detention camps are overflowing with Syrians fleeing Assad’s barbarism, especially his attacks on civilians, using artillery, chlorine gas and nail-filled barrel bombs.
Putin to the rescue. As with the chemical weapons debacle, he steps in to save the day. If we acquiesce, Russia becomes an indispensable partner. It begins military and diplomatic coordination with us. (We’ve just agreed to negotiations over Russia’s Syrian buildup.) Its post-Ukraine isolation is lifted and, with Iran, it becomes the regional arbiter.
In the end, the Putin strategy may not work, but it’s deadly serious and not at all obscure. The White House can stop scratching its collective head whenever another Condor transport unloads its tanks and marines at Latakia.
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BELI MANASTIR, Croatia — At least 15,000 migrants found themselves all but trapped in Croatia on Friday, having been barred from Hungary, sent packing from Serbia and unable to move on to Slovenia.
The human exodus was peaceful but miserable. Along the roads of eastern Croatia, the migrants’ detritus — abandoned blankets, torn clothing, empty cans of tuna — littered the highways.
Those who could afford to take a train, bus, van or taxi westward, toward the capital, Zagreb, or the border with Slovenia, did so; many others simply set out on foot.
On the side of a road outside the border town of Tovarnik, three young Iraqi men said they had spent two excruciating days there. “It was crowded, there was no food, no transport and nowhere to go,” said one of them, Ibrahim Yusuf, 25, a construction worker from Baghdad, eating chocolate wafers in the shade of a walnut tree. He said he was considering returning to Iraq and asked a reporter for directions back to Belgrade, Serbia.
Migrants struggled to clamber onto a train for Zagreb, the Croatian capital, at Tovarnik station near the border with Serbia, on Friday.
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
The migrants have not only been trapped within borders. They were also caught in mass confusion, evidenced by heightening tensions among neighboring nations in a volatile region, incoherent national policies and the continuing failure of greater Europe to resolve the crisis.
In only the most recent example of contradictory policy, some 1,000 migrants were taken by buses or trains to the Croatian-Hungarian border on Friday afternoon, where the authorities — for reasons that were not immediately clear — allowed them to pass through. Meanwhile, Hungarian troops were laying a new razor-wire fence along Hungary’s border with Croatia, extending the barrier it erected along the border with Serbia.
Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said Croatia was overwhelmed by the influx, and he lashed out at Hungary for what he said was a failure to live up to its obligations as a member of the European Union.
Mr. Milanovic also implicitly criticized Germany for effectively extending an invitation to the migrants without having a comprehensive plan to get them to Germany.
Video Thousands of migrants gathered at a train station in eastern Croatia as the flow of people traveling towards western Europe along the Balkan route shifted towards Croatia.
“Croatia has shown it has a heart,” he said at a news conference. “We also need to show we have a brain.”
Mr. Milanovic added: “A solution isn’t to leave these refugees in Croatia. Today we will start changing our methods. We cannot house these people. We won’t block entries, but we also won’t block exits.”
Addressing migrants, he said: “You are welcome in Croatia, and you can pass through Croatia. But go on. Not because we don’t like you, but because this is not your final destination.”
The practical implications of his remarks were not clear. The nation closed its border crossings with Serbia at 11 p.m. on Thursday, but thousands more people continued to enter. On the Croatian side of the border, police officers in vans were seeking to take the arrivals to reception centers.
Migrants rested in a train in Beli Manastir, Croatia, on Friday.
Darko Bandic / Associated Press
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said the Croatians had only themselves to blame. “Instead of helping people, Croatia is encouraging masses and masses of people to commit a criminal offence — illegal crossing of the border is a criminal offense,” he said at a news conference in Belgrade.
Many of the migrants had traveled by bus roughly 300 miles through Serbia, from its southern border with Macedonia to its northern border with Croatia. In Presevo, in southern Serbia, posters in Arabic warned: “The Hungarian border is closed. Croatia is open.”
The influx left Croatia scrambling to create more processing centers, including using a military barracks in the town of Beli Manastir, about 100 miles from the border. The barracks, intended to house 200, was flooded by 8,000, said the town’s mayor, Ivan Dobos. They had arrived suddenly by bus and train, from the border towns of Tovarnik and Batina, he said.
The roads leading to Beli Manastir were strewn with the remnants of the migrants’ overnight stay. Cots provided by the Croatian military were propped against fences. In the town, migrants were lining up at banks, apparently looking to exchange money and possibly to pay their way to Slovenia.
A Syrian man who gave his name as Anas, 38, said he hoped to reach the Netherlands, where he planned to send for his family in Damascus — his two young children and his wife, who is due to deliver their third child in 10 days.
He said that he did not want to squander his money on a smuggler, and that he was waiting for a bus to Zagreb, the Croatian capital.
“If the Slovenian police want to catch me, it’s O.K.,” Anas said, sounding resigned and weary. “I have nothing to lose.” He added that he had found the lack of hospitality puzzling, given that the migrants just wanted to pass through: “Hungary, Slovenia, Austria — they know we don’t want to stay there.”
The mixed messages from Croatia, which joined the European Union in 2013, highlighted how the countries of the former Yugoslavia — smaller and economically weaker than their richer and more populous Western counterparts — are ill equipped to deal with the surge of people who have suddenly turned up on their doorsteps.
Hundreds of migrants continued to arrive aboard dinghies on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from Turkey on Friday.
Yannis Behrakis / Reuters
Slovenia, bracing for the migrants who are streaming through Croatia toward its borders, has set up six reception centers. At one of them, police vans delivered about 15 migrants every few minutes; the official number was 166 by noon Friday, but unofficial estimates placed it higher.
Croatian police officers could be seen on Friday telling migrants who arrived by taxi to turn back. Other migrants tried to cross into Slovenia on foot, walking through meadows, fields and even wading through a river, the Sutla.
Because of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the experience of mass outflows of people is part of the recent memory of people in this region. But most salaries in the countries of this region are relatively low, welfare states are stretched and the prospect of hosting large numbers of migrants threatens to spur a backlash.
The crisis has also dealt a heavy blow to European unity, as the Schengen area of borderless travel, long a cornerstone of European integration, has crumbled.
In Hungary, where riot police officers this week fired water cannons and tear gas to fend off migrants trying to breach a border gate, workers on Friday began laying razor wire along the southern border with Croatia, extending by about 25 miles the 109 miles of razor wire it had already set up along its border with Serbia. The Hungarian government also plans to reinforce the eastern border with Romania.
On Friday, Hungary declared a state of crisis in four southern counties near its borders with Croatia and Slovenia. More than 2,500 soldiers and police officers were to arrive at the border with Croatia by the end of this week.
“There is no dune, no molehill for anyone to hide behind in the hope of entering Hungarian territory illegally,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. “We will protect Hungary’s border.”
The United Nations and the European Union have criticized Hungary for erecting barriers to keep out migrants, most of whom are hoping to reach countries like Germany and Sweden. But Hungary has retorted that none of these people have a right to apply for asylum in Hungary, as they are coming from so-called safe countries, like Serbia, and not directly from their homes in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.
In Slovenia, there were some calls to let the migrants enter. “Slovenia should help the refugees continue their way towards the borth as soon as possible,” said one member of Parliament, Matej Tonin.
That did not appear to be the dominant view, however. Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, met with her Slovenian counterpart, Vesna Gyorkos Znidar, on Friday and said Austria would help Slovenia secure its borders. The two countries are part of the so-called Schengen zone, in which travel without passports has generally been permitted. (Croatia is not yet a part of the Schengen zone.)
“Europe must focus on controlling its outer borders,” Ms. Mikl-Leitner said. “The decision over whether we will be able to maintain an orderly situation is made at the outer European border.”
Elsewhere in Europe, thousands of migrants crossed into Macedonia from Greece, while in Edirne,Turkey, migrants awaited word from the authorities in the Turkish capital, Ankara, about whether they would be allowed to walk over the border into Greece. Hundreds of migrants continued to make their way by boat across the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Lesbos, which has become a gateway to an uncertain future in Europe.
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The first tent camp for internal refugees, constructed by Russian engineers, has been opened in western Syria, in a location safe from the raging civil war. Over the last four years more than 50 percent of the Syrian population has been displaced.
The camp site is situated on a racetrack, practically in the downtown of the city of Hama (Hamah), some 40km from the nearest warzone. This site is considered to be relatively safe in a country suffering from active military operations since February 2011.
The camp for 500 refugees consists of 25 army tents fully equipped for living, a field kitchen, a canteen, showers, two mobile power generators and a water-storage facility. The dwelling tents are equipped with beds and heating furnaces for cold weather.
In case the number of refugees increases sharply, the camp is ready to accommodate up to 1,000 people.
Everything needed to set up a camp was delivered to Latakia Airport on September 12 by an Antonov An-124 Ruslan jet. The flight also brought 50,000 sets of disposable tableware and 15 tons of provisions enough to feed 50 people for 30 days.
Hama province’s Governor Ghassan Khalaf and religious clerics have come to open the camp.
“We appreciate Russia’s help in delivering all the necessary equipment and setting up a camp. With the given situation, Syria is in great need for camps like this to accommodate displaced citizens leaving provinces with active warfare ongoing,” Khalaf told RIA Novosti.
Syrian volunteers are already assisting the refugees at the new camp.
“I learnt how to operate a Russian field kitchen really quickly and have already cooked some Russian cereal. The camp’s kitchen is capable of cooking food for 200 people at a time.
“When we run out of food stock, our organization will continue supplying provision s and assist the refugees,” Red Crescent Society volunteer Anan Musri told Vesti.
Some 30 flights from Russia have landed at Latakia Airport over the course of the last two years. The last two aircrafts that arrived on September 12 brought to Syria about 80 tons of humanitarian help.
Active fighting is ongoing in neighboring Idlib and Aleppo provinces, and people escaping from the militants into the area controlled by the Syrian government are being accommodated in Hama’s schools. As the academic year is set to begin soon, people must be relocated to enable pupils to attend lessons.
According to Amnesty International, four years of warfare in Syria have displaced half of the Syrian population. About 4 million Syrians have escaped abroad, to neighboring Turkey (1.9 million), Lebanon (1.2 million), Jordan (650,000), Iraq (250,000) and Egypt (more than 130,000).
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) claims there are 6.5 million people internally displaced within Syria.
Yet a large number of them have opted to move further, to Europe, and are now causing chaos in the EU, which has found itself unprepared to deal the huge flow of asylum seekers.
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Fireworks explode above St. Basil’s cathedral during the “Spasskaya Tower” international military music festival at Moscow’s Red Square, Russia, September 10, 2015. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
Vladimir Putin is back. After spending more than a year in the doghouse for slicing off pieces of Ukraine, the Russian president has stepped back on center stage by appointing himself the indispensable arbiter in Syria’s civil war.
For Putin, the first quarter of 2014 began with the euphoria of hosting the world’s most expensive Winter Olympics and annexing Crimea before anybody noticed. But then things started going bad when the West sanctioned his cronies and their companies, kicked Russia out of the G8, and turned Putin into an international pariah. Australia’s then prime minister, Tony Abbott, threatened to tackle Putin according to Australian rules football at the G20 summit in Brisbane in November. The Russian leader left the gathering early with a bruised ego.
Less than a month ago, Putin had to watch from afar as German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and French President Francois Hollande in Berlin on Ukraine’s independence day. Merkel awkwardly explained that the meeting was intended to strengthen the so-called “Normandy Format” — an informal group whose fourth member is Putin.
That was then. Since the beginning of September, the guns in eastern Ukraine have finally fallen silent. A reshuffle in the leadership of the Donetsk separatist republic saw the removal of hardline ideologues. At the same time, Putin floated the idea of a global coalition to fight the spread of Islamic State in Syria and confirmed that Russia was supplying Bashar al-Assad’s regime with military assistance. Talk of Russian air strikes was “premature,” Putin told a reporter, implying that the right time might still come.
Syria is on everyone’s mind. Entire countries in the Middle East are imploding. The United States and its regional allies have been frustrated by the durability of Islamic State in resisting their air campaign. The European Union is struggling with the influx of thousands of Syrian refugees. Enter Putin, the only world leader who can talk to Assad and has the means to alter the calculus of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.
When Putin travels to New York at the end of September to address the UN General Assembly for the first time in 10 years, his speech will be the most anticipated one. It will be Putin’s chance to remind the world — and the United States in particular — that Russia is still a great power that others can ignore or isolate at their own peril.
Putin is often compared with a chess player who can see 10 moves ahead. But if any sport really describes Putin’s politics, it’s his beloved judo, which teaches how to throw stronger opponents off balance. Tactical trickery trumps strategic vision. Putin often makes his Western counterparts appear faint-hearted or klutzy because of his ability to react to events decisively, without having to worry about negative media coverage at home or an angry electorate.
Another cliché about Putin is that he’s an inscrutable former spy. While he relishes a good surprise every now and then (see judo comparison), Putin is probably the most public Russian leader ever. State media outlets slavishly transmit the president’s every utterance, and the Kremlin press service continuously updates his bilingual website, creating a vast public record. Putin’s motives are rarely unfathomable for long.
To speak before the United Nations after such a rough year, Putin doesn’t need the rest of the world to dwell on his adventures in Ukraine. After all, 100 UN member states supported a resolution declaring the annexation of Crimea invalid, while only 11 voted against it. It’s a much better bet to come to New York with a proposal to save Syria from being engulfed by Islamic State.
“Russia has suggested the urgent formation of a broad coalition to fight extremism. It should unite all those who are ready to make, or are already making, a real contribution to the fight against terror, as the armed forces of Iraq and Syria are doing today,” Putin said on Tuesday. “We are supporting the Syrian government against terrorist aggression. We are providing it — and will provide it in the future — with the necessary military and technical assistance, and we call on other countries to join us.”
That the West and many Arab countries consider any dealings with Assad a non-starter is secondary. Putin is positioning himself as a statesman with an alternative plan to a U.S. policy that isn’t working. Russia is not part of the problem but part of the solution, Putin is saying. While not everybody will believe him, at least the world is paying attention to him again.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to travel to Russia on Monday to discuss Russia’s growing presence in Syria with Putin. Secretary of State John Kerry has been on the phone with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov three times since the beginning of September. And the White House is in a bind as to whether Obama, who has done his best to ignore Putin, should dignify the Russian president with a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The conundrum of whether or not to talk with Putin has also plagued European leaders since the annexation of Crimea. At the end of August, Merkel saw no reason to invite him to Berlin with Hollande and Poroshenko. A little more than two weeks later, the Kremlin announced that Putin would meet the other three leaders in Paris on October 2.
The hasty implementation of the ceasefire from the start of September shows just how much control the Kremlin has over the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. A top German diplomat explained that the Paris summit was warranted thanks to positive developments and the wish to keep up the momentum in the Minsk peace process.
The Kremlin is putting Ukraine on the back burner for now. What the German Foreign Ministry chose to interpret as progress is most likely just a delay. For Putin, the Paris meeting will be a victory lap after stealing the show in New York.
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Earlier this week, we noted how a pro-Kremlin website claimed the extremist group Islamic State (IS) had sent Chechen militants to Latakia province in Syria.
The report was incorrect -- the Chechen group is not part of IS.
But it was almost certainly an intentional obfuscation.
Russia's conflation of all armed opposition groups with extremist Islamist militants is an integral part of a narrative that has evolved during the Syrian conflict.
Its goals are to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power, counter the United States, and maintain influence in the Middle East.
The "IS threat" narrative contains several arguments that Moscow puts forward in support of these aims.
1. ‘There Are No 'Moderate' Rebels’
According to Moscow, the vast majority of groups fighting Assad are foreign-backed terrorists, not "moderate rebels."
"The Free Syrian Army does not exist," Russia's ambassador to international organizations in Geneva, Aleksei Borodavkin, told the United Nations a year ago, referring to the Western-backed umbrella of moderate rebel forces.
This narrative is partly true. In the north and increasingly the center of Syria, rebel factions are mostly Islamist or Islamist-influenced. Some, like the Al-Nusra Front and the foreign fighter groups, are Salafist-jihadist.
U.S. attempts to bolster moderate rebels have gone awry. The first group to receive U.S. weapons collapsed in March and the United States said this week that there are only "four or five" U.S.-trained rebels fighting IS.
But moderate rebels are still influential in some parts of Syria's far south, where Jordan's intelligence services are active.
2. 'IS Wants To Destroy Syria'
Moscow has warned that IS and other Islamist groups are threatening to turn Syria into a "terror state."
Therefore, eradicating these groups is more important than ousting Assad, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
3. 'Assad Has To Be Part Of Fight Against IS'
Russia has insisted that Assad must be part of the fight against IS, claiming that Syrian armed forces are "the most effective military force on the ground."
Meanwhile, Russia has frequently slammed the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition, saying that it is both illegal (because it has not asked Assad's permission to operate) and ineffective.
4. 'Rebels Should Unite With Assad Against IS'
Both Russia and Assad argue that the threat posed by Islamic State is so great, rebels should unite with government forces to counter the militants.
On September 16, Assad used an interview with Russian news outlets to call on rebels to stop fighting him and help him defeat IS.
Only then can Syrians work on a political solution to the conflict, Assad explained.
Assad's call may seem unrealistic. But it is not a new tactic.
Moscow first put forward the idea nearly two years ago.
"Everything must be done to create a battle-worthy alliance of the government and the patriotic opposition against the terrorist interlopers who flock to Syria from around the world," Lavrov told Russian TV in December 2013.
4. 'The West Is Responsible For IS'
Both Moscow and Damascus have blamed the West for the rise of IS (and other Islamist groups in Syria), saying that while Washington is quick to say Islamic State is a terror group, it has backed other armed groups against Assad.
In February, Putin said the rise of IS was the result of Western "interference" in Syria as well as "double standards" over who it deemed terrorists.
Assad repeated this narrative in an interview with Russian media this week.
"What are IS and the other groups? A Western extremist project," the Syrian leader said.
5. 'Russia's Military Build Up In Latakia Is To Fight IS'
The claim that Assad is essential to countering the IS threat has provided Russia with an argument for its military buildup in Syria -- which is causing increasing alarm from the United States.
"We support the government of Syria in its effort to counter terrorist aggression," is how Putin explained the Russian military expansion in Latakia at a September 15 security summit in Tajikistan.
The Real Threat To Assad
As Russia continues its military build-up in Syria, it has also stepped up its use of the "IS threat" narrative.
But these moves are only partly about IS.
While Islamic State is a threat, a bigger problem for Assad is the advance of other radical Islamist battalions, particularly Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate -- the Al-Nusra Front -- and Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most powerful rebel groups in Syria.
Part of the Jaish al-Fatah military operations coalition, Nusra and Ahrar have driven out government forces from almost all of Idlib province.
And they now threaten Latakia, Assad's coastal stronghold.
But the war is not being fought on the battlefield alone.
Russia's best chance to save its ally in Damascus could be an agreement with the West that while Assad should go or at least be demoted, most of his regime remains in place.
And the only way to achieve that is by persuading Washington and its allies that this would be the best way to fight IS.
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
Ukrainian separatist leaders say their hopes of full integration with Russia or greater independence are fading as the Kremlin tightens the reins on their rebellion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears unwilling to risk broadening his conflict with the U.S. and European Union over Ukraine, senior separatist officials said in interviews this month, meaning the rebel regions’ future is more likely to resemble Transnistria, the Russian-backed breakaway area of Moldova, whose fate is still unresolved more than two decades after fighting subsided.
Alexander Khodakovsky
Photographer: Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images
"Everything is gradually, steadily heading toward a localization of this territory," Alexander Khodakovsky, a top rebel security official, said in his office in the separatist capital of Donetsk. "What I see is the formation of a second Transnistria."
Khodakovsky and other rebel leaders said their backers in the Kremlin are sending the clearest signals in months that they don’t want the conflict to escalate, at least for the moment. Instead, they are leaning on the separatists to limit cease-fire violations and focus on turning their makeshift administration into a functioning government -- with the help of Moscow-trained bureaucrats.
Separatist Limbo
Rebel leaders and people close to the Kremlin said Moscow is aiming to freeze the uneasy status quo, avoiding a major escalation while a resolution to the conflict seems remote. That’s likely to ease the pressure on Russia’s recession-wracked economy- and provide some respite for Ukraine, as well - as Russia tries to shift the focus to the fighting in Syria.
That leaves the separatists in limbo, having broken with Ukraine but short of their goals. Already, with the cease-fire holding better in recent weeks than ever before, signs of war are slowly vanishing, with many road checkpoints now abandoned.
That leaves the separatists in limbo, having broken with Ukraine but short of their goals. Already, with the cease-fire holding better in recent weeks than ever before, signs of war are slowly vanishing, with many road checkpoints now abandoned.
Freezing the conflict amounts to an admission by the Kremlin that international pressure and Ukrainian resistance have made backing further separatist advances too costly. Instead, Moscow is aiming to use the rebel regions to keep the pressure on Ukraine.
For the U.S. and Europe, a stalemate is short of their aims of restoration of Ukrainian control. Still, such an outcome would reflect at least a measure of success for the policy of sanctions as a means to pressure the Kremlin, Western diplomats said. Kremlin insiders say avoiding any major increase in those restrictions is now a prime goal for Putin.
’Minimal Losses’
"It’s important for Putin to get out of this situation with minimal losses," said Alexei Chesnakov, a former Kremlin official who still advises top officials on strategy for the Ukraine conflict.
The tenuous cease-fire agreement reached in February in Minsk will probably be extended beyond its year-end deadline amid slow progress toward a political settlement, according to diplomats and others close to the talks.
"Both sides are trying to buy time," said Chesnakov, referring to Russia and Ukraine.
Many in the separatist regions haven’t given up hope that Russia could annex their territory as it did Crimea last year. Putin faced chants of "take us with you" from some Donetsk region residents when he visited Crimea last week. He responded with a stiff smile. Asked about the episode the next day, Putin said: "It’s not a question to be decided in the street."
Local residents show some skepticism about the future of the self-declared republics, going to Ukrainian-controlled territory to register weddings and legal documents.
There’s no sign Moscow is backing down. People familiar with Russia’s position say that if Moscow saw a threat to the survival of the separatist enclaves, it would likely dispatch troops to protect them as senior rebel officials now admit Russia did in the summer of 2014. Russia denies sending forces.
Fighting Subsides
For the moment, the orders are to strictly limit firing, Khodakovsky said.
Separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko, has toned down his rhetoric and now says he aims to take the strategic port city of Mariupol by political means, not forcibly.
The separatists have little choice. Russia, always a dominant force in the region, has methodically tightened its grip on all key aspects of the breakaway regions.
Political leaders who didn’t fall into line have been replaced with Moscow-backed candidates. Military commanders who defied instructions from Moscow have been removed or killed in mysterious incidents. Economically, the war-ravaged regions rely almost entirely on largely clandestine subsidies from Russia, separatist officials said.
Publicly, Russian officials say the rebel governments are independent and deny any military intervention. They say support is limited to humanitarian aid.
Election Tension
Moscow’s control could face a test in the coming weeks before local elections in the regions that the U.S. and E.U. say amount to a violation of the Minsk deal and should be canceled. Zakharchenko said the poll will go ahead.
Separatist leaders said the edicts from Moscow not to shoot rankle local fighters.
"When the guys come to me and ask how are we supposed to react" to fire from Ukrainian positions, "I have to explain to them that there’s a very strict order to observe the cease-fire," Khodakovsky said.
Discipline isn’t ironclad, he said. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has reported that violations of the cease-fire have come from both the rebel and Ukrainian sides.
The relative truce has led volunteers from Russia to return home in the last few months, bringing their numbers to about 1,500 now from a peak of 4,000 last year, Zakharchenko said.
Instead, Moscow is dispatching dozens of trained bureaucrats to help shore up the separatist governments, which are now staffed largely by amateurs, a rebel official said.
Ruined Economy
Their economies in ruins, the statelets also depend almost entirely on Moscow for funding, separatist officials said.
Khodakovsky said the Kremlin insists the aid be kept low-profile, however, to avoid provoking criticism from the U.S. and Europe.
"If we don’t talk about this openly," he said, "the population gets the feeling that Russia has turned away from us and is just playing some kind of game, hoping to get out of this as easily as possible."
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
We may now have one reason why the Pentagon’s train-and-equip mission in Syria took so long to get up and running—and the story runs through a pile of 30-year-old weapons and a former NavySEAL armorer who met an untimely death in Bulgaria back in June. Aram Roston, investigative reporter for Buzzfeed, writes that the delays started after U.S. Special Operations Command gave a little-known company called Purple Shovel more than $50 million to buy secondhand arms for the Syrian fighters.
The weapons included “2,640 armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenades, of a type called the PG-7VM, along with hundreds of shoulder-mounted launchers. Then there were 6,240 even longer-range anti-tank grenades called PG-9Vs, which are fired from launchers called SPG-9s.”
Problem was, the grenades had not been refurbished since they were manufactured in the mid-1980s—rendering the weapons “either unstable, so they can blow up in a soldier’s hand, or inert, so that soldiers can’t fire the weapons,” Roston writes. And the former is what occurred to 41-year-old defense contractor Francis Norwillo, “according to five sources and Bulgarian news accounts.”
SOCOM acknowledges that it hired Purple Shovel, then rejected the weapons, although officials dispute the circumstances around Norwillo’s death (“To the best of our knowledge, he was not supporting our contract when the incident took place,” a spokesman told Buzzfeed — contradicting a statement by the U.S. embassy in Bulgaria). The Pentagon insists delays in securing suitable arms for Syrian rebels “did not prevent training from occurring.” Read the full report, here.
Meanwhile, the White House just might drop the whole idea of training a large force for fighting the Islamic State inside Syria, The Wall Street Journal reports. And The New York Times adds that the administration is deflecting blame for the mission it calls an “abysmal failure” to those who advised it in the first place—“a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Where to go from here? “Under one proposal being crafted at the Pentagon, the $500 million train-and-equip program…would be supplanted by a more modest effort focused on creating specially trained militants empowered to call in U.S. airstrikes…[built] on the successful model of cooperation between the U.S. and the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG.” the WSJ reports. But U.S. deal with Turkey complicates that, forcing the U.S. to look “at picking Arab groups in northern Syria to serve as a test case for the revised approach…The shift would mean that U.S.-backed fighters would join larger groups that haven’t been vetted by American officials.”
Another option includes opening the door to collaboration with Russia among “midlevel emissaries of the countries, not top officials” while reigniting “long-stalled international talks aimed at reaching a resolution to Syria’s multi-sided war.” But what new direction will actually be selected remains anyone’s guess as both the NYT and WSJ repeatedly flag a lack of consensus among administration and defense officials.
Back in Moscow, Russia says if Syria requests additional troops for its cause, it “will be discussed and considered,” AP writes this morning. Despite reports to the contrary, Russia’s presidential spokesman Dmetry Peskov denied claims Moscow’s troops were fighting alongside the Assad regime while Syria’s foreign minister insisted all they need now is to reap the rewards of Russia having “stepped up the pace” of its supply flights of weapons and ammunition.
The weapons included “2,640 armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenades, of a type called the PG-7VM, along with hundreds of shoulder-mounted launchers. Then there were 6,240 even longer-range anti-tank grenades called PG-9Vs, which are fired from launchers called SPG-9s.”
Problem was, the grenades had not been refurbished since they were manufactured in the mid-1980s—rendering the weapons “either unstable, so they can blow up in a soldier’s hand, or inert, so that soldiers can’t fire the weapons,” Roston writes. And the former is what occurred to 41-year-old defense contractor Francis Norwillo, “according to five sources and Bulgarian news accounts.”
SOCOM acknowledges that it hired Purple Shovel, then rejected the weapons, although officials dispute the circumstances around Norwillo’s death (“To the best of our knowledge, he was not supporting our contract when the incident took place,” a spokesman told Buzzfeed — contradicting a statement by the U.S. embassy in Bulgaria). The Pentagon insists delays in securing suitable arms for Syrian rebels “did not prevent training from occurring.” Read the full report, here.
Meanwhile, the White House just might drop the whole idea of training a large force for fighting the Islamic State inside Syria, The Wall Street Journal reports. And The New York Times adds that the administration is deflecting blame for the mission it calls an “abysmal failure” to those who advised it in the first place—“a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Where to go from here? “Under one proposal being crafted at the Pentagon, the $500 million train-and-equip program…would be supplanted by a more modest effort focused on creating specially trained militants empowered to call in U.S. airstrikes…[built] on the successful model of cooperation between the U.S. and the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG.” the WSJ reports. But U.S. deal with Turkey complicates that, forcing the U.S. to look “at picking Arab groups in northern Syria to serve as a test case for the revised approach…The shift would mean that U.S.-backed fighters would join larger groups that haven’t been vetted by American officials.”
Another option includes opening the door to collaboration with Russia among “midlevel emissaries of the countries, not top officials” while reigniting “long-stalled international talks aimed at reaching a resolution to Syria’s multi-sided war.” But what new direction will actually be selected remains anyone’s guess as both the NYT and WSJ repeatedly flag a lack of consensus among administration and defense officials.
Back in Moscow, Russia says if Syria requests additional troops for its cause, it “will be discussed and considered,” AP writes this morning. Despite reports to the contrary, Russia’s presidential spokesman Dmetry Peskov denied claims Moscow’s troops were fighting alongside the Assad regime while Syria’s foreign minister insisted all they need now is to reap the rewards of Russia having “stepped up the pace” of its supply flights of weapons and ammunition.
In London, Russia’s aggressive stances along Europe’s eastern borders have NATO militaries racing to rebuild their combined-arms skills—and Western defense companies revamping their product lines to suit, Defense One Global Business Reporter Marcus Weisgerber writes from the Defence Security Exposition International, better known as DSEI, “where armor and air-defense batteries are shouldering aside the lighter, less expensive gear of counterinsurgency.”
“The show’s two sprawling halls were packed with tanks, armored vehicles, long-range cruise missiles, drones of all sizes, high-tech electronics, and other equipment,” Weisgerber writes. “Behind the massive building, a handful of warships from the Royal Navy, Canada, Germany, and India tied up at the Royal Victoria Dock off the Thames River… DSEI attendees said the fears of Russia coming west have spurred a renewed emphasis on helping land, naval, and ground forces train together—rather than individually, as had become the general habit.”
“Much of the discussion at DSEI focused on three security crises: the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the Western air campaign against the Islamic State, and the millions of Syrians seeking refuge in Europe…European countries are also interested in long-range weapons that can fly deep into enemy territory. That, too, reflects a shift from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the lack of enemy air defenses allowed the use of simpler gravity bombs.” Read Weisgerber’s report in full right here.
“The show’s two sprawling halls were packed with tanks, armored vehicles, long-range cruise missiles, drones of all sizes, high-tech electronics, and other equipment,” Weisgerber writes. “Behind the massive building, a handful of warships from the Royal Navy, Canada, Germany, and India tied up at the Royal Victoria Dock off the Thames River… DSEI attendees said the fears of Russia coming west have spurred a renewed emphasis on helping land, naval, and ground forces train together—rather than individually, as had become the general habit.”
“Much of the discussion at DSEI focused on three security crises: the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the Western air campaign against the Islamic State, and the millions of Syrians seeking refuge in Europe…European countries are also interested in long-range weapons that can fly deep into enemy territory. That, too, reflects a shift from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the lack of enemy air defenses allowed the use of simpler gravity bombs.” Read Weisgerber’s report in full right here.
In Pakistan, Taliban gunmen stormed a military air base outside of Peshawar this morning, killing 20 people, “most of whom were offering prayers in a mosque,” Reuters reports. “The attack triggered an hours-long firefight at the base and the Pakistani forces said they killed 13 of the attackers, though it was unclear how many were involved in the assault. Apart from 16 slain inside the mosque, three guards employed with the air force and an army captain were also killed,” AP adds. “The attackers first stormed the guard room of the Badaber base” and then approached “from different directions in a two-pronged assault—apparently one push targeted the mosque—but that security forces quickly responded.”
Shortly afterward, “a suspected U.S. drone strike hit a home in the South Waziristan tribal region,south of Peshawar, killing at least three militants and wounding five,” two Pakistani security officials told the AP.
“Friday’s attack came a day after Pakistan reported the arrest a militant figure behind a recent failed attempt to target an air force facility in Kamra, also in the northwest of the country,” AP reports. Also on Thursday, “the Pakistani police in Karachi also reported the arrest of another prominent suspect, Syed Sheaba Ahmad, a former air force pilot who allegedly helped finance al-Qaida’s newly formed South Asian affiliate.” More here.
Shortly afterward, “a suspected U.S. drone strike hit a home in the South Waziristan tribal region,south of Peshawar, killing at least three militants and wounding five,” two Pakistani security officials told the AP.
“Friday’s attack came a day after Pakistan reported the arrest a militant figure behind a recent failed attempt to target an air force facility in Kamra, also in the northwest of the country,” AP reports. Also on Thursday, “the Pakistani police in Karachi also reported the arrest of another prominent suspect, Syed Sheaba Ahmad, a former air force pilot who allegedly helped finance al-Qaida’s newly formed South Asian affiliate.” More here.
Kabul’s mood turns toward despair. From shopkeepers to university lecturers, writes Quartz’s Haroro J. Ingram, the question of whether security is improving in an increasingly independent Afghanistan was met with just one response: Things are actually worse. Read about this incipient crisis, here.
Lawmakers reheat war over defense vs. non-defense spending. An announcement from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell is seen as a coup for Democrats who want a plan to raise budget caps on both defense and nondefense spending, writes National Journal’s Sarah Mims, here.
A long-awaited, top-secret cellphone is just one new tool the Pentagon can expect soon. In a call with reporters, the Defense Department’s chief information officer shared a handful of new developments on the Pentagon’s tech horizon. NextGov’s Mohana Ravindranath rolls them up, here.
Welcome to Friday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Brad Peniston. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Here’s our subscribe link. And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
One step forward for U.S.-China relations. The U.S. just shipped back one of China’s “most wanted fugitives” after 14 years of hiding in the States, one week ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the White House, AP reports. “Businessman Yang Jinjun—the brother of a former deputy mayor wanted for embezzlement—is the first person to be repatriated to China from the U.S.since the ‘Sky Net’ operation targeting 100 fugitives was launched in April, the Ministry of Supervision said.”
And one more instance of divergent views on navigation in the South China Sea. “Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China was ‘extremely concerned’ about the comments and China opposed ‘any country challenging China’s sovereignty and security in the name of protecting freedom of navigation,’” Reuters reports.
China’s remarks come in response to PACOM commander Adm. Harry Harris, who told senators on Thursday about his “great concern militarily” about China’s construction of three airstrips, which he said threaten to all countries in the region.
And one more instance of divergent views on navigation in the South China Sea. “Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China was ‘extremely concerned’ about the comments and China opposed ‘any country challenging China’s sovereignty and security in the name of protecting freedom of navigation,’” Reuters reports.
China’s remarks come in response to PACOM commander Adm. Harry Harris, who told senators on Thursday about his “great concern militarily” about China’s construction of three airstrips, which he said threaten to all countries in the region.
Military coup in West Africa condemned by the U.S. and U.N. Just three weeks before national elections, Burkina Faso is now ruled by a general after a shadowy group of elite presidential guards detained the president and prime minister in a coup late Wednesday. The military announced this morning the president has since been released, though the prime minister remains under house arrest, AP reports.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the U.S. will “review our foreign assistance to Burkina Faso in light of evolving events.” And AP notes that “Burkina Faso hosts French special forces and is an important ally of France and the United States in the fight against Islamic militants in West Africa.”
In neighboring Niger, U.S. special operations troops are “quietly trying to help Niger build a wall against Boko Haram’s incursions and its recruitment of Diffa’s youth,” Reuters writes. The soldiers “do not go into combat, or even wear uniforms” in “an experiment that is part of President Barack Obama’s new counter-terrorism strategy.”
“The U.S. soldiers in Diffa described their mission as a sharp and welcome pivot from the Iraq and Afghan wars, where virtually all of them served. The U.S. military has not said how long their presence will last.” More here.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the U.S. will “review our foreign assistance to Burkina Faso in light of evolving events.” And AP notes that “Burkina Faso hosts French special forces and is an important ally of France and the United States in the fight against Islamic militants in West Africa.”
In neighboring Niger, U.S. special operations troops are “quietly trying to help Niger build a wall against Boko Haram’s incursions and its recruitment of Diffa’s youth,” Reuters writes. The soldiers “do not go into combat, or even wear uniforms” in “an experiment that is part of President Barack Obama’s new counter-terrorism strategy.”
“The U.S. soldiers in Diffa described their mission as a sharp and welcome pivot from the Iraq and Afghan wars, where virtually all of them served. The U.S. military has not said how long their presence will last.” More here.
Carly Fiorina impressed a lot of people at the second GOP debate on Wednesday, and she offered more detail than her rivals about how she would “rebuild” the U.S. military: “‘50 Army brigades, 36 Marine battalions, between 300 and 350 naval ships, and an upgrade of ‘every leg of the nuclear triad,’” writes The Daily Beast’s Kate Brannen. “These numbers seem to be pulled straight from a report released by the conservative Heritage Foundation this year.”
Just how much would this all cost? Fiorina didn’t say. So Brannen did the back-of-the-envelope math: “The answer: more than $500 billion—on top of the more than the $5 trillion the Pentagon plans to spend over the next 10 years.” Check her arithmetic, and her story, here.
By the way, Marines aren’t too pleased with Ben Carson. In Wednesday night’s debate, the #2 poller and former pediatric surgeon said many of the national-security threats the U.S. faces can be attributed to the fact that “we are weak.” But it was this line that Marines took issue with: “It’s because our Navy is so small, it’s because our Air Force is incapable of doing the same things that it did a few years ago, it’s because our Marine Corps is not ready to be deployed.” And they objected in force, asMarine Corps Times reports here.
Just how much would this all cost? Fiorina didn’t say. So Brannen did the back-of-the-envelope math: “The answer: more than $500 billion—on top of the more than the $5 trillion the Pentagon plans to spend over the next 10 years.” Check her arithmetic, and her story, here.
By the way, Marines aren’t too pleased with Ben Carson. In Wednesday night’s debate, the #2 poller and former pediatric surgeon said many of the national-security threats the U.S. faces can be attributed to the fact that “we are weak.” But it was this line that Marines took issue with: “It’s because our Navy is so small, it’s because our Air Force is incapable of doing the same things that it did a few years ago, it’s because our Marine Corps is not ready to be deployed.” And they objected in force, asMarine Corps Times reports here.
The U.S. just shipped off one of its 116 detainees from the detention facility in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said Thursday. Held since 2002, Younis Abdurrahman Chekkouri, 47, was sent to his home nation of Morocco on Wednesday “after officials unanimously approved his transfer,” theMiami Herald reported. Chekkouri’s move is the first since June and continues the slow slog to close the prison that has plagued the Obama administration since announcing their intentions at the start of the president’s first term.
Speaking of departures—here’s the very Hollywood story of one Qatari sheikh’s fast and furious exit from the States. Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, who “owns a drag-racing team and is a member of the ruling family of oil- and gas-rich Qatar,” was targeted by authorities after his “bright yellow, 12-cylinder LaFerrari, which can sell for around $1.4 million new, was spotted along with a white Porsche zooming down narrow streets and blowing through stop signs on Saturday evening until they finally pulled into a driveway, the Ferrari’s engine smoking,” AP reports this morning.
When officers arrived to the house for questioning, “a man” told the officers he had diplomatic immunity—something the police said is unlikely. But police said Thursday the cars are now gone—and so is the man.
When officers arrived to the house for questioning, “a man” told the officers he had diplomatic immunity—something the police said is unlikely. But police said Thursday the cars are now gone—and so is the man.
Read the whole story
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Propaganda against Ukraine and the West has gone so far, the Kremlin is starting to believe its own lies.
What Vladimir Putin is up to in Syria makes far more sense than what Barack Obama and John Kerry appear to be up to in Syria.
The Russians are flying transports bringing tanks and troops to an air base near the coastal city of Latakia to create a supply chain to provide a steady flow of weapons and munitions to the Syrian army.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, an ally of Russia, has lost half his country to ISIS and the Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaida.
Putin fears that if Assad falls, Russia’s toehold in Syria and the Mediterranean will be lost, ISIS and al-Qaida will be in Damascus, and Islamic terrorism will have achieved its greatest victory.
Is he wrong?
Winston Churchill famously said in 1939: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”
Exactly. Putin is looking out for Russian national interests.
And who do we Americans think will wind up in Damascus if Assad falls? A collapse of that regime, not out of the question, would result in a terrorist takeover, the massacre of thousands of Alawite Shiites and Syrian Christians, and the flight of millions more refugees into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey – and thence on to Europe.
Putin wants to prevent that. Don’t we?
Why then are we spurning his offer to work with us?
Are we still so miffed that when we helped to dump over the pro-Russian regime in Kiev, Putin countered by annexing Crimea?
Get over it.
Understandably, there is going to be friction between the two greatest military powers. Yet both of us have a vital interest in avoiding war with each other and a critical interest in seeing ISIS degraded and defeated.
And if we consult those interests rather than respond to a reflexive Russophobia that passes for thought in the think tanks, we should be able to see our way clear to collaborate in Syria.
Indeed, the problem in Syria is not so much with the Russians – or Iran, Hezbollah and Assad, all of whom see the Syrian civil war correctly as a fight to the finish against Sunni jihadis.
Our problem has been that we have let our friends – the Turks, Israelis, Saudis and Gulf Arabs – convince us that no victory over ISIS can be achieved unless and until we bring down Assad.
Once we get rid of Assad, they tell us, a grand U.S.-led coalition of Arabs and Turks can form up and march in to dispatch ISIS.
This is neocon nonsense.
Those giving us this advice are the same “cakewalk war” crowd who told us how Iraq would become a democratic model for the Middle East once Saddam Hussein was overthrown and how Moammar Gadhafi’s demise would mean the rise of a pro-Western Libya.
When have these people ever been right?
What is the brutal reality in this Syrian civil war, which has cost 250,000 lives and made refugees of half the population, with 4 million having fled the country?
After four years of sectarian and ethnic slaughter, Syria will most likely never again be reconstituted along the century-old map lines of Sykes-Picot. Partition appears inevitable.
And though Assad may survive for a time, his family’s days of ruling Syria are coming to a close.
Yet it is in America’s interest not to have Assad fall – if his fall means the demoralization and collapse of his army, leaving no strong military force standing between ISIS and Damascus.
Indeed, if Assad falls now, the beneficiary is not going to be those pro-American rebels who have defected or been routed every time they have seen combat and who are now virtually extinct.
The victors will be ISIS and the Nusra Front, which control most of Syria between the Kurds in the northeast and the Assad regime in the southwest.
Syria could swiftly become a strategic base camp and sanctuary of the Islamic State from which to pursue the battle for Baghdad, plot strikes against America and launch terror attacks across the region and around the world.
Prediction: If Assad falls and ISIS rises in Damascus, a clamor will come – and not only from the Lindsey Grahams and John McCains – to send a U.S. army to invade and drive ISIS out, while the neocons go scrounging around to find a Syrian Ahmed Chalabi in northern Virginia.
Then this nation will be convulsed in a great war debate over whether to send that U.S. army to invade Syria and destroy ISIS.
And while our Middle Eastern and European allies sit on the sidelines and cheer on the American intervention, this country will face an anti-war movement the likes of which have not been seen since Col. Lindbergh spoke for America First.
In making ISIS, not Assad, public enemy No. 1, Putin has it right.
It is we Americans who are the mystery inside an enigma now.
Read the whole story
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Bassam Khabieh / ReutersResidents inspect damage after what activists said was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Assad on the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta of Damascus.
The United States opened the door on Thursday to possible tactical discussions with Russia about the war in Syria, as Moscow's deepening military presence raised the prospect of some limited coordination between the former Cold War foes.
The White House said it "remains open to tactical, practical discussions" with Moscow. The Pentagon acknowledged that such talks might be necessary to avoid "miscalculation," although it was unclear when or under what conditions they might take place.
The United States fiercely opposes Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the Pentagon last year cut off high-level discussions with Moscow after its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine.
But Russia's buildup at Syria's Latakia airbase raises the possibility of air combat missions in Syrian airspace. Heavy Russian equipment, including tanks, helicopters and naval infantry forces, have been moved to Latakia, U.S. officials say.
One U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday that the United States believed as many as 500 Russian troops were now at the airfield, an increase from a previous estimate of about 200.
"We want to avoid miscalculation. We want to avoid problems," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told a news briefing, noting however that Russia wasn't carrying out such operations now and had not yet explained its intentions.
Islamic State Fight
The United States has long warned Syria not to interfere in U.S.-led coalition air operations, which target Islamic State militants in Syria, not Syria's military.
At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest raised the prospect of possible Russian contributions to the campaign against Islamic State.
"We would welcome constructive contributions from the Russians to the anti-ISIL coalition," Earnest said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
"So that's why we'll remain open to tactical, practical discussions with the Russians in order to further the goals of the counter-ISIL coalition and to ensure the safe conduct of coalition operations."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that Russia had sought military-to-military talks on Syria.
Kerry and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter met at the Pentagon on Thursday, with Syria believed to be high on the agenda. Kerry was later flying to London for talks, separately, with his British and United Arab Emirates counterparts.
The American war effort in Syria has seen recent setbacks. The U.S. military acknowledged this week that only four or five of an initial class of some 60 U.S.-trained Syrian rebels were still on the battlefield, following a disastrous debut after they came under attack from al Qaeda's Syria wing.
The training program could be re-envisioned as a far smaller training effort focused on more easily reachable goals, such as helping call in air strikes, U.S. officials say.
Both Moscow and Washington say their enemy is Islamic State, whose fighters control large parts of Syria. Washington believes that Assad's presence is fueling the conflict, but Russia continues to support its long-time ally.
Washington has been pressing Moscow to help with a political transition in Syria, which would see Assad hand over power to an interim governing body. But Moscow's military buildup has complicated those efforts.
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Stringer / ReutersShi'ite fighters fire weapons towards Islamic State militants on the outskirt of Baiji.
About 2,400 Russian nationals are fighting with Islamic State militants, Russia's First Deputy Director of Federal Security Sergei Smirnov was reported as saying on Friday.
RIA news agency also quoted Smirnov as saying that in total there are about 3,000 Central Asian nationals fighting within Islamic State groups.
Speaking to journalists, Smirnov said that the problem of migrants fleeing the Middle East to Europe is only likely to increase, posing potentially a "great threat" for Russia.
"The assertion that Moscow's support negatively impacts the situation in Syria — and the flow of refugees in particular — is not true. This is due to the expansion of Islamic State in the region," he said.
Hinting at the United States, Smirnov said that there are "some countries that try to evade" international cooperation on fighting terrorism.
"There is a cooperation but not at the right level — especially with the United States," he said.
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PRESS RELEASE
Russia’s Envoy to NATO: It’s up to NATO to Re-establish Military Dialogue with Russia
Sept. 17, 2015 (EIRNS)—Russia’s Permanent Representative to NATO, Alexander Grushko, reports that his government has recently received "repeated" indications from NATO that it would be a good idea to re-establish NATO-Russia dialogue "at the military level, starting with a direct hotline to exchange information in order to prevent dangerous military incidents." Russia Beyond the Headlines and Sputnik News both reported Grushko’s remarks today, pointing to his statement that, "The Russian side holds no prejudice against such a form of contact."
Grushko underscored that "it wasn’t us that cut off these communication lines, so that if NATO seriously believes that a military dialogue is a serious stabilizing factor, then it should take the first step in restoring the normal dialogue, which has existed between us as part of the Russia-NATO Council for many years now."
Using Moscow’s alleged involvement in the Ukraine conflict, on April 1 of last year, NATO cut off all civilian and military collaboration with Russia.
By Gerard O'Dwyer 11:25 a.m. EDT September 17, 2015
A soldier from the Swedish armed forces looks on from the top of a Patria armored modular vehicle.(Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP)
HELSINKI — A landmark poll in Sweden reveals a massive shift in public opinion that favors the non-aligned Nordic state joining NATO. Conducted by research organization TNS Sifo (part of the WPP Group), the poll shows 41 percent support for Sweden becoming a full NATO member, 39 percent remain opposed and 20 percent are undecided.
"What is most surprising is the rapid change in opinion. Since the annexation of Crimea and crisis in Ukraine, we have seen a steady trend where opposition to NATO membership is in decline," said political analyst Ulf Bjereld.
The new figures represent a sharp 10 percent increase in pro-NATO support compared with a similar poll carried out in May. Swedish public support for joining NATO hovered at a lowly 17 percent in 2012. By year-end 2013 it was 29 percent.
The poll comes in the wake of an historic reversal in policy by the former NATO-skeptic opposition Center party.
Once staunchly anti-NATO membership, the Center is now advocating that Sweden join the Western alliance as part of a joint initiative with fellow non-aligned Nordic state Finland.
This simultaneous action, the Center contends, would help secure the long-term defense capabilities and national security interests of both nations in an increasingly unpredictable and potentially volatile region.
Three other opposition groups, the Liberals, Moderates and Christian Democrats, who together with the Center belong to the so-called alliance parties, also favor NATO membership.
This powerful political bloc is expected to pressure the ruling Social Democratic-Green government to test the nation’s mood on NATO by convening a referendum.
"We are seeing a clear trend, and in particular alliance voters are moving toward a pro NATO membership position," said Toivo Sjörén, a public opinion analyst at TNS Sifo.
In contrast to rising pro-NATO support by alliance voters, supporters of the ruling Social Democrats and Green parties remain largely opposed to membership.
Around 52 percent of Social Democrat voters are against joining NATO while 30 percent support membership. Some 61 percent of Green voters oppose NATO membership while 27 percent favor joining.
In an interesting twist, the poll shows that while the leadership of the nationalist Sweden Democrats are opposed to NATO membership, 54 percent of the opposition party's supporters favor joining.
The poll results emerged several days after a delayed action by Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström to call in Russia’s ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, to explain controversial comments he made in July.
Tatarintsev warned that Russia’s friendly relationship with Sweden would change markedly if the non-aligned state were to join NATO. Sweden, said Tatarintsev, would be subjected to "countermeasures" and would also run the risk of being targeted militarily.
"We are an independent state and it is Sweden that will make decisions about our security policies and our security policy choices. We do not think anyone should be threatening us, and I have contacted the Russian ambassador to ask some questions and give him the opportunity to explain matters," said Wallström.
Email: godwyer@defensenews.com
Email: godwyer@defensenews.com
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Собирается ли правительство Швеции сделать еще один шаг к интеграции в НАТО? В секретной докладной записке Министерства обороны Швеции говорится, что Швеция готова к более тесному сотрудничеству с НАТО в случае начала военных действий, например, в странах Балтии. Разоблачительную статью, проливающую свет на «закулисные игры» шведской обороны опубликовала сегодня газета Svenska Dagbladet.
Согласно секретной докладной записке, Великобритания хочет, чтобы Швеция присоединилась к соглашению о создании военных сил быстрого реагирования НАТО (JEF - Joint Expeditionary Force).
В противовес России
Соглашение о создании военных сил быстрого реагирования/ JEF было подписано осенью 2014 года на саммите НАТО в Уэльсе. Его подписали семь стран-членов НАТО: Эстония, Латвия, Литва, Великобритания, Дания, Норвегия и Нидерланды.
Инициатива создания специального вооруженного подразделения, которое должно быть сформировано в ближайшие несколько лет, принадлежит Великобритании.
А необходимость создания JEF стала ответом Североатлантического Альянса на политику России по отношению к Украине, которую в НАТО считают агрессивной и опасной.
Однако, по словам генерального Секретаря НАТО Йенса Стольтенберга/ Jens Stoltenberg, создание сил быстрого реагирования носит исключительно оборонительный характер. Он отметил, что НАТО не ищет конфронтации и не идет на гонку вооружений, а старается обеспечить безопасность членов НАТО. Речь в первую очередь идет о немедленном реагировании, в случае начала военных действий в странах Балтии.
В силы быстрого реагирования войдут подразделения наземных, морских и военно-воздушных сил. 10 000 солдат подразделения должны будут, согласно данному документу, действовать «в соответствии стандартам и доктринам НАТО и выполнять весь спектр операций, от гуманитарных миссий и сдерживания конфликтов, до ведения военных действий, в случае их необходимости».
Когда тайное становится явным
Докладную записку, о которой идет речь и которая сейчас находится у министра обороны Швеции Петера Хультквиста/ Peter Hultqvist, написал военный атташе посольства Швеции в Лондоне, Матс Даниельссон/Mats Danielsson. Атташе подтвердил журналистам Svenska Dagbladet, что британцы не имеют ничего против шведского присоединения к силам быстрого реагирования, но решать этот вопрос правительству Швеции.
Председатель комитета Риксдага по вопросам обороны Аллан Видман/ Allan Widman, выступающий за членство Швеции в НАТО, участие шведской стороны в «интенсивных операциях» Североатлантического Альянса характеризует как сближение с НАТО.
Но отмечает, что правительство ведет «закулисные игры» и вопрос этот с парламентским комитетом по вопросам обороны, не обсуждался.
Быть или не быть?
Министр обороны Петер Хультквист, в свою очередь заявил, что Швеция пока не получала официального приглашения стать участницей специального подразделения вооруженных сил быстрого реагирования НАТО. А соответственно, ни о каких подготовительных процессах в Кабине министров не может быть и речи.
Аллан Видман с министром обороны в этом вопросе не согласен, и считает подобные высказывания банальной «игрой словами».
«Официальных приглашений до того момента, пока страна не будет полностью готова, в подобных случаях быть не может. Все ранее сказанное министром обороны, звучит как подготовка Швеции к участию в JEF», - говорит Аллан Видман.
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The connected car may be catching everyone's imagination at this year's IAA auto show. But the new technology also brings with it new dangers, such as hacking.
Carmakers at the Frankfurt Motor Show, which opens its doors to the general public on Saturday, are keen to show off their brave new world of intelligent, digitized models.
But an incident in the US earlier this year when computer hackers remotely took control of a Jeep Grand Cherokee while it was driving on a motorway and brought it to a standstill highlighted the dangers that such innovations can bring.
And the industry must find ways of convincing consumers that these new super-computers on wheels are safe and secure.
One Jeep owner, Michael Frosch, is taking an extra close look at different models on display at the IAA.
"I have the same navigation system as in the Jeep that was hacked," he says.
"But I guess I'm not important enough for someone to want to send me crashing into a tree."
Jeep was forced to recall 1.4 million vehicles in the US in the wake of the hacking incident, which was a real wake-up call to the potential dangers, says Ricardo Reyes, vice president of US startup Tesla, a maker of upscale electric cars.
"We were mobilized before" the incident with the Jeep, but "awareness is much stronger" now, says Brigitte Courtehoux, director of PSA Peugeot Citroen's connected services business unit.
German auto giant Volkswagen has promised to turn "all of our models into smartphones on wheels" by 2020.
But as was the case with computers and mobile phones before them, that will make cars potential targets for hackers.
Around 150 million connected cars will be on the road worldwide in 2020, according to estimates by consultancy firm Gartner.
For the time being, "there is no clear economic model for hacking cars. But once your car stores sensitive data, that will start attracting criminals," said Egil Juliussen, analyst at IHS.
And those criminals always keep pace with any technological advance.
"A connected car is only secure for a short time" until a chink in the armour can be found, said Andrey Nikishin, director of futures technologies projects at the cybersecurity consultants Kaspersky.
'No big challenge'
At the moment, "it's not really easy to hack just any car on the road. But for a professional hacker with lots of time on their hands, it is no big challenge," Nikishin said.
In London, for example, around 6,000 cars were stolen in 2014 without being broken into, but simply by hacking their electronic locks, according to the city's police.
But theft or accidents are not the biggest threats, Nikishin said.
Protecting personal data "is the most pressing problem because it's a lot easier to steal the data," the expert said.
For example, such a risk could arise if connected cars are synchronised with drivers' smartphones containing personal credit card or bank account details.
And while "hackers" currently tend to be well-intentioned researchers, the weak points can quickly fall into criminal hands, said Juliussen.
At the IAA, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association ACEA outlined its "principles of data protection in relation to connected vehicles and services."
"Data protection is an issue automakers take very seriously, as we are committed to providing our customers with a high level of protection and maintaining their trust," said ACEA chief, Carlos Ghosn, who heads French carmaker Renault.
Nevertheless, the industry is not always moving at the same pace on the matter.
German automaker Daimler and its chief executive Dieter Zetsche, for example, boast that data collected by the group is stored on its own secure servers, rather than those of third parties, contrary to some of its rivals.
PSA Peugeot Citroen is collaborating with IT giants such as Cisco on an electronic architecture for its cars, as well as "some players from the military sector," says Courtehoux.
US manufacturer Tesla is taking the bull by its horns and working together with hackers themselves.
And the IT sector is also taking the dangers seriously. This week, US giant Intel set up a new research group, the Automotive Security Review Board, to look into ways of reducing the risks ofconnected car hacking.
In Germany, Volkswagen announced a similar cybersecurity research project with insurer Allianz, and chemicals giants BASF and Bayer.
© 2015 AFP
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A group of investors in Ukraine’s shortest-dated bonds stepped up pressure on Franklin Templeton to adjust the terms of an $18 billion restructuring agreement they argue is biased against them, saying they have the power to block the deal.
Holders of the $500 million Eurobond due on Sept. 23 have a so-called blocking stake in the security, Shearman & Sterling LLP, the law firm representing them, said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday. That means they own the 25 percent needed to potentially thwart a vote on the agreement finalized last month with a committee of some of Ukraine’s biggest bondholders.
Holdouts may threaten a ratification process that’s behind schedule due to delayed sign-off on the deal by the eastern European nation’s parliament. The war-ravaged country needs to restructure its external debt to qualify for a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan, which is already at risk because of Russia’s insistence on being repaid in full for a bond due in December.
"The question is how hard they are willing to negotiate, and are they willing to bring the entire deal down for the sake of a fairer deal," Tim Ash, the head of Europe, Middle East and Africa emerging-markets credit strategy at Nomura Holdings Inc. in London, said Thursday in e-mailed comments. "There is still a lot of work to be undertaken to put this particular deal to bed."
Holdout Risk
The accord includes a 20 percent writedown to the face value of the bonds, higher average interest payments and warrants tied to economic growth. Ukraine would issue nine new bonds of equal size maturing annually from 2019 to 2027, giving all holders a share of each security. The bond due next week climbed 0.68 cent to 78.23 cents on the dollar on Friday, near the highest level this year.
The dissenting investors argue the distribution isn’t fair to the owners of notes due this month and Oct. 13 since their investments are delayed for more years than everyone else. A spokesman for the main four-member creditor committee, led by Franklin Templeton, declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg on Thursday.
This latest threat comes after Ukraine’s parliament passed the accord on Thursday, dispelling concern that a revolt by lawmakers would scupper the deal and jeopardize the flow of bailout funds. Russia’s Finance Ministry stepped up pressure on Ukraine shortly after the vote passed, issuing astatement on its website saying it was in Kiev’s interest to settle the $3 billion bond it owes "immediately, since defaulting on these obligations would cost it much more" in legal costs and late-payment penalties.
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said Sept. 11 that the group of potential holdouts were in discussions with the main creditor committee. She said she didn’t expect they would "have any influence" on the deal’s implementation.
Changing Allocations
"To the contrary, the Franklin group has not responded to our clients’ request to engage," Shearman & Sterling said in the statement, without naming the members it’s representing. "Our clients believe that the only thing standing in the way of this sensible resolution is the refusal of the Franklin group to engage with them."
Reuters reported on Friday that hedge fund Aurelius Capital Management is part of the group, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.
Voting Process
While the dissenters aren’t opposed to overall terms, they want allocation of the new notes to give them bigger portions of the earlier securities to even out the average maturity extension to approximately four years, Shearman & Sterling said last week.
Ukraine aims to start the voting process on Monday, six days later than targeted. Bondholders must be given at least 21 days notice before a vote can be called, and 75 percent of the investors need to vote in favor at a meeting in which two thirds of the creditors are represented. The Franklin Templeton group also has a blocking stake in the Sept. 23 note, a source with knowledge of the holdings said in July.
The heads of terms agreement, a legal document accompanying the restructuring deal, does specify that Ukraine and the creditor group can adjust allocations to shorter-dated notes in order to push through approvals.
The strategy of the dissenting group is "designed to increase pressure on the ad-hoc committee to come to the table," Michael Roche, an emerging-market strategist at Seaport Global Holdings LLC in New York, said by phone. "It’s not over yet. There are some deadlines that are coming up that should help get a conclusion: either the acquiescence by the dissenting group to the status quo or a negotiated solution between the two."
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BY: Sonny Bunch
Black Mass is an oddly plotted mob movie that lacks a strong narrative arc or a consistent point of view. It’s also a gripping character study and the best-acted film of the year so far, an unnerving look at the pursuit of power.
Johnny Depp stars as James “Whitey” Bulger, a small-time hood who becomes a major player in the Boston mob scene after crafting an alliance with John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), another kid from Southie who joined the FBI. The feds want the mafia taken down, and John comes up with the bright idea of empowering the Irish mob to get the job done. Jimmy (don’t call him Whitey: “That’ll just get you a smack”) can’t stand rats, but infahmin’ on invading enemies like “the Brits in the Six Counties or the dagos in the north end” isn’t ratting. It’s strategy.
Bulger, whose brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) serves as a state senator, is a man about town, hanging out at the local and helping old ladies cross the street and viciously murdering anyone who crosses him. Depp’s onscreen visage is captivating, aided in large part by off-putting light blue eyes that call to mind a Siberian husky and a dead tooth that grays as the film goes along, a physical manifestation of his corrupt soul.
A “Black Mass” venerates Satan. Depp’s Bulger is a magnificent devil, debasing everyone who comes into his orbit and exploiting the weakness of men to cover for committing robberies and collecting souls. Edgerton, fresh off the surprise critical and commercial hit The Gift, plays Connolly with a beady-eyed naiveté, as someone who thinks he can control a mad dog he’s let off the leash.
Indeed, from top to bottom, the cast excels: Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott, and Corey Stoll headline a top-notch group of actors. I wonder if the surfeit of acting talent may have harmed the story: There’s no through-line to Black Mass, it’s a two-hour catalogue of Bulger’s sins.
I feel as though the film may have been better served being about Connolly, his rise and fall, about a man desperate to save his city from outside crime bosses who don’t care about the people of Boston. However, Depp’s brilliance and director Scott Cooper’s (understandable) reluctance to take the camera off of him unbalances the whole thing: Imagine The Dark Knight, but with The Joker onscreen for two-thirds of the two-and-a-half hour running time instead of 30 minutes or so.
We don’t even leave the film with a good sense of what Bulger really did. There’s a whole subplot about Jai Alai that your humble reviewer found borderline incomprehensible, having something to do with skimming money out of the franchise and bumping off the owner when he got wise to the grift. Perhaps the infiltration of the professional Jai Alai circuit by Boston’s Irish mob is common knowledge, but the few things I know about the sport I learned from brief references to it on Mad Men several years ago.
The sloppy treatment of Bulger’s criminal exploits is in stark contrast to the portrayal of the Lufthansa Heist in Goodfellas or the introduction of smack to New York City in The Godfather. As impressive an actors’ showcase as it is, Black Mass is, unfortunately, a rather weak “mob movie.”
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Pawn Sacrifice suffers from the opposite problem of Black Mass. Director Ed Zwick and writer Steven Knight imbue the enigmatic mental case Bobby Fischer with almost too much meaning, using the chess champion as a lens through which to view the Cold War.
We open on Fischer as a child, where his single mother is hosting a party for local communists. After spotting a car full of cops outside their house keeping an eye on the dirty Reds inside—this is the late forties, after all—Fischer snitches on them to his mom, a good Commie who tells her kid never to rat on their Bolshevik friends. Still, he can’t sleep, agitated by the fact that his mom seems more interested in lifting up the proletariat than spending time with him. To take his mind off his worries, he focuses on a chessboard in the corner and starts running through moves.
In a short span of time he is revealed to be a prodigy. Fischer (Tobey Maguire) is the only American with a chance of beating the long-dominant Russian masters in single combat, thus opening a new avenue in the Cold War.
Whereas the Russians—led by the calm, collected, rock-star-like Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber)—have the backing of their nation, Fischer is on his own, at least at first. It’s not until a patriotic lawyer named Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg) and a chess-obsessed priest named Father Bill Lombardy (Peter Sarsgaard) start pulling some strings that Fischer gets the financial help he feels he deserves.
For Fischer, it’s all about winning—and being properly compensated. Zwick and Knight do a good job of refusing to romanticize Bobby Fischer, who notoriously spiraled into mental illness and anti-Semitism as the years progressed. But by shoehorning him into a narrative about the broader Cold War—replete with montages of the 1960s, discussion of nuclear war, etc.—some of the personal tragedy gets lost. Was Bobby Fischer driven crazy by the pressure of the Cold War or was he simply an ill-mannered jerk with a variety of mental problems?
Pawn Sacrifice certainly has its pleasures. Histrionic Tobey Maguire is my least-favorite iteration of the actor, but he is certainly believable as the prodigal loon. Stuhlbarg and Sarsgaard excel as the Bobby Whisperers, ably representing both the macro geopolitical issues and the micro moves on the chessboard. And Zwick deserves kudos for rendering actual chess matches competently and compellingly, no mean feat for a rather static exercise.
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Charles Mostoller / ReutersU.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
LONDON - U.S. President Barack Obama believes that holding military talks with Russia on Syria is an important next step and hopes they will take place very shortly, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday.
Russia, which is building up a military presence in Syria, was quick to say that Moscow was also ready for talks with the United States.
At a meeting in London with United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, Kerry said the U.S. president hoped that talks would "help define some of the different options available to us as we consider next steps in Syria".
"Our focus remains on destroying Islamic State militants and also on a political settlement with respect to Syria, which we believe cannot be achieved with the long-term presence of [President Bashar] Assad," Kerry told reporters. "We're looking for ways in which to find a common ground."
The United States opposes Russia's support for Assad, and the Pentagon last year cut off high-level discussions with Moscow after its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine.
But Russia's buildup at Syria's Latakia airbase raises the possibility of air combat missions in Syrian airspace. Heavy Russian equipment, including tanks, helicopters and naval infantry forces, have been moved to Latakia, U.S. officials say.
Earlier, a Syrian military source said that troops had started to use new types of air and ground weapons supplied by Russia.
Kerry said the United States wanted to find "a diplomatic way forward".
"Everybody is seized by the urgency. We have been all along but the migration levels and continued destruction, the danger of potential augmentation by any unilateral moves puts a high premium on diplomacy at this moment," he added.
Millions of Syrians have fled the four-year conflict and the UAE foreign minister said his country had taken more than 100,000 Syrian refugees over the last four years.
He said it was important to forge a political agreement in Syria and end the hardship of Syrian people. "It'll be very difficult to sustain the current situation," he added.
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian army jets carried out at least 25 air strikes on the Islamic State-held city of Palmyra on Friday, a group monitoring the war said, the second intense bombardment of territory held by the militants in two days.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was one of the most sustained government bombardments on Palmyra. It came a day after Syrian jets heavily bombed Islamic State’s bastion in the north, the city of Raqqa.
Palmyra, in central Syris and home to vast Roman-era ruins, was seized by Islamic State insurgents from government forces in May.
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