Now all eyes are on Monday, when the president is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. - Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere - NYT
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MOSCOW — Where’s Putin?
The question obsessed Moscow and much of Russia on Friday, as speculation mounted as to why President Vladimir V. Putin had not been seen in public for more than a week.
He abruptly canceled a trip to Kazakhstan and postponed a treaty signing with representatives from South Ossetia who were reportedly told not to bother to fly to Moscow. Most unusually, he was absent from an annual meeting of the top officials from the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence service.
The rumor mill went into overdrive, churning out possible explanations from the simple to the salacious to the sinister. He had been stricken by the particularly devastating strain of flu going around Moscow just now. He sneaked off to Switzerland for the birth of his love child. He had a stroke. The victim of a palace coup, he was imprisoned within the Kremlin. He was dead, aged 62.
Dmitry S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, treated all the health questions with a certain wry humor initially, coming up with new and inventive ways to say, “He’s fine.”
Yet, the fact that the story proved impossible to quash underscored the uneasy mood gripping the Russian capital for months now, an atmosphere in which speculation about the health of just one man can provoke fears about death and succession.
There have been periodic glimpses of the tension behind the high red walls of the Kremlin, infighting over the wisdom of waging war in Ukraine that has only deepened as the value of the ruble crumbled under the combined weight of an oil price collapse and Western economic sanctions over the annexation of Crimea.
Those pressures seemed to culminate in the Feb. 27 assassination of Boris Y. Nemtsov, the opposition leader and former deputy prime minister who was gunned down near the Kremlin. Mr. Nemtsov’s supporters blamed the atmosphere of hate that has been brewing in Russia, with the state-controlled news media labeling him a ringleader among the “enemies of the state.”
All that seemed to feed some of the darker interpretations of Mr. Putin’s disappearance. Andrei Illarionov, a former presidential adviser, wrote a blog post suggesting that the president had been overthrown by hard-liners in a palace coup endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church. Russians could anticipate an announcement soon saying that he was taking a well-deserved rest, the post said. Conspiracy theorists bombarded Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media with similar intrigue.
Of course, the “wag-the-dog” grandfather of all the conspiracy theories surfaced as well, that Mr. Putin disappeared on purpose to distract everyone from the problems and economic pressures piling up around them.
Given that Russia sometimes seems to be reverting to the dusty playbook of the Soviet Union, some concerns seemed to feed off old habits. In the early 1980s, when three Soviet rulers — Leonid I. Brezhnev, Yuri V. Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko — died in quick succession, the public was among the last to be informed.
“If an American president dies, not that much changes,” said a reporter who has covered Mr. Putin for years, not wanting to be quoted by name on the subject of the president’s possible demise. “But if a Russian leader dies everything can change — we just don’t know for better or worse, but usually for worse.”
The White House declined to say if it had any information about Mr. Putin’s whereabouts or whether President Obama has been briefed.
“I have enough trouble keeping track of the whereabouts of one world leader,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “I would refer you to the Russians for questions on theirs. I’m sure they’ll be very responsive.”
The last confirmed public Putin sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5, although the Kremlin would have one think otherwise.
That was another aspect of the Soviet past that seemed to actually emerge from the grave: efforts to doctor the president’s timetable to confirm that all was hunky-dory.
The daily newspaper RBC reported that a meeting with the governor of the northwestern region of Karelia, pictured on the presidential website as taking place on March 11, actually occurred on March 4, when a local website there wrote about it. A meeting with a group of women shown as March 8 actually happened on March 6, RBC said.
On Friday the Kremlin released video and still pictures of Mr. Putin meeting with the president of the Supreme Court to discuss judicial reform. The footage got heavy play on state-run television, but given that it was not live it did little to douse the flaming rumor mill.
The simplest explanation appeared to come from an unidentified government source in Kazakhstan, who told Reuters “it looks like he has fallen ill.”
Since half of Moscow seemed racked with a flu that knocks people onto their backs for days at a time, that seemed the most likely explanation. (Who knows how many hands he shakes in a day?)
But there seemed to be a certain reluctance to admit that Russia’s leader, who cultivates a macho image of ruddy good health, might have been felled like a mere mortal.
His spokesman told any media outlet that called (and most did) that his boss was in fine fettle, holding meetings and performing other duties of the office.
“No need to worry, everything is all right,” Mr. Peskov said Thursday in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio. “He has working meetings all the time, only not all of these meetings are public.”
As new theories emerged practically by the hour, Mr. Peskov denied them all.
A Swiss tabloid reported that Mr. Putin had spent the past week accompanying his mistress, the Olympic gymnastics medalist Alina Kabayeva, to give birth in a clinic in Switzerland’s Ticino canton favored by the family of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister. (It would be the third child, none confirmed.)
Mr. Peskov swatted that one down, too.
Of course, Mr. Putin’s opponents next door in Ukraine lost no time celebrating the possible news. One set up a clock using a joyous chorus from “Swan Lake” to count off the time since Mr. Putin last appeared alive.
One of Mr. Putin’s predecessors, Boris N. Yeltsin, used to disappear frequently as well. But that was due either to drinking bouts or, at least once, an undisclosed heart attack. His spokesman settled on a standard explanation that Mr. Yeltsin still had a firm handshake and was busy working on documents.
Mr. Peskov drolly resorted to both explanations, telling Echo of Moscow that Mr. Putin’s handshake could break hands and that he was working “exhaustively” with documents.
By Friday, Mr. Peskov’s patience appeared to be wearing thin as he told Reuters: “We’ve already said this a hundred times. This isn’t funny anymore.” But he also mused aloud about finding a wealthy sponsor to underwrite a prize for the funniest hoax invented about Russia’s leader.
Early in his presidency, Mr. Putin infamously dropped out of sight when the submarine Kursk sank in 2000 and again two years later when terrorists seized a Moscow theater, trapping hundreds of hostages. But since those two crises, which spawned all manner of questions about his leadership skills, he has been very much a public figure.
A key sign that Russians seemed to be taking it in stride, despite the weird and wild tales, was that the value of the ruble barely budged. Farther away, on world markets distant from rumor central, there were gyrations attributed in part to the Putin uncertainty.
Now all eyes are on Monday, when the president is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg.
Correction: March 13, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the Italian prime minister. He is Matteo Renzi, not Renzo. It also misstated the year the submarine Kursk sank. It was 2000, not 2002.
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Faced with surging violence at Rikers Island, Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the New York City jail complex on Thursday for the second time in three months to unveil a 14-point plan focused on curtailing inmate fights and stopping the smuggling of drugs and weapons.
Mr. de Blasio described the changes as a product of months of review and spoke in greater detail and fluency about the challenges at Rikers than he had at any time in his tenure. But the mayor, who was surrounded by senior uniformed correction officers during an hourlong news conference, made only passing reference to the brutality by guards that has been the focus of news media reports and a federal inquiry.
Joseph Ponte, who took over as correction commissioner last April, has said repeatedly that no change can come to Rikers without first bringing violence under control.
Mr. de Blasio said on Thursday that the new measures were part of a long-term solution that might not yield results immediately.
“We are fundamentally dissatisfied with a culture of violence and will not allow it to continue,” Mr. de Blasio said at the news conference, vowing to make Rikers a “national model of what is right again.”
Many of the proposals in the department’s plan, in fact, are already underway, even as violence has continued to worsen, showing just how difficult the task of changing Rikers will be.
The mayor’s primary emphasis on Thursday was the problem of contraband smuggling by visitors to the jail. Correction officials attribute much of the violence between inmates at Rikers to disputes over drugs and weapons.
Under the new plan, Mr. de Blasio said, physical contact between inmates and visitors would be limited to a hug or embrace at the beginning and end of the visit. He also said plexiglass partitions would be installed to separate inmates and visitors, making it more difficult to pass contraband. (Currently, inmates and visitors sit across a small table from each other, but there are no restrictions on physical contact for most inmates.)
The Correction Department also plans to create a computerized screening system to make it harder for people with criminal records or gang affiliations to visit.
While smuggling by visitors is a serious problem, city investigators say much of the contraband that enters the jails is brought in by Rikers officers and civilian employees. Since 2010, 16 correction officers and other employees have been charged with contraband smuggling, according to the city’s Department of Investigation.
When asked about increased screening of employees, Mr. de Blasio said the problem paled in comparison with smuggling by visitors.
As scrutiny of Rikers has grown over the last year, Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Ponte have carefully avoided criticizing correction officers publicly. But the Correction Department has adopted more stringent screening measures for employees after two reports by the Investigation Department detailing corruption and criminality in the uniformed ranks.
In October, an undercover investigator from the Department of Investigation dressed as a correction officer was able to smuggle drugs, alcohol and a razor blade through six different employee security checkpoints at Rikers. Three months later, another report found that the department had been hiring officers who had criminal backgrounds and belonged to gangs.
Among the new measures introduced by Mr. de Blasio on Thursday was a more tailored approach to housing inmates, including separating rival gang members, who officials say are responsible for most of the violence at Rikers.
The number of stabbings and slashings reported so far this year is higher than the total for each entire year in 2007, 2008 and 2009, officials said.
The department also plans to introduce special teams trained to de-escalate confrontations, particularly involving inmates with mental illness, who now make up nearly 40 percent of the jail population. All inmates, under the new plan, would receive at least five hours of therapeutic and educational programming.
Much of the new plan must first be approved by the Board of Correction, a city watchdog agency that oversees Rikers.
The mayor spoke at a new enhanced supervision housing unit, where the most violent inmates will be jailed under the department’s new plan. Mr. Ponte has described the new unit as critical for driving down violence by keeping the most troublesome inmates in the same place and imposing greater restrictions on them.
The new unit where the mayor spoke had a fresh coat of paint and inspirational slogans on the wall like, “Positive anything is better than negative nothing.” It is still unoccupied. Eventually, officials said, it will be one of several new enhanced supervision units that will be able to hold up to 250 men. To date, 17 inmates have been moved into another unit.
At his last visit to Rikers in December, Mr. de Blasio, who had called the Correction Department the most troubled agency in the city, promised to allocate tens of millions of additional dollars to address what he has described as decades of dysfunction. During the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, violence skyrocketed after a period of relative calm.
The city has been under intense pressure on several fronts to address the problems, including the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, who has sued over pervasive brutality against Rikers inmates.
Even so, last month, The New York Times detailed 62 cases of inmates who were seriously injured during encounters with guards that occurred in the months after Mr. Bharara released a damning report about abuse at the jails.
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Three Brooklyn men accused of plotting to join the Islamic State gave bare biographical details in response to a judge’s questions as they pleaded not guilty to various charges on Friday.
The men, Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, Akhror Saidakhmetov and Abror Habibov, were arrested last month and indicted this week on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. Mr. Saidakhmetov and Mr. Habibov also face a charge of conspiracy to use a firearm, and Mr. Saidakhmetov is charged with travel document fraud.
According to the government, the men had spoken since last summer about fighting for the Islamic State, a terrorist organization also known as ISIS or ISIL that has seized a wide expanse of Syria and Iraq; Mr. Saidakhmetov had planned to slip over the border into Syria and join the organization but was arrested in February as he boarded a plane bound for Turkey. Mr. Juraboev also had a ticket to fly to Turkey. Mr. Habibov had helped the men arrange and finance the travel, according to prosecutors.
At the hearing on Friday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, a prosecutor hinted at the evidence to be used against the men. “Much of the discovery involves intercepted recordings in the Uzbek language,” Alexander Solomon, an assistant United States attorney, said.
With their hands shackled, the three men sat in the jury box as Judge William F. Kuntz II asked questions and read aloud the charges against them.
Of the three, Mr. Juraboev, 24, appeared the most engaged in the proceedings, looking intently at whomever was speaking. Asked if he understood English, he shook his head and said, “Not well”; he had a translator.
He said had attended high school in Uzbekistan. When Judge Kuntz asked if he was ready to enter a plea, Mr. Juraboev said, “Yes, I am ready and I am not guilty.”
In the middle sat Mr. Saidakhmetov, 19, his wide face clean-shaven and his hair cut in a chin-length brown bob.
His mother attended the hearing, crying both during and afterward; she declined to speak to reporters. According to the government, she had been worried about his growing extremism and had tried to confiscate his passport. She also held the lease on the apartment that Mr. Saidakhmetov and Mr. Juraboev shared.
Mr. Saidakhmetov said that he had graduated from the 273 School in Uzbekistan and that “then I came to the U.S.”
“Here I went to high school in New York,” he continued, “and I didn’t graduate high school.” He said he attended James Madison High School in southern Brooklyn in 2014.
Asked how he pleaded to the first count against him, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, Mr. Saidakhmetov said, “I don’t have anything to tell you.”
“You have to plead,” Judge Kuntz said.
“Not guilty,” he responded, and then gave a similar answer on the other counts.
Mr. Habibov, 30, had a full beard and thick brown hair with a spot of gray at the front. As Judge Kuntz questioned his co-defendants, he sat with slumped shoulders, looking at the ground. When it was his turn, though, he sat up and smiled a few times while giving his answers.
He said he had earned a bachelor’s degree from Tashkent State Foreign Languages University in Uzbekistan.
Afterward, Mr. Habibov’s lawyer, Eric Franz, said his client was “shocked and astonished” by the allegations. He has family in Brooklyn, Mr. Franz said, and “hopes his family will contact me since they’ve been cut off since his arrest.”
The lawyer representing Mr. Saidakhmetov, Adam D. Perlmutter, said his client was “very frightened; he doesn’t think that he’s done anything wrong.”
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WASHINGTON — The United States and Iran are closing in on a historic agreement to limit Iran’snuclear program, but are confronting serious last-minute obstacles, including when United Nationssanctions would be lifted and how inspections would be conducted, American and European officials said.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who heads to Lausanne, Switzerland, on Sunday night for a critical round of talks, is still clashing with his Iranian counterpart over Tehran’s demand that all United Nations sanctions be suspended as soon as there is a deal, as well as Washington’s insistence that international inspectors be able to promptly visit any nuclear site, even those on Iranian military bases.
There are also disagreements over Iran’s research and development of advanced centrifuges, which would allow Iran to produce nuclear fuel far more quickly, as well as over how many years an agreement would last.
The White House hopes that an accord might eventually open a new chapter in a relationship that has been marked largely by decades of mutual suspicion, Iranian-sponsored terrorism, American cyberattacks and Iranian retaliation. But even the prospect of the deal has set off a furious political confrontation between the White House and Republicans who say an accord will fail to end Iran’s bomb program and even encourage Arab nations to mount their own nuclear efforts. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Congress recently that the effect of the emerging deal with Iran would be “to move from preventing proliferation to managing it.”
The areas of convergence in the deal circulating in Washington and European capitals include a complex arrangement in which Iran would ship large portions of its stockpiles of uranium out of the country, almost certainly to Russia. In return, the United States and its negotiating partners could allow Iran to keep roughly 6,500 of its centrifuges spinning, rather than the few hundred that were under discussion a year ago.
The number of centrifuges, which may be altered in the final stages of talks, will take on outsize proportions in the public debate here. Opponents of the deal argue that it will leave the Iranians with a latent production capacity, even though the country would have limited amounts of uranium to work with. American officials insist that for at least the first 10 years of a final accord, the mix of fuel and enrichment capacity will leave the United States, Israel and others with at least a year’s worth of warning time if Iran raced to make a bomb’s worth of material — compared to just a few months of warning time today.
But inside the negotiating rooms, there are still major debates about how to phase in the lifting of United Nations, American and European sanctions as Iran complies with the terms. The sanctions standoff underscores a little-discussed but politically volatile issue for the Obama administration: how quickly Iran would see economic and technological benefits from any accord.
A suspension, and ultimate elimination, of the sanctions on oil exports and financial transactions is the key issue for President Hassan Rouhani of Iran and his lead negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, if they hope to sell a 10-year or longer limitation on their nuclear activity to Iranian mullahs and military leaders who have opposed the negotiations. As details of the talks leak, they are being used by opponents in Tehran, especially the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees the military side of the nuclear program. They argue that by limiting Iran’s capabilities for so many years, the United States would use an accord to thwart Iran’s emergence as the major power in the Middle East.
But any rapid lifting of sanctions — by vote of the Security Council and by President Obama’s decisions to gradually waive imposition of American- imposed economic penalties — could intensify the already fierce congressional debate. Congress would ultimately need to vote to remove American sanctions, though it might not be asked to do so until Mr. Obama is out of office. And some Republicans may balk at doing that and instead try to toughen the terms, perhaps to the point that Iran might no longer accept them.
An adviser to Mr. Kerry said the secretary recently expressed concern that even if he wins his last negotiating points with Iran, any accord “is going to be a heavy lift” in Congress.
“He’s rightly worried,” said the adviser, who would not be named because he was discussing sensitive diplomatic talks. “The chances of reaching an agreement are now higher than ever, and the chances it will collapse politically here are higher, too.”
Mr. Kerry is calling in reinforcements to bolster the argument that an accord would guarantee that, for a decade or more, that the United States and its allies have at least a year’s warning before Iran could manufacture a bomb’s worth of weapons-grade nuclear fuel. Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, a nuclear scientist who has negotiated with his Iranian counterpart during the last two rounds of talks, is part of the American team at the coming negotiations as well. Mr. Moniz is there to negotiate details that once seemed as if they were the eye-glazing stuff of diplomacy — how to modify arrays of centrifuges so they cannot easily make weapons fuel, for example — which is suddenly becoming crucial to the political debate.
What the United States and Iran want out of discussions over Iran’s nuclear development.
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Here are some of the critical remaining differences:
HOW LONG A DEAL?
One of the most contentious features of the accord is how long the provisions extending the breakout time to a year would last. American officials have said that such measures would be in effect for at least 10 years of an expected 15-year agreement. Mr. Kerry’s Iranian counterpart argued in an interview last summer that the entire deal should run no more than seven years.
However long it lasts, a core objection Mr. Kerry must overcome is that after it expires, Iran would still have the infrastructure to produce as much nuclear material as it wants, as Japan or Brazil do. The Obama administration is betting that by then a different, or at least a more cooperative, Iranian regime will be in power.
But to hedge against the risk that it is not, and to make an agreement more politically palatable at home, Mr. Kerry is trying to negotiate extensive verification measures that would continue even after a formal agreement has ended. Those measures would include visits to military sites where suspected nuclear work is going on. Iran’s generals have so far refused to do that.
Getting a far-reaching inspection regime to guard against a covert nuclear program — one that goes beyond the toughest measures inspectors use in any other country — is critical for Mr. Kerry to meet his own goal, which he described earlier this month as “a deal that will prove over the long term that each pathway to a bomb is closed off.”
Another way to hedge would be to keep some constraints, such as a ban on the construction of nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, in place after a formal agreement lapses.
The United States has “great respect for the religious importance of a fatwa,” Mr. Kerry told reporters during a visit to Egypt on Saturday, alluding to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s much publicized edict against the development of nuclear weapons. But negotiators, Mr. Kerry said, needed an agreement that would “guarantee that Iran’s program will be peaceful now and peaceful forever.”
A LEGALLY BINDING ACCORD?
In congressional testimony last week, Mr. Kerry acknowledged what 47 Republicans wrote in a letter to the Iranian leadership last week — that any “executive agreement” like this one, made without a vote in Congress, would not be legally binding on future presidents. But neither are other “executive agreements,” including the diplomatic opening to China and the accord that rid Syria of many of its chemical weapons. The White House and Mr. Kerry argue that any future president is highly unlikely to rescind the accord, particularly if Iran is complying with its terms.
Still, the nature of the agreement raises some questions about its durability.
“I think Kerry is probably right that a future president is likely to honor the agreement as long as Iran does, but the fact that the agreement is not legally binding gives a future president or Congress more flexibility to seek to modify or abrogate the agreement,” said Gary Samore, once Mr. Obama’s chief adviser on weapons of mass destruction and now president of an advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran. “The same is true of Iran.”
In fact, if a future president canceled the deal, there would be an immediate price to pay: Iran would be free to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wanted.
RELAXED RESTRAINTS ON
TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH?
One reason the United States and its allies are so reluctant to lift the United Nations sanctions is that they include a ban on high-technology goods that could help Iran covertly build a weapon. So discussions are underway about setting up a highly monitored channel for Iran to receive its technology, with continuing bans on certain goods. But that requires extraordinarily good intelligence to avoid cheating.
Similarly, the United States is insisting on long-lasting restrictions on Iranian research and development of advanced centrifuges. But Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency and its military are objecting, saying no other countries must live with such restrictions.
The military and Iranian scientists are also resisting demands that they answer all of the questions the International Atomic Energy Agency has asked for many years about possible research and design work on nuclear weapons and how to shrink them into a warhead.
“The issue is deeper than whether you make them admit what they did in the past,” said one American official, who asked for anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. “It’s getting to know their entire scientific infrastructure so you will detect any effort to start up weapons design years from now.”
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The website of Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledges that NATO has played a “central role” in the country’s security and insists that Turkey, which became a member in 1952, “attaches utmost importance” to it. Yet Turkey’s commitment to the alliance has never seemed more ambivalent than it does now.
On crucial issues — from fighting the Islamic State to fielding integrated defense systems, which share information and operate together, to standing firm against Russian aggression in Ukraine — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government either are not cooperating fully or are acting in outright defiance of NATO’s priorities and interests. Add the fact that Turkey under Mr. Erdogan has become increasingly authoritarian, and it becomes apparent that the country is drifting away from an alliance whose treaty says it is “founded on the principles of democracy” as much as defense.
For months, the Western allies have pressured Turkey to close its porous border, which has allowed thousands of jihadists to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and has enabled ISIS to smuggle in weapons and smuggle out oil on which it relies for revenue.
Although the Turkish government has taken some steps to make transit harder, it has been unwilling, or unable, to stem the flow, according to Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt’s reporting in The Times. One smuggler said that while his job has become more difficult, sometimes the Turkish border guards look the other way.
Completely shutting down the long border may be impossible, but given the country’s large military and well-regarded intelligence service, it is inexcusable that Turkey is not doing a better job. Turkey should also be making military bases and troops available to the American-led coalition, but James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Congress recently that he was not optimistic that Turkey would do more against ISIS because it had “other priorities and other interests.”
Public opinion polls show that the Turks don’t consider ISIS a primary threat, and Mr. Erdogan is more concerned with opposing Kurdish autonomy within Syria and with bringing down the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
There are other troubling aspects of Turkey’s behavior. The government says it is still considering buying from China a $3.4 billion air defense system that involves radars and long-range ground-to-air missiles that can shoot down enemy missiles. The purchase is opposed by the American and European allies because they view this military purchase from China as a risk. They are also disturbed that Turkey is not purchasing a system from them, because they have borne the cost of defending Turkey against a Syrian attack by stationing Patriot missile batteries on Turkish territory. Moreover, the Turkish defense minister last month said the government did not plan to integrate whatever air defense system it bought with NATO’s air defenses and radars so that the various parts would work together, though the presidential spokesman later said the system would be integrated with NATO’s.
NATO would not integrate its system with a Chinese system because the two are not compatible, a Chinese system might contain risky software, and members of Congress oppose it. If Turkey refuses to link its defense system with NATO’s, “they are weakening the defense of their territory and weakening NATO at the same time,” said Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO.
Meanwhile, Turkey is supposed to sign an agreement this year that will allow Russia to build a natural gas pipeline to Turkey, thus bypassing Ukraine. The Erdogan government, ignoring Western sanctions, has been exploiting a rift between Russia and the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to gain energy supplies at bargain prices. Russia also plans to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant.
American officials say they don’t think Turkey will ever withdraw from NATO. Of course, such a move would be a catastrophic mistake. But the fact that the possibility is even raised by officials and defense experts shows how concerned the allies are about relying on Turkey in any crisis.
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CreditPiotr Malecki for The New York Times
KALISZ, Poland — For evidence of how much President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has jangled nerves and provoked anxiety across Eastern Europe, look no farther than the drill held the other day by the Shooters Association.
The paramilitary group, like more than 100 others in Poland, has experienced a sharp spike in membership since Mr. Putin’s forces began meddling in neighboring Ukraine last year.
Thirty students took an oath to defend Poland at all costs, joining nearly 200 other regional members of the association — young men and women, boys and girls — marching in formation around the perimeter of the dusty high school courtyard here. They crossed Polish Army Boulevard and marched into the center of town, sprawling in four long lines along the edge of St. Joseph’s Square.
Gen. Boguslaw Pacek, an adviser to the Polish defense minister and the government’s chief liaison with these paramilitary groups, marched with them. He has been making the rounds in recent months of such gatherings: student chapters like this one, as well as groups of veterans, even battle re-enactors.
One of those who took the oath in Kalisz was Bartosz Walesiak, 16, who said he had been interested in the military since playing with toy soldiers as a little boy, but had been motivated to join the Shooters Association after Russia moved into Crimea.
“I think that Putin will want more,” he said.
“Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are already getting ready for such a scenario, so Poland must do the same.”
As the crisis drags on, what was unthinkable at the end of the Cold War now seems not quite so unlikely to many Poles: that the great Russian behemoth will not be sated with Ukraine and will reach out once again into the West. The thought is darkening the national mood and rippling across the entire region in ways that reflect a visceral fear of an aggressive and unpredictable Russia.
Pointing out that Russia insists it has no such intentions usually elicits little more than a despairing laugh.
“I think the impact on everyday life is starting to be very bad,” said Marcin Zaborowski, director of thePolish Institute of International Affairs. “Very often now, people approach me — neighbors, hairdressers — asking whether there will be a war. The other day, my mother called and asked me.”
Dinner parties in Warsaw these days frequently drift to the topic. Possibilities that were once shrugged off are now seriously contemplated. Even the jokes are laced with anxiety.
In January, the Polish Ministry of National Defense announced that it would provide military training to any civilian who wished to receive it, with registration beginning March 1. About 1,000 people showed up the first day, said Col. Tomasz Szulejko, spokesman for the Polish Army’s general staff. “This number certainly bodes well for the future,” he said.
How Russia aims to achieve its goal of keeping Ukraine isolated from the West.
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Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s defense minister, is also contemplating a proposal to establish a Territorial Defense Force, taking the cream of the members of the paramilitary associations and other volunteers to create something akin to the National Guard in the United States.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz changed the law on who can be called up for service in case of “military maneuvers.” Previously, the armed forces could summon only current and former reservists, those with actual military training. Now, if necessary, they can call on almost any man in the country.
In neighboring Lithuania, President Dalia Grybauskaite said her government intended to reinstate military conscription because of the “current geopolitical environment.”
In January, the government issued a 98-page booklet (“How to Act in Extreme Situations or Instances of War”) that offered advice on what citizens should do if foreign soldiers appeared on their doorstep, and how they might offer passive resistance to an occupying power.
“If you are a civilian and you make that clear, it is unlikely someone will rush to kill you,” the booklet advised, urging people not to panic. Even hearing shots fired outside your home “is not the end of the world,” it said.
“People come up and ask me: ‘Should we leave? Should we flee?’ ” said Karlis Bukovskis, deputy director of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs in Riga. “This is a new development. This is the first time that has happened to me.”
Worries are increasing in Poland, but they have not yet reached the level of mass fear, said Tomasz Szlendak, a sociologist at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun who has studied the effects the Ukraine crisis is having in Poland.
At a recent party of fellow academics, he said, one retired military officer announced that he would organize a local militia if the Russians invaded. Another professor declared that he would put his wife and daughter on a plane out of Poland with a bag of money and then sign up with one of the paramilitary groups.
“These kind of comments are, of course, meant as jokes,” Mr. Szlendak said. “But they are based on real fear. They are humorless, sad jokes.”
The situation has not quite gotten to the point that people are stockpiling food and ammunition in the basement, said Mr. Zaborowski of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, but anxiety is definitely rising.
Pawel Kowal, a former member of Poland’s Parliament and a foreign policy expert, said the country was getting parallel messages from its leaders, being told that a newly aggressive Russia poses a genuine threat while also being reassured that membership in NATO and the European Union will provide sufficient protection.
“The sense is that the border between NATO and Russia is like a new Iron Curtain,” Mr. Kowal said. “But at least this time, Poland is on the right side of it.”
The growing enrollment in the paramilitary groups is just one manifestation of the changed climate. The number of groups, General Pacek said, is clearly rising. Not all of the increase is due to Ukraine — patriotism and uniformed service are becoming more fashionable among younger Poles, and the military does offer a stable career — but Mr. Putin’s shadow has certainly accelerated the trend, he said.
A gathering a few days earlier in the city of Szczecin had 500 new cadets taking the oath. General Pacek estimated there were 120 such groups at the moment, with about 80,000 members, but he acknowledged that this was just a guess, as the groups are not required to report their existence or membership rolls.
The Defense Ministry has been trying to entice the groups to join an alliance with the government, offering equipment, uniforms, training and even money in exchange for a clearer idea of who they are — and a chance to assemble a new generation of energized recruits.
“There is no question of them doing any fighting,” General Pacek said. “They are to offer assistance to the military. But of course, they have to be prepared to defend.”
In St. Joseph’s Square, the 30 new members of the Shooting Association waited for the command before taking four purposeful steps forward and raising their right hands.
“I hereby pledge to put the good of the Polish Republic above all else,” they repeated. “I will always be ready to defend its independence until my last breath.”
After the ceremony, Grzegorz Sapinski, the mayor of Kalisz, watched the cadets march down the cobblestone streets back to the school.
“One cannot help but notice the change in attitudes among young people following what is happening in Ukraine,” Mr. Sapinski said. “The conflict is not in some obscure place. It is happening four hours’ drive away.”
The members of one squad from the Shooters Association were splayed on their bellies on the edge of the school’s soccer field, pushing themselves ahead one knee thrust at a time. Each held a prop AK-47, and Capt. Lukasz Kolcz, the chapter’s commander, barked at them to keep low and move forward.
The youngest of the cadets, Grzegorz Zurek, 11, was having trouble keeping up, but he was stubbornly determined. As they arrived on the far side of the field, the cadets turned to cheer Grzegorz along.
“I think it is highly probable that Putin will do something against Poland,” Grzegorz later said. “I know from history that Russia has always been a totalitarian state. Now it is trying to regain the territory it lost at the end of the Cold War.”
He rested his rubber-coated gun on the soft, perfect grass.
“Should it invade Poland,” he said, “I would not hesitate a second to fight against them.”
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WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.
They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.
“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010, noting that the cash would be used for weapons and other operational needs.
Bin Laden urged caution, fearing the Americans knew about the payment and had laced the cash with radiation or poison, or were tracking it. “There is a possibility — not a very strong one — that the Americans are aware of the money delivery,” he wrote back, “and that they accepted the arrangement of the payment on the basis that the money will be moving under air surveillance.”
The C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.
While refusing to pay ransoms for Americans kidnapped by Al Qaeda, the Taliban or, more recently, the Islamic State, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last decade at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which has been siphoned off to enemy fighters.
The letters about the 2010 ransom were included in correspondence between Bin Laden and Mr. Rahman that was submitted as evidence by federal prosecutors at the Brooklyn trial of Abid Naseer, a Pakistani Qaeda operative who was convicted this month of supporting terrorism and conspiring tobomb a British shopping center.
The letters were unearthed from the cache of computers and documents seized by Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid in which Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and had been classified until introduced as evidence at the trial.
Details of the C.I.A.’s previously unreported contribution to the ransom demanded by Al Qaeda were drawn from the letters and from interviews with Afghan and Western officials speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The C.I.A. declined to comment.
The diplomat freed in exchange for the cash, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was serving as the Afghan consul general in Peshawar, Pakistan, when he was kidnapped in September 2008 as he drove to work. He had been weeks away from taking up his new job as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan.
Afghan and Pakistani insurgents had grabbed Mr. Farahi, but within days they turned him over to Qaeda members. He was held for more than two years.
The Afghan government had no direct contact with Al Qaeda, stymieing negotiations until the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent faction with close ties to Al Qaeda, stepped in to mediate.
Qaeda leaders wanted some captive militants released, and from the letters it appeared that they calibrated their offer, asking only for men held by Afghan authorities, not those imprisoned by the Americans, who would refuse the demand as a matter of policy. But the Afghans refused to release any prisoners, “so we decided to proceed with a financial exchange,” Mr. Rahman wrote in the June 2010 letter. “The amount we agreed on in the deal was $5 million.”
The first $2 million was delivered shortly before that letter was written. In it, Mr. Rahman asked Bin Laden if he needed money, and said “we have also designated a fair amount to strengthen the organization militarily by stockpiling good weapons.” (The Qaeda leaders named in the letters were identified by aliases. Bin Laden, for instance, signed his letters Zamray; Mr. Rahman, who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in August 2011, went by the alias Mahmud.)
The cash would also be used to aid the families of Qaeda fighters held prisoner in Afghanistan, and some was given to Ayman al-Zawahri, who would succeed Bin Laden as the Qaeda leader and was identified in the letters under the alias Abu-Muhammad, Mr. Rahman said.
Other militant groups had already heard about the ransom payment and had their hands out, Mr. Rahman reported. “As you know, you cannot control the news,” he wrote. “They are asking us to give them money, may God help us.”
But Bin Laden was clearly worried that the payout was an American ruse intended to reveal the locations of senior Qaeda leaders. “It seems a bit strange somewhat because in a country like Afghanistan, usually they would not pay this kind of money to free one of their men,” he wrote.
“Is any of his relatives a big official?” he continued, referring to Mr. Farahi, the diplomat. It was a prescient question: Mr. Farahi was the son-in-law of a man who had served as a mentor to then-President Hamid Karzai.
Advocating caution, Bin Laden advised Mr. Rahman to change the money into a different currency at one bank, and then go to another and exchange the money again into whatever currency was preferred. “The reason for doing that is to be on the safe side in case harmful substances or radiation is put on paper money,” Bin Laden wrote.
Neither of the two men appeared to have known where the money actually came from. Aside from the C.I.A. money, Afghan officials said that Pakistan contributed nearly half the ransom in an effort to end what it viewed as a disruptive sideshow in its relations with Afghanistan. The remainder came from Iran and Persian Gulf states, which had also contributed to the Afghan president’s secret fund.
In a letter dated Nov. 23, 2010, Mr. Rahman reported to Bin Laden that the remaining $3 million had been received and that Mr. Farahi had been released.
The C.I.A., meanwhile, continued dropping off bags of cash — ranging each time from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million — at the presidential palace every month until last year, when Mr. Karzai stepped down.
The money was used to buy the loyalty of warlords, legislators and other prominent — and potentially troublesome — Afghans, helping the palace finance a vast patronage network that secured Mr. Karzai’s power base. It was also used to cover expenses that needed to be kept off the books, such as clandestine diplomatic trips, and for more mundane costs, including rent payments for the guesthouses where some senior officials lived.
The cash flow has slowed since a new president, Ashraf Ghani, assumed office in September, Afghan officials said, refusing to elaborate. But they added that cash was still coming in, and that it was not clear how robust any current American constraints on it are.
“It’s cash,” said a former Afghan security official. “Once it’s at the palace, they can’t do a thing about how it gets spent.”
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
A new report from The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg published Saturday reveals details about a 2010 deal between Afghan officials and Al Qaeda that resulted in $1 million of CIA money funding the terrorist group.
According to the report, Al Qaeda demanded $5 million for the release of an Afghan diplomat held hostage in 2010 and the Afghan government ended up using $1 million from a secret fund that the CIA provided them in monthly cash installments delivered directly to the Kabul palace of former President Hamid Karzai.
Rosenberg quotes letters sent between Osama bin Laden and one of his deputies after the Afghans raised the rest of the money from other countries and completed the deal:
“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010, noting that the cash would be used for weapons and other operational needs.Bin Laden urged caution, fearing the Americans knew about the payment and had laced the cash with radiation or poison, or were tracking it. “There is a possibility — not a very strong one — that the Americans are aware of the money delivery,” he wrote back, “and that they accepted the arrangement of the payment on the basis that the money will be moving under air surveillance.”he C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.
Read the full report at nytimes.com.
[Photo via Wikimedia Commons]
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Declassified Documents: CIA Helped Fund al Qaeda via Afghan Government
Sputnik International - 2 hours ago
Documents declassified at a trial of a suspected terrorist show that millions of dollars in CIA funds fell into the hands of al Qaeda in 2010. The money was used by Afghan officials in a ransom payment. CIA Director John Brennan. © AFP 2015/ Jewel Samad.
CIA Cash Ends Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda
New York Times - 2 hours ago
WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money. They first turned to a ...
CIA bankrolled al-Qaeda in 2010: Report
Press TV - 1 hour ago
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has at times financed al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan, according to a new report. The $1 million of CIA funds inadvertently ended up in the hands of the al-Qaeda in 2010, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
Al Qaeda got $1million in CIA money from fund to free Afghan diplomat
Daily Mail - 4 minutes ago
Al Qaeda received about $1million from the Central Intelligence Agency when the Afghan government used money from a secret fund to pay a ransom for a kidnapped diplomat in 2010. Abdul Khaliq Farahi was the Afghan consul general in Peshawar, ...
Afghanistan govt. took $1M from the CIA and used it for al Qaeda ransom: report
Washington Times - 1 hour ago
One million dollars that the CIA gave to the government of Afghanistan was in turn handed over to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda offered to free a captive Afghan diplomat in exchange for $5 million in 2010, which left the government under then-president Hamid Karzai ...
Report: Afghanistan gave CIA money to al-Qaida for diplomat's ransom
Jerusalem Post Israel News - 4 hours ago
People are silhouetted as they pose with laptops in front of a screen projected with binary code and a Central Inteligence Agency (CIA) emblem. (photo credit:REUTERS). Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. WASHINGTON - About $1 million provided by the ...
Afghanistan gave CIA money to al Qaeda for diplomat's ransom: Report
The Express Tribune - 3 hours ago
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had at first been concerned about the payment, fearing the CIA knew about the money and had tainted it. PHOTO: AFP. WASHINGTON: About $1 million provided by the Central Intelligence Agency to a secret Afghan ...
Afghanistan gave CIA money to al Qaeda for diplomat's ransom: NYT
Ahram Online - 2 hours ago
About $1 million provided by the CIA to a secret Afghan government fund ended up in the hands of al Qaeda in 2010 when it was used to pay a ransom for an Afghan diplomat, the New York Times reported on Saturday. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had ...
NY Times Reveals How CIA Money Ended Up in Hands of Al Qaeda
Mediaite - 3 hours ago
A new report from The New York Times' Matthew Rosenberg published Saturday reveals details about a 2010 deal between Afghan officials and Al Qaeda that resulted in $1 million of CIA money funding the terrorist group. According to the report, Al Qaeda ...
Report: CIA money was given to al Qaeda
CBS News - 3 hours ago
Five million dollars -- that's how much an Afghan official was worth in ransom money to al Qaeda. And in 2010, the Afghan government struck a deal with the terror organization, paying the $5 million price tag to free the diplomat. But according to a New York ...
Secret CIA payments to Afghan gov't funded Al Qaeda: report
New York Daily News - 3 hours ago
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (c.) with former president Hamid Karzai (l.) and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah (r.). Karzai's administration received payments from the CIA every month. Secret monthly CIA payments to Afghan officials were funneled to Al ...
Afghan officials used CIA money to pay ransom to al Qaeda: NYT
MarketWatch - 3 hours ago
NEW YORK (MarketWatch)—Afghan officials used money delivered by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of a $5 million ransom paid to al Qaeda in the spring of 2010, helping the terror group replenish its coffers after a campaign of drone strikes in ...
CIA Inadvertently Subsidized Afghan Ransom Payment to Al Qaeda
Gawker - 4 hours ago
Previously classified letters between Osama bin Laden and a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative reveal that the Afghan government used a secret fund, bankrolled by the CIA, to facilitate the release of a senior Afghan official kidnapped by the terrorist ...
Afghanistan gave CIA money to Al-Qaeda for diplomat's ransom: New York Times
The Straits Times - 33 minutes ago
The Times said Abdul Khaliq Farahi (above, centre) was the Afghan consul-general in Peshawar, Pakistan, when he was kidnapped in 2008 and handed over to Al-Qaeda. About US$1 million provided by the CIA to a secret Afghan government fund ended up ...
Afghanistan reportedly traded $1 million from the CIA to al Qaeda for a hostage ...
Businessinsider India - 3 hours ago
Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a gathering discussing youth and national issues in Kabul September 17, 2013. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani. karzai. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani. Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a gathering discussing ...
How al-Qaeda Used CIA Money to Fight US
Newser - 4 hours ago
(Newser) – Even Osama bin Laden thought it was too good to be true: CIA money bankrolling al-Qaeda operations? The New York Times explains how it sometimes came to be, and it's not all that complicated. For years, the agency delivered bags of cash ...
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 The Guardian |
NY Times Reveals How CIA Money Ended Up in Hands of Al Qaeda
Mediaite A new report from The New York Times' Matthew Rosenberg published Saturday reveals details about a 2010 deal between Afghan officials and Al Qaeda that resulted in $1 million of CIA money funding the terrorist group. According to the report, Al Qaeda ... Afghanistan gave CIA money to al Qaeda for diplomat's ransom: NYTReuters Canada all 9 news articles » |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to cancel a January briefing for U.S. Senators by his nation’s intelligence service that warned Congress could damage talks aimed at constraining Iran’s nuclear program, according to sources familiar with the events.
Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had requested the Jan. 19 briefing for six of his colleagues traveling to Israel so that the intelligence agency, Mossad, could warn them that a Senate proposal might inadvertently collapse the talks. After Netanyahu’s office stripped the meeting from the trip schedule, Corker threatened to cut his own Israel trip short in protest.
Netanyahu relented after the personal intervention of Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, and allowed the briefing to go forward, sources say. Attending were Corker, Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Barrasso, Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Joe Donnelly, and Independent Senator Angus King.
At issue was the fate of a Nov. 2013 agreement between Iran, the U.S. and five other international powers. That temporary agreement promised no new economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for a freeze of Iran’s nuclear program, new international inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites and the removal of nearly all medium-enriched uranium from Iran’s possession. Both sides have stuck to the interim deal while talks on a long-term deal to constrain the Iranian nuclear program have dragged out.
The controversial but popular bill proposed by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez would have imposed new sanctions on Iran if it didn’t agree by June 30 to a long-term deal. U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that the Kirk-Menendez bill risked collapsing the talks and taking with it the 16-month-old agreement, according to a report by Eli Lake and Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View. Corker wanted the Mossad briefing to bolster the U.S. assessment.
During the Mossad briefing, the agency’s chief, Tamir Pardo, warned that the Kirk-Menendez bill would be like “throwing a grenade” into the U.S.-Iran diplomatic process. After some of the contents of the briefing were first reported by Bloomberg View, Pardo released a statement saying he had used the phrase not to oppose new sanctions, but “as a metaphor” to describe the effect derailing current talks might have.
A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to say why the Prime Minister acted to prevent the Senators from receiving the briefing from Pardo. Since the Mossad briefing, Corker has rallied support for an alternative measure to replace the Kirk-Menendez proposal, support for which has faded. Corker’s bill, which has broad support and potentially could receive enough votes for a veto-proof majority, would only impose new sanctions if Iran walked away from the Nov. 2013 agreement.
U.S. and Iranian officials are entering a tense phase of negotiations in Switzerland this week as they attempt to reach a political deal to extend and expand the Nov. 2013 agreement for at least 10 years. As the challenges of reaching the longer-term deal have increased, some in the U.S. are trying to ensure the interim agreement that has frozen the Iranian program isn’t undermined in the process.
Some members of the Senate oppose the ongoing talks with Iran. Freshman Republican Senator Tom Cotton last week issued an open letter with 46 other GOP Senators warning the Iranian leadership that Congress could reverse parts of any deal the talks produce. Corker did not sign that letter; his bill provides for partial Congressional approval of a deal.
Cotton has said that rather than negotiate with Iran, the U.S. should adopt a policy of regime change and should arm Israel with bombers and bunker busting bombs with which it could attack Iranian nuclear sites. Authorities in both parties, including Obama’s first Defense Secretary Robert Gates,have worried that an Israeli attack could draw the U.S. into a military confrontation with Iran on unfavorable terms.
Supporters of Kirk-Menendez argue it would increase pressure on Iran to make concessions that would more effectively limit its ability to get a nuclear weapon. Republicans are concerned that the Obama administration is too eager to do a long-term deal with Iran and is making too many concessions in the current talks. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives for talks in Geneva Sunday ahead of a self-imposed Mar. 24 deadline for the political framework for a long-term deal. Final terms of a comprehensive agreement would not be worked out before June.
Netanyahu is seeking re-election in a tough vote Tuesday, with his Likud Party trailing his strongest competitor, Zionist Union, by four points in recent polls.
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Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana said that he had requested asylum at the American Embassy after soldiers surrounded his home in the wake of his expulsion from the governing party.
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EU Foreign Policy Chief to Visit Cubaby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will visit Cuba this month as a next step in talks aimed at boosting trade relations between the 28-nation bloc and the communist state, her office said Saturday. Mogherini will meet with her Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez. She will be the highest-ranking EU diplomat to visit the island. Mogherini's March 23-24 visit "comes at a crucial time" for negotiations between the two sides, the statement from her office said....
 The Guardian |
Lesbians' goodbye kiss leads to 'humiliation' in Paris
The Guardian Two women kiss during a pro-gay marriage demonstration in Paris. Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images. Kim Willsher in Paris. Saturday 14 March 2015 11.24 EDT Last modified on Saturday 14 March 2015 14.55 EDT. Share on Facebook ... and more » |
Russia Gives Up On Burnishing Its Image in Westby By Ivan Nechepurenko <moscowtimes@themoscowtimes.com>
The "information war" against Russia makes any efforts to improve the country's image in the West futile, a Kremlin spokesman said Thursday.
Wild Russian Leopards Obey Putin's Command to Go Forth and Multiplyby The Moscow Times <moscowtimes@themoscowtimes.com>
When President Vladimir Putin commands, even wild leopards obey, footage released this week suggests.
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В Сенате обсудили борьбу против «Исламского государства» Originally published at - http://www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/video/senate-on-isis/2677660....
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Порошенко одобрил создание Военного кабинета в Украине
Подробности Президент Петр Порошенко утвердил положение о создании в Украине военного кабинета. Данное положение утверждено введением в действие решения СНБО от 18 февраля "О дополнительных мерах по укреплению нацбезопасности Украины". Согласно положению, основными ... и другие » |
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Минобороны лишило ФСБ дела о госизмене
Фонтанка.Ру ФСБ прекратила уголовное дело о государственной измене в отношении Светланы Давыдовой после веского слова Генштаба Минобороны. Военное ведомство предпочло дать заключение, что многодетная домохозяйка ввела в заблуждение украинских дипломатов, нежели, как ... и другие » |
 The Fiscal Times |
Vladimir Putin: 17 Things You Didn't Know About Russia's President
The Fiscal Times If you think Russian President Vladimir Putin (who has apparently gone missing at the moment) is nothing more than a ruthless thug who relishes political power and personal preening on the world's stage — he's got you right where he wants you. Putin's Russia expands Latin American role, Kelly saysThe Tico Times Russia and Egypt's hands knotted with military and economic cooperationDaily News Egypt all 27 news articles » |
 Wall Street Journal |
Cry, the Beloved Russia I Left Behind
Wall Street Journal Several days after the Feb. 27 murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a museum in Perm, a town about 700 miles east of Moscow, announced a change of both management and focus. The museum, located at the site of Perm-36, the only ... Nobody in Russia Is Buying Putins Nemtsov LieDaily Beast Russian economy is ready to growCNBC Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up EverywhereNew York Times Fortune -The Daily Star all 1,834 news articles » |
The death toll from a fire at a shopping center in the Russian city of Kazan was raised to 17 on March 14 after emergency workers found more bodies amid the debris.
Moscow in a Time of Twitter by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 14 – Rumors have always swirled around the Russian throne especially when anything happens or is thought to be happening or even is desired to happen. But the reach and intensity if not the accuracy and insight of such rumors has been vastly increased by the rise of social media and especially Twitter with its 140 character limit.
Every few hours or on occasion every few minutes a new tweet appears sending analysts, commentators and even ordinary citizens off in one direction and then in another, creating a situation where, in the title of Peter Pomerantsev’s recent book, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.
That author described this state as “the surreal heart” of contemporary Russia, a description which seems increasingly apt. But at the same time, while it is entirely possible that none of the specific rumors is correct, the rumors taken as a whole may suggest certain conclusions, just as big data can tell us things that no one data point can.
In a commentary yesterday, Ivan Preobrazhensky, the politics editor of the Rosbalt.ru news agency, suggests that the swirl of rumors proves only one thing: “the political, economic and cultural life of the entire country is concentrated suddenly not on one position but on one single concrete individual” (rosbalt.ru/main/2015/03/13/1377592.html).
The Rosbalt editor reaches that conclusion after tracing the rumors about Putin over the last week from the report that the Kremlin leader was about to sack Igor Sechin to the discussions of Putin’s role in the Nemtsov murder to the suggestion of many that there is a major fight between the FSB and the Chechen “clan” in Moscow.
As these rumors spread, Preobrazhensky notes, “the media suddenly or at the advice of someone recalled that no one had seen the chief of state for several days.” That led to other rumors that he was ill or dead or the victim of foul play. And those rumors then “multiplied and metastasized” into stories about a coup.
Some of these stories have a basis in fact – no one denies that the FSB and Kadyrov are enemies – but others appear to have been designed to “sent everyone off on a false trail,” to distract attention from other issues be they the Nemtsov murder and Putin’s possible role in it or something else entirely such as reports about early Duma and presidential elections.
Then on Friday, a video of Putin meeting with Supreme Court head Vyacheslav Lebedev appeared, “the media and the bloggers breathed with relief and with a light heart went off for the weekend and the entire history about the supposed coup d’etat not to mention the illness or death of the president of Russia was dispelled like smoke.”
But even as he makes this argument, Preobrazhensky ends with another, one that points to a somewhat different conclusion. He points out that “many people who did not approve of Stalin’s policies were very worried at the time of his death because it seemed that the world was held on the shoulders of one man and because they had the sense that all life had stopped.”
Such people in 1953 were mistaken as are “mistaken today the supporters and opponents of Vladimir Putin” who instead of talking about the real problems of the country and its place in the world have acted as if the only thing that matters to them is “gossip about the health of one individual.”
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Putin Like Khrushchev between Cuban Missile Crisis and 1964 Ouster, Kalashnikov Says by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 14 – In the swirl of rumors reflecting the limited and only suggestive information anyone has about what is going on in the Kremlin right now, some of the most interesting analyses not surprisingly have been those which have drawn parallels with earlier leadership crises in Russia.
Whether those analogies are correct or not only time will tell. But they are intriguing for at least two reasons. On the one hand, they underscore the historically saturated nature of Russian political discussions in which every current event is seen through the lens of a past one, with people lining up often because of what happened long ago.
And on the other, such arguments by analogies point to certain continuing features of political life in Russia regardless of whether that country was called the Russian Empire, the USSR, or the Russian Federation or whether its leaders identified themselves as tsarist, communist, or post-communist.
One of the most interesting of the analogies now on offer is provided by Maksim Kalashnikov who suggests that Putin and his country now find themselves in a position like that of Khrushchev and the USSR after Moscow’s defeat in the Cuban missile crisis but before the Soviet leader was ousted in October 1964 (forum-msk.org/material/kompromat/10739925.html).
In a commentary today, Kalashnikov argues that “the absence of Putin in public in reality ever more suggests a quiet ‘covert coup d’etat,” one much like the one that overthrew Nikita Khrushchev 51 years ago, a move initiated by conservatives and the force structures appalled by the actions of the leader and convinced that Moscow must change course.
According to Kalashnikov, many of these conservative and force structure figures near the Kremlin are furious about Vladimir Putin’s adventurous but at the same time inconsistent policies in Ukraine, policies that have brought down on Russia’s head serious sanctions but that have not brought the victories Putin promised and they expected.
The murder of Boris Nemtsov and Putin’s support for Ramzan Kadyrov at a time when the security services were pursuing the “Chechen trace” was in many ways the last straw for Putin’s former supporters and current opponents, Kalashnikov says, adding that they clearly have had enough of his willful, but unpredictable and half-hearted approach to many things.
Those close to the Russian throne today know that Putin “in contrast to the picture drawn by propaganda is very indecisive.” At key moments, be they the Kursk disaster in 2000 or the demonstrations in 2012, he has fallen into a funk and not taken the kind of tough and decisive actions many around him expected and wanted.
Such people, Kalashnikov says, view Putin’s actions in Ukraine as equally half-hearted, with big threats but from their perspective small actions that have not led to the victories they thought were to be theirs. Some of them want to cut their losses by pulling back, others want to double their bets and launch a broader offensive, but both have problems with Putin.
In such a situation, “the most impossible thing becomes possible,” and consequently an October 1964-type ouster of Putin is possible. Khrushchev had to go after his miscalculation and humiliation in the Cuban missile crisis; Putin in this view must go “after the failure in the Donbas and the beginning of a new cold war.”
“But what will his successors do?” That is the question, Kalashnikov says. “Will they run to capitulate before the West? Or will they carry out the war [in Ukraine] to a victorious conclusion? … Will they begin to change the social-economic course in the Russian Federation in a significant way given that ‘Putinomics’ has led it into a disaster?”
Given what he knows about the upper reaches of the Russian force structures,” Kalashnikov says, he does not see grounds for “any optimism. They are completely the product of the dissolution of ‘the elite,’ completely dependent on the raw materials model, and [are in almost all cases] ‘effective managers,’” just like Putin.
And those reasons, together with the fact that these elites too are fundamentally divided will prevent a post-Putin Moscow from taking a consistent policy at least in the near term, just as it did after October 1964 when the two wings of the government, one under Leonid Brezhnev and the other under Andrey Kosygin, did the same.
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 Свопи |
Песков: Путин не имеет отношения к ребенку Кабаевой
Свопи Песков: Путин не имеет отношения к ребенку Кабаевой Дмитрию Пескову, занимающему должность пресс-секретаря президента России Владимира Путина, в последнее время приходится высказывать опровержения относительно огромной волны сплетен про личную жизнь главы ... и другие » |
 N4K |
Песков признал, что Путин не имеет отношения к детям Кабаевой
N4K Песков признал, что Путин не имеет отношения к детям Кабаевой Так уж получается, что пресс-секретарю российского президента Дмитрию Пескову приходится рассуждать на тему личной жизни главного политического деятеля страны. Дело в том, что в последнее время в интернете ... и другие » |
 Business Insider |
Kremlin posts images of Vladimir Putin after health rumors swirl
CNN The three images showed Putin meeting with the head of the Supreme Court in Moscow on Friday, the Kremlin said. State broadcaster Russia 24 also aired video footage of the meeting. CNN cannot independently confirm that the meeting took place as stated ... Russia is preparing for something at the Kremlin while Putin's absence baffles...Business Insider Nobody in Russia Is Buying Putins Nemtsov LieDaily Beast Cry, the Beloved Russia I Left BehindWall Street Journal TheBlaze.com -The Fiscal Times all 1,960 news articles » |
Two police officers were shot outside police headquarters in Ferguson, Missouri, early Thursday morning and were reported to be in serious condition.
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson
As the first shot rang out a woman near the camera screamed in surprise (at 0:27 in the video). Then after one or two more shots, a man, presumably one of the officers who was hit, could be heard moaning as if in pain. Protesters began to run away from the scene of the violence, and when the camera turns back to police they can be seen swarming, apparently trying to help the injured officers.
Seconds later, in what can only be described as a surreal moment, someone on the protesters’ side of the street taunts the police in a loud voice saying, “Acknowledgement nine months ago would have kept that from happening.” (0:48) The protester, whose face isn’t seen, was apparently referring to the shooting of Michael Brown, which took place last August.
St. Louis Police Chief Belmar spoke to the press shortly after the incident. Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported on Twitter that one officer was hit in the shoulder, while the other officer was hit in the face. Both officers were conscious but said to have “very serious” injuries.
Protesters indicated the shots had come from a hill behind them. Police massed and went up the hill, but Chief Belmar said he had no description of a possible suspect.
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PROOF that Putin Killed Russian Opposition Leader Nemtsov
A reader tells us that the Russian language at the top and bottom says: “Irrefutable Proof.”
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Mr Venediktov left Moscow the day before Novaya Gazeta's report was published, and is now believed to be in Paris.
The twists and turns of the investigation into Nemtsov's death have fuelled anxieties in Russia over the possibility of more killings amid speculation of clan warfare inside the country's security apparatus.
Other names reportedly on the list include the murdered Nemtsov, as well as Russian socialite Ksenia Sobchak and tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in prison before being freed in 2013 and moving to Europe.
Ms Sobchak, a prominent journalist as well as one of the leaders of Russian protests following fraud-marred elections in 2011 and 2012, is well known across Russia as a television presenter. "Unfortunately I have had to strengthen my security arrangements. Now I must move around with guards," Ms Sobchak told Russian news website Gazeta.ru on Friday.
The Russia-based press secretary of Mr Khodorkovsky, who is currently living in Switzerland, posted a photograph on Wednesday of a large funeral wreath that she had found outside the door to her Moscow apartment.
KYIV -- One year after Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the pro-Russian de facto authorities continue to crack down on independent journalists there.
This week, agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Crimean capital of Simferopol raided the homes of two reporters from the Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent journalism group that was forced to relocate to Kyiv after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.
In a statement issued on March 13, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nongovernmental organization based in New York, described the raids as "repressive actions" and said journalists covering Crimea "have been harassed, attacked, detained, and had their equipment seized" over the last year.
Journalist Natalya Kokorina said the FSB searched the home of her parents, where Kokorina was registered, on March 13. At 8 a.m., Kokorina received a phone call telling her to come to the apartment immediately.
"In the morning, a man called saying he was from the...police," Kokorina told RFE/RL. "He said the doors of the apartment where I am registered and where my parents live had been sealed. My parents' telephones had been turned off."
She was subsequently detained and questioned for more than six hours before being released.
"Natasha is the author of many investigations about problems in Crimean society, corruption, thieves in power and the Russian occupation," wrote the founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Dmytro Gnap, on his Facebook page. "She and her colleagues have had to practically work underground on their articles."
The same day, FSB agents raided the home of the parents of journalist Anna Andriyevskaya. Andriyevskaya said she has not lived in the apartment for about 10 years and she has not been in Crimea in the last 10 months.
She wrote on her Facebook page that the FSB showed her father documents indicating that criminal charges have been filed against her in connection with stories she had that purportedly include calls to end Russia's control over Crimea.
She said her father's computer and flash drives were confiscated during the search.
Until shortly after Russia annexed Crimea, Andriyevskaya worked for the newspaper Argumenty Nedeli-Krym, but she left after the paper adopted a policy forbidding criticism of the de facto authorities or Russia. She has since worked as a contributor to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.
A spokesman for Russian law enforcement agencies in Crimea said they had no comment on the raids. Local Interior Ministry spokesman Dmitry Polonsky said he had not heard of the detention of any journalists.
Korkorina's lawyer, Dzhemil Temishev, told RFE/RL that she was questioned in connection with reports published by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
"I cannot tell all the details now," he said. "So far we do not have any concrete charges in connection with the interrogation. I do not at present see any danger for Natalya."
Dunja Mijatovic, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's media freedom representative, issued a statement on March 13 condemning "the intimidation of independent journalists in Crimea."
"This detention is a reminder of the ongoing practice of the de facto authorities in Crimea to intimidate and persecute independent media representatives for their work," Mijatovic wrote. She added that the "repression" of journalists in Crimea is "a fundamental violation of basic human rights."
Refat Chubarov, head of the Crimean assembly, the Tatar Mejlis, who is currently in Kyiv because the de facto authorities in Crimea have banned him from the peninsula, told RFE/RL that "repression" is increasing in Crimea.
"Fear is being maintained through the repression of all layers of Crimean society -- against Crimean Tatars, against journalists, against businesspeople," Chubarov said. "Those of us here in Kyiv have to think about what we can do to help these people, to protect them and their families and the journalists who are still in Crimea. We have only one tool -- maximum publicity and appeals to international journalism and human rights organizations.
Earlier this month, the NGO Freedom House issued a report that accused the de facto authorities of "working to turn the Crimean peninsula into an information ghetto." The report notes that "challenging Crimea's status as part of Russia" in the media is a crime carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison.
All Ukrainian television broadcasts to the region have been shut down, although some channels -- "mostly entertainment channels" -- can still be viewed on cable.
RFE/RL correspondent Robert Coalson contributed to this report from Prague
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Командир украинского добровольческого батальона имени Джохара Дудаева Адам Осмаев
Фото: ТАСС
Командир добровольческого батальона имени Джохара Дудаева, воюющего на стороне украинских силовиков, Адам Осмаев отверг утверждения, что он имеет какое-либо отношение к убийству оппозиционера Бориса Немцова. По словам Осмаева, он хорошо относился к убитому политику.
«Я считаю, это полнейший бред, который комментировать даже не стоит», — заявил Осмаев телеканалу «Дождь». «Я никакого отношения к этому не имею, конечно», — подчеркнул он.
Осмаев также заявил, что с основным подозреваемым по делу, Зауром Дадаевым, он не знаком и никогда не общался даже по телефону. «С такой категории людьми мне вообще не о чем говорить. Они, в принципе, и говорить-то особо не умеют, несколько слов знают — «Стечкин» и так далее. Они предатели своего народа, а с предателями везде поступают одинаково», — сказал он.
Осмаев добавил, что новость об убийстве Немцова воспринял «болезненно».
Ранее газета «Известия» написала, что, согласно одной из версий следствия, заказчиком убийства были украинские спецслужбы, а организаторами — Адам Осмаев и его жена Амина Окуева. Исполнителями якобы стали чеченские боевики.
Осмаева ранее подозревали в подготовке покушения на президента России Владимира Путина. После освобождения украинским судом он начал принимать участие в боевых действиях в Донбассе.
Немцов был убит поздно вечером 27 февраля в центре Москвы на Большом Москворецком мосту. По факту убийства возбуждено уголовное дело по двум статьям УК РФ: «убийство» и «незаконный оборот оружия». По подозрению в организации и исполнении этого убийства были задержаны Заур Дадаев, братья Анзор и Шагит Губашевы, Тамерлан Эскерханов и Хамзат Бахаев.
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Совет Европы продлил точечные санкции против России до 15 сентября 2015 года, отмечаетсяв его официальном сообщении. Санкции затрагивают 150 физических и 37 юридических лиц, которых Евросоюз считает причастными к нарушению территориальной целостности Украины. Подоводом принятия такого решения стало обострение ситуации на Донбассе в январе 2015 года.
Персональные санкции предусматривают арест активов указанных в них физических и юридических лиц, а также запрет на въезд в Евросоюз для физических лиц. Напомним, под ограничения, в частности, попадают депутаты Госдумы и члены Совета Федерации, такие как Сергей Железняк, Сергей Миронов, Леонид Слуцкий, Андрей Клишас, Олег Пантелеев, Николай Рыжков, Виктор Озеров, Владимир Джабаров, Евгений Бушмин и Александр Тотоонов.
Варвара Захарова
Фото: <a href="http://www.mk.ru" rel="nofollow">www.mk.ru</a>
Сегодня, 14 марта, в силу вступило очередное решение Европейского союза о продлении санкций в отношении российского государства. Срок действия ограничений против компаний и отдельных физических лиц Российской Федерации, продлен на 6 месяцев до 15 сентября. Причина дальнейшего применения политики санкций ЕС заключается в кризисе на Донбассе и медленном решении данной проблемы Россией.
Напомним, само решение с явной политической окраской, было принято еще 29 января. Под ним подписались 28 представителей МИД государств Евросоюза. Это случилось сразу после обстрела украинского города Мариуполя.
Окончательным этапом по вступлению в силу постановления продления санкций закончилось лишь недавно. Им стали формальные процедуры по оформлению документа.
В санкционном перечне ЕС присутствует 150 человек – это граждане Украины и РФ, среди которых бизнесмены, политики, артисты, певцы и другие деятели культуры, а также чиновники из Крыма. Ограничения ЕС предусматривают запрет данным людям посещать державы Евросоюза и «заморозку» всех активов, находящихся в европейских финансовых учреждениях.
Среди попавших под санкции Запада оказались и организации ДНР и ЛНР. ЕС не признаёт существование данных государств как независимых и запрещает вести с ними, какие-либо дела.
Стоит отметить, ранее Соединённые Штаты Америки также продлили санкции действующие санкции против российских, некоторых украинских граждан и компаний.
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Командир украинского батальона имени Джохара Дудаева Адам Осмаев отверг утверждения о своей причастности к убийству Бориса Немцова. Об этом он заявил в эфире телеканала «Дождь».
«Я никакого отношения к этому не имею, конечно. С Зауром Дадаевым не знаком, никогда не созванивался, с такой категории людьми мне вообще не о чем говорить», — рассказал Осмаев.
Осмаев также добавил, что их с Немцовым связывали хорошие отношения, а новость о его смерти он воспринял болезненно.
О том, что Осмаев рассматривается как вероятный заказчик убийства Немцова заявил в интервью «Комсомольской правде» неназванный сотрудник ФСБ. По его словам, Осмаев тесно контактировал с предположительным исполнителем убийства Зауром Дадаевым.
Заур Дадаев был задержан 7 марта в Ингушетии. 8 марта Басманный суд Москвы арестовал его и еще четырех человек по подозрению в убийстве политика Бориса Немцова. 12 марта Дадаевобжаловал свой арест.
Борис Немцов был застрелен вечером 27 февраля в центре Москвы. По политику, шедшему со своей знакомой (23-летней украинской фотомоделью Анной Дурицкой) по Большому Москворецкому мосту, около 23:30 мск открыли огонь. При нападении, предположительно, использовался пистолет Макарова с набранными вразнобой патронами производства различных заводов. По Немцову сделали шесть выстрелов со спины, из них четыре попали в цель. От полученных ранений политик скончался на месте преступления.
Осмаев был задержан 4 февраля 2012 года по подозрению в причастности к взрыву в квартире в Одессе, в результате которого погиб Руслан Мадаев и пострадал Илья Пьянзин. По мнению Службы безопасности Украины, он готовил покушение на президента России Владимира Путина. В ноябре 2014-го Приморский районный суд Одессы освободил Осмаева из-под стражи.
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The findings are presented in a new film by Mr Carey called Masterspy of Moscow.
Blake, 92, defected to the Soviet Union after escaping Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 and still lives in Russia, where he is feted as a hero by Vladimir Putin, the president, and other KGB veterans.
He has always insisted that his Russian handlers agreed not to take punitive measures against the informants whose names he passed across the Iron Curtain.
But Mr Carey managed to identify six "dangerous agents", as the Stasi called them, who were listed individually in the files but whose names were blacked out.
He even tracked down the only one of the six who is still alive, but even half a century after her imprisonment she did not want to recall her ordeal.
"I could tell in her eyes that this was something she didn't want to remember, she didn't want to talk about," he said. "It must have been four dreadful years in the Stasi prison."
The filmmaker knows all six names of the victims but legally can only identify two. The rest cannot be named under a German law that prevents that until 120 years after their date of birth.
The MI6 agents who Blake exposed were:
• Hans Möhring, an official on the GDR state planning commission, who was released in 1976 when the West German government ransomed him from the GDR for 500,000 Marks. It was reported then that he had spied for Britain and there was media speculation suggesting he was a victim of Blake, but no evidence was offered publicly. The Stasi files seen by Mr Carey proves definitively that Blake exposed Möhring, who was born on March 5, 1917. He was arrested in 1959 and held for 324 days in Hohenschöenhausen, before being sentenced to life imprisonment for conducting "serious espionage" the next year. He served his sentence in Bautzen II, another Stasi facility.
• A colonel in the National People's Army who does not appear in government records. Bernd-Rainer Barth, a German historian who helped research the documentary, believes the officer may have been sent to Moscow and possibly executed there, because of the gravity of handing over military secrets.
• An employee in the Potsdam building committee, born in 1927. The only woman on the list, she was arrested in 1961, sentenced to five years hard labour in June that year, and released in August 1964 on probation until the formal end of her sentence. She is still alive but refused to speak to Mr Carey on camera.
• Otto Georgi, a stenographer born in 1894 who had worked for German governments since 1918. He was arrested in March 1958 and spent 558 days in remand prison, probably the notorious Stasi facility, Hohenschöenhausen. He was sentenced in February 1959 to life imprisonment, and was prisoner 36/59 in Bautzen II. Guards held him for most of the time in solitary confinement. Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, gave a personal order to release Georgi in September 1964. He then lived in East Berlin until his death in the 1970s.
• A government planner in the ministry for mechanical engineering who was born in September 1919. He was arrested in March 1960 and later that year was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence was later reduced to 10 years and he was actually released in October 1966.
• A senior official at the ministry for foreign trade born in the Ruhr in 1921. He was arrested in November 1959, and also held in Hohenschöenhausen. In December 1960 he was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served in the Frankfurt Oder prison. He eventually got out in 1969, and decided to stay in East Germany.
Hans Mohring, an official on the GDR state planning commission and an agent for MI6, spent 17 years in a Stasi prison after he was betrayed by George Blake
In a written statement for his defence team at the Old Bailey in 1961, Blake said that he had extracted an assurance from his KGB handlers that every MI6 informant he exposed "should not be arrested and the only use the Russians should make of this information was to protect themselves from the activities of these agents".
While the KGB may have lied to their spy that claim now appears untenable and historians are likely to re-examine theories that other agents suffered at Blake's hand.
"Being able to track these people down and find out exactly who they were was illuminating," the filmmaker told the Telegraph. "These are the first hard facts about the suffering Blake caused and they call into question whether he ever really struck a deal with the KGB to spare the people he betrayed."
"This is a really fascinating and significant find that puts some flesh on the bones of Blake's betrayal," said Roger Hermiston, author of The Greatest Traitor, a biography of the spy. "For the first time we have clear, definitive evidence of what happened to some of his victims."
Blake grew up in the Netherlands and his mother was Dutch but he inherited British citizenship from his father, a Jew with roots in Cairo and Istanbul, and managed to reach London in 1943 after his home country was occupied by the Nazis.
He was recruited by SIS and sent to learn Russian at Cambridge. During a posting to Seoul under diplomatic cover at the time of the Korean War in 1950 he began to sympathise with Communist ideas. When North Korean soldiers took him prisoner he offered his services as a double agent to their Soviet patrons.
Over the next decade, from postings in Holland, Britain, Germany and Lebanon, he would photograph and pass on thousands of pages of MI6 documents to the KGB. Blake was exposed in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years treason but he escaped over the wall of Wormwood Scrubs five years later using a ladder made from knitting needles, and made his way to Moscow.
George Blake at his home outside Moscow
The elderly Blake has given only a few interviews to British journalists in the last 25 years, but Mr Carey was able to meet him briefly at his comfortable wooden dacha outside Moscow. Almost blind but apparently in good health for his age, the spy gave little away and would not speak of his duplicitous past.
Blake, a Calvinist by upbringing, once said that he saw Communism as an opportunity to put Christian values into practice. How he squared his lofty morals with the pain he caused remains a mystery.
"He's a friendly, charming person," said Mr Carey. "Clearly, one part of him is a very nice guy. All spies are contradictory, they lead double lives. I think these lives gradually become more separated, living constantly in two worlds with your brain split. And in the end the two halves stop talking to each other because it's the only way of surviving."
Masterspy of Moscow – George Blake will be shown at the Frontline Club in London at 7pm on March 16 and at 9pm on BBC Four on March 23.
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Screen grab CCTV Kremlin
Kremlin-controlled TV informed millions of Russians about a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev. Nothing unusual about that, right?
Wrong.
The meeting between the two leaders of the former Soviet republics isn’t due to take place until Monday. But that didn’t stop the newsreader on the Rossiya 24 channel reading out the following item – all in the past tense.
“The Kremlin also reports that Vladimir Putin met with Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev on Monday. They talked about cooperation in investment and humanitarian spheres, as well as the energy sector. They also discussed the possibility of Kyrgyzstan joining the Eurasian Economic Union.”
Before we get to Monday, as most of you are undoubtedly aware, we have to get past the weekend first. A spokesperson for Rossiya 24 quickly announced the news item had been a mistake. And, on a normal day, that would have been that.
But these are not normal times in Russia. Putin hasn’t been seen in public for over a week. This prolonged absence has sparked rumors that Russia’s long-serving national leader is ill. Or has been deposed in a coup. Or is dead. Or is visiting his alleged lover, the “extremely flexible gymnast,” Alina Kabaeva, who reportedly gave birth to a baby Putin in Switzerland today. Take your pick.
ReutersPutin greets Russian gymnasts Alina Kabayeva during a meeting with candidates to the Russian Olympic team for Summer Olympics 2004 at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, March 10, 2004.
Rossiya 24’s inadvertent act of fortune-telling has already been labeled “Guests from the Future” on social media, a reference to a well-loved Soviet children’s film. But beneath the laughter, there is concern that Russia could be on the edge of another one of the cataclysmic events that seem to swing around these parts every few years.
Was Rossiya 24’s report on Putin’s meeting prepared in advance, because the Kremlin knew he would not be attending? Was it part of a cover up that was inadvertently aired ahead of time? Either way, it’s added to a general atmosphere of confusion and apprehension in Russia right now. “I was dreaming of Putin all night,” a friend in Moscow told me. “I dreamed he’d been kidnapped and was being marched off somewhere.”
True, the NTV channel aired images Friday of Putin meeting with supreme court president Vyacheslav Lebedev at his Novo-Ogaryovo presidential residence outside Moscow. But as there was no proof the footage was actually filmed Friday, that did little to stop the rumors. After all, the Kremlin has already been caught out once before this week, when it tried to pass off old photographs as new ones as evidence of Putin’s activities.
Kremlin
So when a line of mysterious trucks was photographed outside the Kremlin’s walls Friday evening, and seating for hundreds of people was laid out on Red Square, the rumor mill went into overdrive again. Someone quickly spliced together footage of Putin saying “and snuffed it,” over a grimy hip-hop beat, and uploaded the clip to YouTube.
“Has he really snuffed it?” asked one Facebook user. But the trucks and seating, it turned out, are for a concert to celebrate the first anniversary of the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea. “What are you all on about?” asked another Facebook user. “Putin’s fine, don’t you know? He’s already met the president of Kyrgyzstan on Monday.”
Will Putin finally show on Monday? Or will the mystery deepen? All will be revealed after the weekend. That is, of course, if there are no twists in this story before then. Keep watching Russia.
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Rossiya 24, the channel involved, later described the incident as a “mistake”, but the blunder deepened suspicions that state media is covering up for Mr Putin’s unexplained absence.
On Friday, ostensibly new footage of Mr Putin meeting a senior Russian judge at his residence was shown on state television but failed to quell the speculation. Such clips are often recorded in advance, and released when the authorities give the go-ahead.
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