All Things Russia & Ukraine

[RedFromMI]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

[OCanada]

Good point. The mess we have made in Syria and Yemen has been a big boost to Russia and Iran

[old salt]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

Looks like Butina was Russia's version of the CIA's Valerie Plame, ...except she got caught.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... mo-825666/

[Typical Lax Dad]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

Looks like Butina was Russia's version of the CIA's Valerie Plame, ...except she got caught.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... mo-825666/

We have people killed also, so when one of ours ends up dead, no big deal.

[old salt]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

Looks like Butina was Russia's version of the CIA's Valerie Plame, ...except she got caught.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... mo-825666/

We have people killed also, so when one of ours ends up dead, no big deal.

Plame's alive & well & cashing in. She was no longer undercover when Armitage-->Novak outed her.
Another leak driven low point for the media.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

Looks like Butina was Russia's version of the CIA's Valerie Plame, ...except she got caught.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... mo-825666/

We have people killed also, so when one of ours ends up dead, no big deal.

Plame's alive & well & cashing in. She was no longer undercover when Armitage-->Novak outed her.
Another leak driven low point for the media.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander, admiral.

[old salt]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

Looks like Butina was Russia's version of the CIA's Valerie Plame, ...except she got caught.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... mo-825666/

We have people killed also, so when one of ours ends up dead, no big deal.

Plame's alive & well & cashing in. She was no longer undercover when Armitage-->Novak outed her.
Another leak driven low point for the media.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander, admiral.

What's your point Captain Video ?
I have no beef with Butina getting tried, sentenced & deported.
Score 1 for Team USA.

Thankfully Plame wasn't outed until she was out of the game & safely desk bound in the USA,
before Novak published her leaked identity, which was, by then, an open secret.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Butina sentencing memoranda dropped on the 19th...

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... Butina.pdf

Really good twitter thread on the threat Butina and the Russians behind her represents:

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 2820436997

Looks like Butina was Russia's version of the CIA's Valerie Plame, ...except she got caught.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... mo-825666/

We have people killed also, so when one of ours ends up dead, no big deal.

Plame's alive & well & cashing in. She was no longer undercover when Armitage-->Novak outed her.
Another leak driven low point for the media.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander, admiral.

What's your point Captain Video ?
I have no beef with Butina getting tried, sentenced & deported.
Score 1 for Team USA.

Thankfully Plame wasn't outed until she was out of the game & safely desk bound in the USA,
before Novak published her leaked identity, which was, by then, an open secret.

That's noble of you

[old salt]

Cold War for fun & profit :

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/navarro ... d=22670555

Today, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Greenville, S.C., a new F-16 fighter jet facility takes wing.

The case of the recently approved sale of eight F-16 fighter jets to Bulgaria vividly underscores how the Trump administration is improving conventional arms transfers. When the Bulgarian government decided to replace its aging fleet of Soviet-origin MiG-29 fighter jets in 2018, it opened a bidding process among Swedish, Italian, and American contractors. The U.S. government made a clear case for the unparalleled capability and support that purchase of the F-16 would convey, and, on Jan. 6 of this year, the Bulgarian parliament approved plans to purchase the made-in-America F-16 — in what will be Bulgaria’s largest military procurement since the fall of its Communist regime.

Slovakia made a similar decision when it signed an agreement letter on Dec. 12, 2018. Not only will Eastern Europe and the NATO Alliance be stronger, but our manufacturing base will be more resilient.

The F-16 production line in Greenville, South Carolina, would not be having a ribbon cutting ceremony today were it not for President Trump’s bold advocacy with our international partners. Of course, what happens in Greenville with the F-16 won’t stay in Greenville. According to Lockheed Martin, F-16 production supports over 16,000 jobs across 41 states.

[OCanada]

It is not a news item it is an opinion piece. Not a very good one either

This is not a new manufacturing plant. It is relocated from TX to S.C. so nothing new was created nationally. It appears to be a payoff to Graham who needs help in next years Senate race as did McConnell with the steel plant.

SC ‘s approach has been to be undercut prevailing wages and expenses to entice. Thereby lowering GDP not increasing it

It does nothing to make our manufacturing more resilient.

We are already by far the largest dealer in international arms sales

Our cost of production is driven by inefficiencies such as spreading parts production across the country

Ailes classifies Fox News as entertainment and not news.

[OCanada]

Syria has been a big windfall for Russia and a setback for USA interests.

[OCanada]

From the National Security Center at Fordham.

Ex-DHS secretary wanted cabinet-level election threat meetings, White House refused: Former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was reportedly prevented from convening senior cabinet meetings at the White House on potential future Russian interference in the upcoming 2020 U.S. elections in the months before resigning from her position, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the matter. After the midterm elections, Nielsen reportedly pushed for the White House to convene a cabinet meeting to address the issue, but the White House “refused,” according to one of the officials. White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below [Trump’s] level,” according to one senior administration official. ABC News, Washington Post, New York Times

Given trump has not spent appropriated monies and eliminated the unit that was supposed to over see prevention etc makes sense.

Who could benefit from not exerting maximum effort to prevent Russian interference ?

[OCanada]

I will post this under M investigation as well.

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report details in almost 200 pages the scale and scope of the Russian interference in the U.S. elections. The report’s findings must be a warning to people everywhere who care about democracy.

The report details a multi-year set of operations run by the Kremlin that ultimately enabled Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump won by a close margin, aided by Vladimir Putin.

Trump has said Putin told him there was no Russian interference. Trump said he believed Putin. Trump continues to say the Mueller investigation and its findings are “a hoax.”

Democracy endangered everywhere

But the United States is far from the only country where such interference has played out. The Russians have been engaged in assorted ways in supporting far-right politicians in Western Europe, as well as the pro-Brexit campaign. However, the Russian involvement in the United States dwarfs such European interventions.

But that past may be prologue elsewhere. What the Russians did to subvert American democracy could be repeated in Germany, France, Canada and all other Western democracies. I believe this is the most important lesson to be drawn from the Mueller report.

The meticulous account of the Russian engagement is chilling. And we only have a partial account, as some sections of the report, notably concerned with Russian intelligence services, have been redacted by the U.S. Justice Department in the version that has been made public.

Information warfare

First, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), based in St. Petersburg, launched a U.S. program directed by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who Mueller stated has ties to Putin. It sent employees to the United States in 2014 to pursue “information warfare.”

As Trump launched his candidacy, the Russians decided to back him and the IRA mounted a national campaign. It reached around 126 million Americans through its Facebook accounts, and around 1.4 million people through Twitter.

It created companies and organizations to buy anti-Hillary advertisements and to organize pro-Trump rallies.
Second, in early 2016, the Russian government deployed an interference strategy run by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU).

Its operations were vast: It used malware to damage computers, and it hacked into others to steal e-mails; it released damaging e-mails at key times in the election campaign through Wikileaks that it stole from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The Mueller report noted:

GRU officers also targeted individuals and entities involved in the administration of the elections. Victims included U.S. state and local entities, such as state boards of elections (SBOEs), secretaries of state, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities. It targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations.

Russians make official contacts

Third, Russian government officials never stopped seeking to forge contacts with people associated with the Trump campaign and they were highly successful. Several of those people have been prosecuted by the Mueller team including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, his deputy Rick Gates, foreign policy advisers Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos.

There is evidence in the report – although key parts are redacted – that the Russians were in contact with Trump’s long-time friend Roger Stone, who now awaits trial. The Trump campaign was well aware that the Russians were doing many things in the United States to smear Hilary and help Donald.

Russian businessmen engage

Fourth, Russian businessmen were deployed to strengthen contacts with the Trump team. During the campaign and then in the December 2016 transition, the head of the Russian state bank met with Kushner in New York.

The chief of a large Russian hedge fund met with Eric Prince (brother of current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a campaign supporter, and former head of Blackwater – the company that ran mercenaries in Iraq) in the Seychelles, who was seen as having close ties to Manafort’s successor as campaign manager, Steve Bannon.

For example, after Trump’s victory, Putin called in Petr Avin, the head of Russia’s largest commercial bank, Alfa-Bank, and told him to forge a line of communications with the Trump team and be sure to protect the bank from U.S. sanctions.

Avin told Mueller that he is one of approximately 50 wealthy Russian businessmen who regularly meet with Putin in the Kremlin and it was very clear that Putin expected him to follow through on the suggestions that were made. Other oligarchs were given similar orders.

From PM Blair to Ambassador Burt

There were numerous Americans not directly involved in the Trump campaign who sought to assist the Russian businessmen. Some were involved with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in the failed Trump Tower Moscow project.

Others were financiers with multiple foreign clients, such as one who not only introduced a Russian banker to Jared Kushner, but at the same time, on behalf of his clients in the United Arab Emirates, sought to introduce former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the Trump team.

Alfa-Bank’s Avin contacted Richard Burt who had previously done some work for the Bank. During his time in government service, Burt had served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs.

Burt was on the board of a U.S. think tank run by a Russian intellectual, Dmitri Simes, who had a range of contacts in Trump’s circle. Simes did not make the contact for Avin, partly because he felt it might complicate his efforts at that time to lobby the Trump transition team to appoint Burt as U.S. ambassador to Moscow – a position Burt did not get.

Failure and success

Despite major orchestrated efforts, Russian officials and businessmen were unsuccessful in forging relationships with the Trump team that could eventually result in their two top priorities: Reducing U.S. support for Ukraine to enable Russian advances there and lifting U.S. sanctions on Russians and Russian firms.

The Mueller report leaves the distinct impression that the Trump team during the campaign and in the transition was so chaotic when it came to foreign policy matters that the Russians often ended up meeting people who were to have no influence on Trump as the administration got underway in 2017.

Or, meeting people like Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Junior who, perhaps, never really understood the issues.

However, the Russians were enormously successful in their direct IRA and GRU efforts to influence American voters and interfere with the election process. No wonder, the Mueller report concluded: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

They did it here in the United States – which Western democracy is next?

About Frank Vogl
Frank Vogl is co-founder of Transparency International and author of Waging War on Corruption: Inside the Movement Fighting the Abuse of Power. [Washington D.C., United States]

It is quite clear by now that Trump is hiding an elephant. It is also quite clear he and democracy/representative government are antithetical aas anyone who echoes his positions. In the last 12 months his administration has NOT spent appropriations to defend against russian hacking; has dismantled the group that was supposed to lead the effort and as rejected the former Secretary of DHS from establishing cabinet level meetings to address the issue. And who benefits?

[old salt]

Cold War for fun & profit :

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/navarro ... d=22670555

Today, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Greenville, S.C., a new F-16 fighter jet facility takes wing.

The case of the recently approved sale of eight F-16 fighter jets to Bulgaria vividly underscores how the Trump administration is improving conventional arms transfers. When the Bulgarian government decided to replace its aging fleet of Soviet-origin MiG-29 fighter jets in 2018, it opened a bidding process among Swedish, Italian, and American contractors. The U.S. government made a clear case for the unparalleled capability and support that purchase of the F-16 would convey, and, on Jan. 6 of this year, the Bulgarian parliament approved plans to purchase the made-in-America F-16 — in what will be Bulgaria’s largest military procurement since the fall of its Communist regime.

Slovakia made a similar decision when it signed an agreement letter on Dec. 12, 2018. Not only will Eastern Europe and the NATO Alliance be stronger, but our manufacturing base will be more resilient.

The F-16 production line in Greenville, South Carolina, would not be having a ribbon cutting ceremony today were it not for President Trump’s bold advocacy with our international partners. Of course, what happens in Greenville with the F-16 won’t stay in Greenville. According to Lockheed Martin, F-16 production supports over 16,000 jobs across 41 states.

It is not a news item it is an opinion piece. Not a very good one either

This is not a new manufacturing plant. It is relocated from TX to S.C. so nothing new was created nationally. It appears to be a payoff to Graham who needs help in next years Senate race as did McConnell with the steel plant.

SC ‘s approach has been to be undercut prevailing wages and expenses to entice. Thereby lowering GDP not increasing it

It does nothing to make our manufacturing more resilient.

We are already by far the largest dealer in international arms sales

Our cost of production is driven by inefficiencies such as spreading parts production across the country

Ailes classifies Fox News as entertainment and not news.

The point is that the F-16 (& Boeing's F-15 & F-18) production lines now stay open, with upgraded models, paid for by sales to allies, & that 2 NATO allies chose the US made F-16 over the Eurofighter. ...did you see Lockheed- Martin's 1st Qtr statement ? Their larger Ft Worth plant is needed for full scale F-35 production. It's a big deal keeping all three of these 4th generation production lines open for foreign sales & upgrades & service life extensions for US aircraft already in service.

It's also significant that Slovokia & Bulgaria are finally upgrading their air forces & getting rid of their Soviet legacy aircraft. That means fewer USAF fighter deployments for Black Sea air policing, which can be now done by these NATO F-16's from their home bases.

[dislaxxic]

WHY DIDN’T MUELLER HOLD COUNTERINTELLIGENCE SUSPECT MIKE FLYNN RESPONSIBLE FOR SANCTIONS CALL?

Possibly because Trump himself is responsible...

..

[old salt]

WHY DIDN’T MUELLER HOLD COUNTERINTELLIGENCE SUSPECT MIKE FLYNN RESPONSIBLE FOR SANCTIONS CALL?

Possibly because Trump himself is responsible...

That's been my hunch from the get go. Took one for the team. Maintain plausible deniability for Trump.

As usual, PMM poses more questions than she answers. The redactions may be just because Flynn has yet to be sentenced.

As I said from the start, if Flynn was acting in the interests of Russia, counter to US interests, I don't see Mueller letting him off with just a plea to a minor process crime, with a recommendation for no jail time & hailing his co-operation.

[a fan]

As I said from the start, if Flynn was acting in the interests of Russia, counter to US interests, I don't see Mueller letting him off with just a plea to a minor process crime, with a recommendation for no jail time & hailing his co-operation.

Lying about not discussing sanctions with the Ambassador is specifically in itself, in Russia's interest. You understand that, right?

[dislaxxic]

As usual, PMM poses more questions than she answers. The redactions may be just because Flynn has yet to be sentenced.

It's also quite plausible that many of the questions here, and elsewhere as well, are because Bill Barr is hiding details from Congress and the American people, doing his best "Roy Cohn" imitation.

..

[OCanada]

This is not the first time Barr has been brought in to kill an investigation. This fine he even auditioned for it

[old salt]

As I said from the start, if Flynn was acting in the interests of Russia, counter to US interests, I don't see Mueller letting him off with just a plea to a minor process crime, with a recommendation for no jail time & hailing his co-operation.

Lying about not discussing sanctions with the Ambassador is specifically in itself, in Russia's interest. You understand that, right?

Not escalating tensions, is in both countries interests, particularly with a new Admin coming into office.

Lame Duck Obama, in his final days, should not have acted without Trump's concurrence.
Trump, not Obama, would have to deal with the consequences.

For 2+ years, we've been unable to negotiate with Russia over matters of critical mutual importance.
We punished then for interfering. Trump & associates have been cleared of conspiring with Russia.
When are we going to come back to reality & deal with real world issues ?