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]]>It has been nearly two years since President Trump first announced a full military withdrawal from Syria.
Instead, U.S. troops, first sent to battle the now-defunct Islamic State group’s “caliphate,” are still there and last week found themselves in a dangerous confrontation with Russian forces that left at least four Americans injured after a vehicle collision in a disputed part of the country.
The stunning incident — video footage of which took social media by storm and left the White House and Pentagon scrambling to explain what happened — has raised fresh questions about the role of U.S. forces in Syria, exactly what the administration hopes to achieve, and what metrics U.S. commanders will use to finally declare victory and follow through on the president’s repeatedly expressed determination to bring all American troops home.
Administration officials stress that the roughly 500 U.S. troops still in Syria are desperately needed to continue the fight against ISIS remnants, protect oil fields, train and assist Kurdish-led allies and act as something of a buffer between the host of actors involved in Syria’s decade of civil war.
What’s unclear, critics say, is exactly how a continued presence there benefits U.S. national security, particularly when tensions between Washington and Moscow are escalating rapidly and could spiral out of control.
“Playing bumper cars with Russians in the Levant serves no vital U.S. national interest. As in numerous past incidents, America was lucky not to lose a soldier in a wholly unnecessary confrontation,” said Gil Barndollar, a senior fellow at the Washington think tank Defense Priorities, a group broadly skeptical of U.S. military missions abroad.
“U.S. troops, together with their Syrian partners and NATO allies, destroyed the Islamic State’s last stronghold in Syria nearly 18 months ago,” said Mr. Barndollar, who served for seven years as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps. “Neither counterterrorism raids nor confiscating Syrian oil is a valid reason to maintain this mission. There is no remaining strategic or legal rationale for U.S. forces to remain in Syria. They are long overdue to come home.”
Throughout his term, Mr. Trump has shown that he largely agrees with that view. In late 2018, the president first announced plans to bring home the roughly 2,000 troops stationed in Syria to battle the Islamic State. By that time, the terrorist group had lost nearly all of its physical territory and was a shell of the powerful pseudo army that years earlier controlled huge swaths of land in Syria and Iraq.
Mr. Trump’s decision led to the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis, who argued that a pullout would leave America’s Kurdish allies at the mercy of a hostile Turkey. Mr. Mattis has gone on to routinely criticize the president’s policy choices in Syria.
Military leaders and conservative members of Congress ultimately persuaded the president to keep some forces in the country.
In October, Mr. Trump again tried to hasten a U.S. exit from Syria when he ordered American troops to pull back from the Turkish-Syrian border. That decision allowed Turkey to launch its own invasion in order to wage attacks on Syrian resistance groups allied with the U.S. but elements of which Ankara considers to be terrorists.
The president faced widespread criticism for what critics said was the abandonment of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been loyal American allies in the yearslong fight against ISIS. The pullback and repositioning of American personnel also paved the way for Russian troops, who have been backing the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, to seize suddenly unoccupied U.S. military bases in Syria. Critics say the developments have only emboldened Moscow’s forces inside the country.
“None of this was possible before Trump ordered U.S. forces to abandon their facilities, leaving them for the Russian military,” Brett McGurk tweeted last week after the incident between U.S. and Russian forces. Mr. McGurk served as the State Department’s envoy for the global coalition to defeat ISIS from 2015 to 2018.
“Reminder: these incidents have been ongoing for months. Trump has apparently never raised the issue in multiple calls with Putin. He leaves our troops to fend for themselves,” he said.
Syria’s state-controlled media reported over the weekend that new U.S. convoys of military vehicles and tanker trucks from Iraq had reportedly been seen crossing into Syria to resupply American posts there.
‘Dangerous and unacceptable’
The incident Tuesday was the latest close encounter between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria, which operate in close proximity to each other but are expected to adhere to “deconfliction” protocols meant to keep them apart and keep both nations’ troops out of harm’s way.
Pentagon officials said Russian forces violated those protocols and sent vehicles across the established boundaries. One of the Russian vehicles then collided with an American vehicle, as Russian helicopters flew low overhead.
The two countries traded blame in harshly worded statements that suggest neither Washington nor Moscow wants to be seen as backing down.
“The U.S. troops attempted to block the Russian patrol,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement last week. “In response to that, the Russian military police took the necessary measures to prevent an incident and to continue the fulfillment of their task.”
Last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had another message for the U.S. He said at the military forum in Moscow that Russia was testing a new anti-drone system that, if effective, would be deployed in Syria.
The Pentagon quickly shot back with its own version of events and stressed that American forces won’t sit idly by if they are put in danger.
“We commend our personnel on the ground for de-escalating this unfortunate encounter through professionalism and restraint, which are hallmarks of the U.S. military,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said. “We have advised the Russians that their behavior was dangerous and unacceptable. We expect a return to routine and professional deconfliction in Syria and reserve the right to defend our forces vigorously whenever their safety is put at risk.”
The administration has argued that it has several tangible objectives in Syria, though there does not appear to be a clear time frame to achieve them. The “enduring defeat” of ISIS, officials have said, is the top priority and necessitates at least a small troop presence inside Syria to train and assist allies such as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
In addition, U.S. forces provide security for oil fields in northeastern Syria that are now sources of revenue for the Kurdish-led SDF.
The administration also wants to have leverage in talks on a lasting political settlement that ends a decade of civil war and brings at least some semblance of stability to the country. Another of its tangible goals is to rid Syria of all proxy forces backed by the Iranian government, which has allied itself with Russia and Mr. Assad.
Top administration officials note that the messy situation inside Syria — with numerous militaries, terrorist groups and proxy forces operating in close proximity — can be resolved only through peaceful political processes.
“This is an extremely volatile, extremely dangerous situation,” Ambassador James Jeffrey, the administration’s special representative for Syria and envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition, told reporters this month. He argued that a Geneva meeting last week of the Syrian Constitutional Committee, a group formed to amend the country’s constitution, is a key step forward. The group includes representatives from the Assad regime, civil society and opposition forces.
“We will urge all sides, including the regime, to continue this process,” Mr. Jeffrey said. “This is the way out of the terrible predicament — economic, military, diplomatic — that they find themselves in.”
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]]>July 18, 2020 | 9:15am
The Russians are coming — again.
Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee, warned Americans on Friday that Russia would again try to interfere in the presidential election, just as they did in 2016.
The former vice president said he is now receiving intelligence briefings on the matter, Reuters reported.
“We know from before, and I guarantee you that I know now, because now I get briefings again. The Russians are still engaged in trying to delegitimize our electoral process. Fact,” Biden said during an online fundraiser for his campaign. In the same event Biden also warned that China was getting in on the act to with maneuvers “designed for us to lose confidence in the outcome”
The US intelligence community has concluded that Russia took actions to try and help Donald Trump win over Hillary Clinton during the 2020 race.
Biden warned that the country would pay a price for their activities should he be elected president.
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]]>The post Russians give Putin the chance to stay in power until 2036 after historic vote appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Members of a local electoral commission empty a ballot box at a polling station after a nationwide vote on constitutional reforms in Moscow on July 1, 2020.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV
Russians have overwhelmingly voted in favor of changes to the country’s constitution that enable President Vladimir Putin to potentially stay in power up to 2036.
With all the votes counted, the electoral commission said Thursday morning that the final count showed 77.9% of those who voted were in favor of amendments to the constitution of Russia and 21.2% against, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Data showed voter turnout was 65%, the commission said.
The constitutional amendments covered a raft of issues ranging from the minimum wage and pensions, to giving Putin the right to run for two more six-year terms in office. The 67-year old’s current term ends in 2024.
The vote on constitutional amendments was billed as a referendum, but in reality the changes had already been passed by Russia’s parliament and the public vote was seen as a move to legitimize the amendments. Putin has not yet explicitly stated that he will run for office again.
Critics of the Kremlin say the vote was neither transparent nor conducted according to usual electoral standards; ballot boxes were set in conventional polling stations but also on pavements, and in fields and parks.
Some voters — those in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod region — were able to vote online, and votes were cast from abroad too. A Russian cosmonaut even voted from space as he is stationed at the International Space Station. Controversially, incentives were also reportedly offered to voters, with reports of prizes being up for grabs.
Russia’s electoral commission has rebuffed accusations of irregularities, however, saying on Twitter that it had received few complaints and had taken measures to prevent double voting, adding that voter lists would be checked and verified.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a televised address to the nation in Russia’s Tver region on June 30, 2020.
MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV
Opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who has heavily criticized the electoral procedure during the week-long vote, called it illegitimate. “We’ll never recognize this result,” Navalny told supporters in a video, Reuters reported. Navalny said on Twitter the opposition would focus its efforts on regional elections later this year in its efforts to defeat ruling party United Russia.
“The best reaction to what happened is not despair and anxiety, but the mobilization of thousands of observers this fall and the defeat of United Russia in the regional elections, where at least some procedure has remained,” Navalny tweeted.
Putin gave a speech Tuesday, on the eve of the last day of voting, calling on Russians to vote, though he did not mention how the changes would amend rules to the presidential office that “reset the clock” on Putin’s presidency.
“We are going to vote for the country where we want to live, with cutting-edge education and health care, a reliable system of social protection and an effective government accountable to the people,” he said in a national address after unveiling a patriotic monument to Soviet soldiers.
“We are going to vote for a country to the benefit of which we have been working and which we would like to pass on to our children and grandchildren.”
Putin has seen his popularity decline in recent months to around 60%, a far cry from the near-90% approval rating seen in mid-2015, according to the independent Levada Center.
The president has been criticized for what some have described as a hands-off approach to the pandemic: Russia has the third-highest number of cases in the world, with 653,479 reported infections, to date, and 9,521 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
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]]>The post ‘I don’t know what the Russians have on the president’: Pelosi slams Trump over reported of bounty on US troops appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>CLOSE
President Donald Trump was visiting Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia on Saturday, after he cancelled a trip to a golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey this weekend. (June 27)
AP Domestic
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday denounced President Donald Trump’s response to news reports that Russia placed a bounty on U.S. troops in Afghanistan and repeated an unsubstantiated theory that the Russian President Vladimir Putin has some kind of leverage over Trump.
On Friday, The New York Times reported Trump and the National Security Council had been briefed on an intelligence report that a clandestine Russian unit had offered rewards to Afghan militants who successfully attacked coalition and U.S. troops. On Sunday, Trump took to Twitter to deny knowing about the report and to disparage the Times’ reporting.
“This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed,” Pelosi told ABC “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos. “Just as I have said to the president, with him all roads lead to Putin. I don’t know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, financially, or whatever it is.”
Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi to elaborate on her claim that the Russians “have something on him.”
Pelosi said it was the logical explanation for Trump’s refusal to accept intelligence reports that implicate Russia, such as the consensus that Russia intervened in the 2016 election with the aim of aiding his candidacy.
“Now, he’s saying this is fake news. Why would he say that? Why wouldn’t he say, ‘Let’s look into it and sees what this?'” she asked. “And he’s engaged in peace negotiations with the Taliban and he’s kissing up to Putin in every way, saying they should be in the G-7, even though he annexed Crimea and caused death and destruction in Ukraine. So totally irresponsible. Something is wrong with this picture.”
‘Nobody briefed or told me’: Trump denies knowing about intelligence report that Russia put bounty on U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan
Claims and conspiracies about Trump’s ties to Russia proliferated during the first two years of Trump’s presidency amid an investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives working to interfere in the 2016 election.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence “that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” though his report “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” and said the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian effort.”
During his July 2019 testimony before the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, Mueller said the possibility that Russia was extorting Trump was a counterintelligence issue and beyond the scope of his report. In a report commissioned by a research firm working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele alleged Russia had blackmail material on Trump. But much of Steele’s report has not been corroborated and critics have dismissed his claims as a politically motivated smear intended to discredit Trump.
Trump has repeatedly denied any ties to Russia and derided the allegations against him as a “hoax” and “witch hunt.”
Pelosi, who is part of the “Gang of Eight” congressional leaders who receive intelligence reports, said she had not been briefed on the intelligence about the Russian bounty. She called for an intelligence report on the matter to be submitted to Congress and vowed to determine if the president was briefed about it. Pelosi said it would raise troubling questions if Trump was not briefed about such an important issue.
“What does that say about the concern that those who briefed the president have about not going anywhere near the Russia issue with this president?” she asked.
Concerns about the administration’s handling of the reported bounty were not limited to Democrats like Pelosi.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., said in a tweet Sunday that if the report is accurate, “the White House must explain” why the president and vice president were not briefed on the matter, who did not about it and when, and what has been done to “hold Putin accountable.”
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who just published a scathing book about the president and his handling of foreign affairs, said Sunday on CNN “State of the Union” that if he thought the Russians had compromising information on Trump, “I would have revealed it because I think that would be the most disturbing thing you could imagine.”
Bolton instead ascribed Trump’s apparent unwillingness to confront Putin to his “affinity for strong, authoritarian leaders.”
“I think his policies with respect to Russian assertiveness against the United States have been wildly inconsistent, tough on one aspect, weak on another,” Bolton said. “And I think that’s also part of the problem. To have a sustained strategic view of U.S.-Russia relations, you have to have a clear understanding of your objectives, you have to have policies that make sense over a long period of time. That’s not the way that we do business with Russia, at least not in the Trump administration.”
Bolton stressed that the news reports about the Russian bounty on U.S. troops were unconfirmed and that much remained unknown.
“If it is true – underline the word if – that they are paying surrogates to kill Americans, this is one of the most serious matters, I think, that has arisen in the Trump administration,” he said.
Bolton said he was “puzzled” by Trump’s tweets insisting he had not been briefed on the matter.
“The fact that the president feels compelled to tweet about the news story here shows that what his fundamental focus is, is not the security of our forces, but whether he looks like he wasn’t paying attention,” Bolton said. “So, he’s saying: ‘Well, nobody told me. Therefore, you can’t blame me.'”
Exclusive: John Bolton says Trump’s White House was ‘like living inside a pinball machine’
Contributing: Michael Collins
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is up the creek without a paddle and for the first time it looks like he might know it.
The ex-KGB agent-turned Russian leader with a penchant for marginalizing anyone who gets in his way had all but shored up power to last a lifetime when he announced plans in January to change the country’s constitution, which would have extended his rule.
It was supposed to be a quick vote with few obstacles.
Then coronavirus hit.
WHO IS VLADIMIR PUTIN, THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT AND EX-KGB OFFICER?
The equalizer crashed Putin’s party and bent his hold over Russians who were confused, scared and dying daily from COVID-19.
In early April, Russia announced it would send a planeload of masks and other personal protective gear to the United States to help fight coronavirus. The delivery sparked criticism and anger from some who claimed Russia was itself experiencing severe shortages of medical items.
“Russia has actually sold the United States masks and medical equipment when doctors and nurses across the country are left without masks and are infecting one another,” Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition politician, tweeted. “It’s monstrous. Putin is crazy.”
The Alliance of Doctors, a trade union for medical workers, said while it had been collecting money to buy protective gear for Russian doctors and nurses, the same equipment had been shipped to the United States.
“It’s just making a mockery of everything,” AOD wrote on Twitter.
The shipload of equipment is just the latest frustration Russians are having with a leader they claim is out of touch.
From the start, Putin’s response to the pandemic was criticized.
At first, he downplayed coronavirus, reassuring Russians that everything was under control and that the virus which put entire countries on lockdown hadn’t crept across Russia’s borders.
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When the numbers got too big to ignore, Moscow’s sloppy, disjointed message to its citizens only exacerbated the problem and people started pushing back, taking to the streets in frustration.
On March 30, Moscow Mayor Serge Sobyanin ordered 12 million residents in Russia’s capital to stay inside. By April 13, the city’s health system had been overwhelmed by a spike in COVID-19 cases with dozens of ambulances forming massive lines just to get into the hospitals. One ambulance driver told The Moscow Times he had to wait 15 hours to get in.
Moscow’s Health Department upped fears when it announced the city would run out of intensive care unit beds by the end of April. Then came the accusations from a Russian medical union that said the government was covering up cases and forcing doctors and nurses to treat patients without any protective equipment.
As outrage grew and the need for strong leadership became abundantly clear, Putin stepped out of the spotlight and relegated the crisis response to local and regional officials that have screwed it up spectacularly.
In Komi, a remote Russian region that trails only Moscow in per-capita coronavirus infections, government workers have not been warning residents about the risks of COVID-19 or working to allay fears. Instead, they have wasted time launching an investigation into who leaked the bad news about the novel coronavirus.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center and founder of R. Politik. Reality of Russian Politics, said coronavirus has underscored Putin’s isolation from the majority of Russians and has put the durability of his regime to the test.
“He has only addressed the nation twice, both times briefly, and visited a hospital, but has not proposed an action plan, sticking instead to disjointed measures,” she wrote. “There has been no dramatic appeal, no empathy or call to mobilize.”
It seems Russians are taking note.
Levada Center, an independent pollster, said Putin’s approval rating has fallen from 69 percent in February to 63 percent in March. That’s a sharp drop from the 68 to 70 percent Putin is used to seeing. For comparison, in March 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin’s approval rating soared to 80 percent.
“Public opinion doesn’t rate Putin’s crisis management skills very highly,” Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Russian domestic politics and political institutions program at Carnegie Moscow Center, recently wrote.
While Putin hasn’t been relatable too often, his video message to Christians on Orthodox Easter this weekend did drive home the point.
Russian President Vladimir Putin offers holiday wishes on the Orthodox Easter at the Novo-Ogarevo residence outside Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 19, 2020.
(Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russia’s leader delivered his Easter message as he sat in front of a fireplace with painted Easter eggs, a traditional Orthodox Kulich sweet bread and a porcelain teapot by his side.
“All levels of power are working in an organized, responsible and timely way,” he said.
On the day he made those comments, Russia had reported 6,060 new cases of COVID-19 within a 24-hour period.
In a sign that Putin may be bowing to public pressure, he postponed the vote on the constitution change that would let him stay in power until 2036, moving the date from April 22 to “a later date.”
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“It’s a recognition of how difficult the situation could get in Russia,” Ben Noble, a Russia expert at University College London told Foreign Policy. “[The Kremlin] wanted to make the vote as fast as possible, because they know public opinion about it will only sour over time.”
Even though Moscow has gotten good in recent years at responding to threats, both foreign and domestic, tackling coronavirus could be the fight neither the Russian system nor its leader can conquer.
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