Tag Archives: Kremlin

Julia Davis writes for the Washington Post: Russian state media are hard at work, praising Putin’s strategy that is finally paying off. That is not surprising, as the state media in Russia are fully controlled by the government. Positions conveyed by the Kremlin’s bullhorns reflect only what is considered permissible by the state. On Russian state television, criticism of Putin …

Gosh, whatever will they talk about? President Donald Trump plans to meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin at the start of their July 16 summit in Helsinki, Finland, according to a person familiar with the plans, before allowing other aides to join the highly anticipated encounter with the Russian leader. The meeting will be the first formal summit talks between them. …

The Hill reports: President Trump cited Russia’s denial of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in a tweet early Thursday, asking why former FBI Director James Comey did not examine the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked email server. The DNC in April sued the Russian government, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, alleging that they conspired to aid Trump in …

Reuters reports: A search warrant application unsealed on Wednesday revealed closer links than previously known between President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin. In an affidavit attached to the July 2017 application, an FBI agent said he had reviewed tax returns for a company controlled by Manafort and his …

Bloomberg reports: Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing to accelerate his probe into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians who sought to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a person familiar with the probe. Mueller and his team of prosecutors and investigators have an eye toward producing conclusions — and possible indictments — related to collusion …

CNN reports: The National Rifle Association is setting aside years of documents related to its interactions with a Kremlin-linked banker, as the gun-rights group appears to be bracing for a possible investigation, according to sources familiar with the situation. The NRA has faced fresh scrutiny from congressional investigators about its finances and ties to Alexander Torshin, one of the 17 …

The New York Times reports: The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election. But newly released emails show that in at least …

NBC News reports: John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, chaired a nonprofit that has promoted misleading and false anti-Muslim news, some of which was amplified by a Russian troll factory, an NBC News review found. The group’s authors also appeared on Russian media, including Sputnik and RT News, criticizing mainstream European leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron. …

“President Putin could not say such a thing and did not say it to President Trump, taking in to account that they had never communicated before Trump became President. As for the main content of the book, I do not presume to judge. We did not read it.” – Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in a statement released today.  The Comey …

Reuters reports: The Kremlin on Thursday said Facebook’s removal of accounts controlled by various Russian media was a hostile move that smacked of censorship. Facebook said on Tuesday it had deleted hundreds of Russian accounts and pages associated with a “troll factory” indicted by U.S. prosecutors for fake activist and political posts in the 2016 U.S. election campaign. When asked …

The Daily Beast reports: President Trump has reportedly invited Vladimir Putin to the White House for a visit, according to a statement from the Kremlin. According to an Agence France-Presse reporter, a senior U.S. official did “not deny” that Trump “floated the idea of a White House summit,” noting that “no planning has begun as yet.” This comes after Trump …

The Associated Press reports: Russia’s foreign minister says Moscow will expel the same number of diplomats from the nations that have expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain. Sergey Lavrov said U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Thursday, where he was given notice that Russia is responding quid pro …

The Washington Post reports: Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the …

CNET reports: The US Justice Department has filed charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. In an indictment released on Friday (.pdf), the Justice Department called out the Internet Research Agency, a notorious group behind the Russian propaganda effort across social media. Employees for the agency created troll accounts and used …

CNBC reports: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office said Friday that a grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for alleged interference in the 2016 presidential elections, during which they boosted the candidacy of Donald Trump. The indictment says that the defendants by early to mid-2016 were “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump … and …

TIME Magazine reports: Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years. The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits …

Politico reports: The suspected Russian hackers accused of breaching the Democratic National Committee and meddling in France’s presidential election are now targeting the U.S. Senate, according to new research. Since last June, the hacking group known as “Fancy Bear” has been setting up fake websites mimicking the Senate’s login server, hoping to trick Senate staffers into entering their credentials there, …

McClatchy reports: A jailed Russian who says he hacked into the Democratic National Committee computers on the Kremlin’s orders to steal emails released during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign now claims he left behind a data signature to prove his assertion. In an interview with Russia’s RAIN television channel made public Wednesday, Konstantin Kozlovsky provided further details about what …

The New York Times reports: A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign. A May 2016 email to the campaign …

The New York Times reports: Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly …