Tag Archives: Kremlin

According to a worker at a Kremlin-backed troll factory, last year they put together a fake sex tape starring a black man and a Hillary lookalike. The tape was apparently never posted because the trolls decided that even the craziest far-right Americans wouldn’t believe it. The Daily Beast reports: Alan Baskaev worked for the troll factory, also known as the …

The Independent reports: Russia has preemptively denied ties to any plot to assassinate late President John F Kennedy ahead of the expected release of thousands of archived records. The National Archives was due to release a trove of documents related to the 22 November 1963 assassination on Thursday. One of several conspiracy theories about Mr Kennedy’s killer Lee Harvey Oswald …

Politico reports: Twitter said Thursday it’s dropping all ads from Kremlin-funded English-language media outlets RT and Sputnik, as the company prepares to face lawmakers next week over Russian use of social media to interfere with the 2016 election. “This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion …

Agence France-Press reports: Russia’s foreign ministry on Friday announced counter measures in response to tough new sanctions proposed by the United States, ordering Washington to reduce its diplomatic staff. Moscow ordered the US to reduce its diplomatic presence in Russia to 455 diplomats and staff and also barred it from using a Moscow summer house and storage facility. It has …

Reuters reports: A senior Russian banker who met President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did not do so on the Kremlin’s orders, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. Kushner, who was quizzed on Monday by Senate investigators on his contacts with Russians as part of an investigation into possible Kremlin meddling in last year’s presidential election, …

Reuters reports: The Kremlin said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not have “a secret meeting” at the G20 summit earlier this month, but confirmed they did chat informally over dinner. The Kremlin was responding to questions about a previously undisclosed conversation between Trump and Putin that caused alarm among some U.S. politicians …

The Washington Post reports: The Kremlin on Monday said it was unaware of a 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer purported to have information that could potentially damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. President Trump’s eldest son said Sunday that Natalia Veselnitskaya, who represents business executives close to the Russian government had approached him in June 2016, …

The Guardian reports: A Russian law that bans gay “propaganda” encourages homophobia and discrimination, the European court of human rights has ruled, in a sharply worded rebuke to the Kremlin. Three Russian gay rights activists brought the case against the 2013 federal statute, widely known as the “gay propaganda” law, after they were arrested between 2009-12 for protesting against local …

The Associated Press reports: The Kremlin has denied claims from a U.S. government intelligence report that Russian hackers had attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier before last year’s presidential election. The classified National Security Agency report, which was published online on Monday by The Intercept, said Russian military intelligence agency GRU attacked the software company and sent spear-phishing …

The Washington Post reports: Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors …

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is willing to cooperate with federal investigators looking into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, his attorney said. The statement from attorney Jamie Gorelick was issued Thursday amid reports that the FBI was investigating meetings Kushner had in December with Russian officials. “Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with …

Reuters reports: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the appointment of former FBI chief Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian efforts to sway the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump and whether there was any collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Moscow. “There is nothing to comment on. It is an internal matter …

CNN reports: When asked whether Russia is involved in the Macron email hack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said,”These, like other similar accusations, are based on nothing and are pure slander.” Russian officials have vehemently denied interfering in elections and have said they have no preferred candidate in the French vote. But Russia has good reasons to support Le Pen over …

Radio Free Europe reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman sought to downplay evidence of a campaign of abuse targeting gay men in Chechnya, saying the Kremlin has “heard no confirmation” of reports that have prompted outrage in the West. Speaking to journalists on April 20, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin has no reason to doubt regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s …

Reuters reports: A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters. They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. …

PAGING NIKKI HALEY. PAGING REX TILLERSON. The Associated Press reports: In the face of growing international concern about reported detentions and killings of homosexuals in Chechnya, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says the Kremlin does not have confirmed information about the matter. The respected Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported this month that police in the predominantly Muslim republic rounded up …

The New York Times reports: After Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson waited for much of the day, wondering whether he would get to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin, the two men sat down at the Kremlin late Wednesday afternoon in the first face-to-face meeting between the Russian leader and a top official in the Trump administration. Relations between …

From the Russian propaganda outlet RT News: President Putin “regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that the president believes the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.” Peskov also insisted that “the Syrian army doesn’t have chemical weapons,” saying this had been “observed …

The Associated Press reports: The spokesman for President Vladimir Putin tells The Associated Press that Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad is not unconditional. Thursday’s statement from Dmitry Peskov comes several days after a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held province in Syria. Moscow, Assad’s key backer, has supported the Syrian government militarily since 2015. Turkey said on …

Newsweek reports: Russian authorities have pledged to investigate reported mass disappearances and deaths of gay locals in the region of Chechnya, after the regional government dismissed allegations made in Novaya Gazeta on Saturday, saying “you cannot detain… what simply does not exist.” According to the Russian investigative newspaper, authorities in the conservative and predominantly Muslim Chechen Republic have detained over …