Rusia

Bennett and Putin agree to meet during first phone call

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett holds first call with Vladimir Putin, agree to face-to-face meeting.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Russian President Vladimir Putin made plans to meet in the near future, when the two leaders held their first phone call on Monday since the new government was sworn in last month. No date was set for such an encounter.

Bennett and Putin “agreed to meet soon,” the Prime Minister’s Office said after the call.

Massive exercise in Black Sea with US comes after Russia warning

Russia has warned the US and UK not to “tempt fate” in the Black Sea – only one place where there are naval tensions.

On June 21, the US Sixth Fleet announced it would participate in the Sea Breeze exercise that will take place from June 28 to July 10. Washington says that “this year’s iteration has the largest number of participating nations in the exercise’s history, with 32 countries from six continents providing 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft and 18 special operations and dive teams scheduled to participate.”

Russian Mercenaries Are Driving War Crimes in Africa, U.N. Says

An investigative report says that Russian operatives in the Central African Republic who had been billed as unarmed advisers are actually leading the fighting, including massacres of civilians.

Russian mercenaries deployed in one of Africa’s most fragile countries killed civilians, looted homes and shot dead worshipers at a mosque during a major military operation earlier this year, United Nations investigators have found.

EU Leaders Divided on Relations With Russia

The 27 EU leaders need to unanimously agree on restarting talks with Russia for a meeting to take place.

EU leaders on Friday failed to agree on the way forward on relations with Russia, with most of them rejecting a proposal by France and Germany to hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, following marathon talks that went through Thursday night.

Libya conference: Russia, Turkey to start removing their foreign mercenaries

Libya’s transitional government renewed its commitment to holding elections in December at a UN-sponsored conference in Berlin, where Russia and Turkey reached a tentative plan to start withdrawing their foreign mercenaries from Libya.

At the Berlin conference on Wednesday, Libya’s transitional government underlined its commitment to holding elections on 24 December, and Germany said it would continue keep up pressure until all foreign forces have been withdrawn from Libya.

Libya’s transitional leadership was joined at the conference by foreign ministers from France and Germany, as well Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria and Italy, along with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and senior officials from Russia, the United Arab Emirates and others.

Though a final communique specified no concrete new measures, Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush said the transitional government came “with a vision of how best to re-establish stability in our country and pave the way for free, inclusive and safe elections on 24 December”.

She was hopeful that there would finally be progress on a key pledge from a previous conference, held in January 2020, for foreign fighters to pull out of the country.

“We have a progress in terms of mercenaries, so you know hopefully within coming days, mercenaries from both sides [are] going to be withdrawing and I think this is going to be encouraging,” she told reporters in Berlin.

Russia and Turkey back opposing sides in Libya, which has been split between two rival administrations backed by foreign forces and countless militias.

The internationally-recognised Government of National Accord in Tripoli is supported by Turkey, which in October helped it repel an offensive from Khalifa Haftar, who rules large parts of the east of Libya, and is backed by Rusisa, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

In October the two sides agreed a ceasefire in Geneva. The agreement involved the withdrawal of all foreign mercenaries by January.

Mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner company, along with fighters from Sudan, Chad and Syria, support Haftar in the east of Libya. Turkey has advisers in Tripoli, supported by allied Syrian fighters.

None have left, as both sides argue over which group should leave first.

Two diplomats said France had prepared proposals for a sequenced withdrawal of foreign forces from Libya that was discussed with both Turkey and the US, and a senior US State Department official said Wednesday that Turkey and Russia had reached an initial understanding to each pull out 300 of their Syrian mercenaries.

It is not a large number of the estimated 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries in Libya, but it would signal the start of a process in which all armed groups would eventually be brought under a joint military command.

Warning Shots Fired at British Destroyer in Black Sea, Russia Says

Russian forces said they fired warning shots Wednesday at a British Royal Navy destroyer taking part in a U.S.-led naval exercise in the Black Sea near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the action was taken because the HMS Defender entered 3 kilometers into Russia’s territorial waters. Britain says no shots were fired toward the vessel.

When a President Lies

“Did you, too, O friend,
suppose democracy was only for
elections, for politics, and for a party name?”

– Walt Whitman, “Democratic Vistas” (1871)

Joe Biden received much media praise for his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin on June 16th. However, little attention has been paid to an issue posed by an Associate Press reporter in a press conference following the meeting: “U.S. intelligence has said that Russia tried to interfere in the last two presidential elections, and that Russia groups are behind hacks like SolarWinds and some of the ransomware attacks you just mentioned.”

What Did the Biden-Putin Summit Mean for Syria ?

Analysts cannot offer any definitive indications about the fate of the Syrian issue after the summit between president Joe Biden, and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Reports hinted, however, at the possibility of cooperation between the two countries.

Some reports described the Biden-Putin meeting as a pragmatic summit, while other analysts described the meeting as a “red line summit” that was demanded by the two presidents, asserting that the Syrian issue was at the bottom of the agenda.

Some US allies near Russia are wary of Biden-Putin summit

Central and Eastern European nations are anxious about the coming summit meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wary of what they see as hostile intentions from the Kremlin.

Some in the countries that once were part of the Soviet Union or the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact during the Cold War worry that Washington could scale down support for its allies in the region in a bid to secure a more stable and predictable relationship with Russia.