Month: July 2018

The United States has reportedly rejected requests from European allies that are seeking exemptions from U.S. sanctions imposed on countries doing business in Iran. 

According to diplomats and other officials, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote a letter to Britain, France and Germany saying the U.S. would not provide widespread protection from sanctions to countries doing business in Iran. 

Pompeo and Mnuchin said in their letter, first reported by NBC News, that they are seeking “to provide unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime.” 

The U.S. did add, however, that it would grant limited exceptions, based on national security or humanitarian grounds. The letter came in response to a request last month from Britain, France and Germany.

The U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal earlier this year. The deal sought to limit Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief. 

The U.S. said it plans to reimpose tough sanctions on Iran, beginning in early August, targeting Iran’s automotive sector, trade and gold, and other key metals. 

A second set of sanctions are set to begin in early November. Those sanctions will focus on Iran’s energy sector and petroleum related transactions and transactions with the central bank of Iran. 

The U.S. has warned other countries that they will also face sanctions if they continue to trade with sanctioned sectors of the Iranian economy. 

The Trump administration’s hard stance on Iranian sanctions is part of a growing list of contentious moves that the U.S. has engaged in with its allies. On a recent trip to Europe, Trump complained members of the NATO alliance are not fiscally responsible. The U.S. leader also criticized British Prime Minister Theresa May’s handling of Brexit. He has also called the European Union a “foe” on trade issues.
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The outcome of the first summit between the unpredictable first-term American president and Russia’s steely-eyed longtime leader is anybody’s guess. With no set agenda, the summit could veer between spectacle and substance. As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin head into Monday’s meeting in Helsinki, here’s a look at what each president may be hoping to achieve:

What Trump wants

What Trump wants from Russia has long been one of the great mysteries of his presidency.

The president will go into the summit followed by whispers about his ties to Moscow, questions that have grown only more urgent since the Justice Department last week indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers accused of interfering in the 2016 election in an effort to help Trump.

And while most summits featuring an American president are carefully scripted affairs designed to produce a tangible result, Trump will go face-to-face with Putin having done scant preparation, possessing no clear agenda and saddled with a track record that, despite his protests, suggests he may not sharply challenge his Russian counterpart over election meddling. 

“I think we go into that meeting not looking for so much,” Trump told reporters last week.

Trump has strenuously insisted that improved relations with Russia would benefit the United States. But much of the appeal of the Finland meeting is simply to have the summit itself and to bolster ties between Washington and Moscow and between Putin and Trump, who places his personal rapport with foreign leaders near the heart of his foreign policy.

“The fact that we’re having a summit at this level, at this time in history, is a deliverable in itself,” said Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia. “What is important here is that we start a discussion.” 

Trump has been drawn to the spectacle of the summit and has expressed an eagerness to recreate in Helsinki the media show of last month’s Singapore summit when he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 

Even as many NATO leaders made supportive noises this week, the Helsinki summit has raised fears in many global capitals that Trump will pull back from traditional Western alliances, allowing Putin to expand his sphere of influence. 

Back home, too, there is wariness on Capitol Hill, with a number of Democrats and a handful of Republicans urging Trump to cancel the summit in the wake of the explosive indictments.

But Trump has vowed that he can handle Putin, whom he has taken to referring to as a “competitor” rather than an adversary.

And Trump in recent days has outlined some of the items he’d like to discuss, including Ukraine. Though the president has said he was “not happy” about Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, he puts the blame on his predecessor and says he will continue relations with Putin even if Moscow refuses to return the peninsula.

Trump also said he and Putin would discuss the ongoing war in Syria and arms control, negotiations that White House officials have signaled could be fruitful. 

“I will be talking about nuclear proliferation,” the president said alongside British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday. “We’ve been modernizing and fixing and buying. And it’s just a devastating technology. And they, likewise, are doing a lot. And it’s a very, very bad policy.”

But it is the matter of election meddling, including fears Russia could try to interfere in the midterm elections this fall, that could play a central role in the summit talks or loom even larger if not addressed. In neither of Trump’s previous meetings with Putin — informal talks on the sidelines of summits last year in Germany and Vietnam _ did the president publicly upbraid the Russian leader, prompting questions about whether he believed the former KGB officer’s denials over his own intelligence agencies’ assessments of meddling. 

Trump repeatedly has cast doubt on the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacking of his Democratic rivals and disparaged special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between Russia and his campaign as a “witch hunt.” But he said in Britain that he would raise it with Putin even as he downplayed its impact.

“I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it. I did it. You got me,”‘ Trump said, invoking a television detective. “There won’t be a Perry Mason here, I don’t think. But you never know what happens, right? But I will absolutely firmly ask the question.” 

What Putin wants

For Putin, sitting down with Trump offers a long-awaited chance to begin repairing relations with Washington after years of spiraling tensions. 

Putin wants the U.S. and its allies to lift sanctions, pull back NATO forces deployed near Russia’s borders and restore business as usual with Moscow. In the longer run, he hopes to persuade the U.S. to acknowledge Moscow’s influence over its former Soviet neighbors and, more broadly, recognize Russia as a global player whose interests must be taken into account. 

These are long-term goals, and Putin realizes that no significant progress will come from just one meeting. More than anything else, he sees Monday’s summit as an opportunity to develop good rapport with Trump and set the stage for regular high-level contacts. 

“Russia-U.S. ties aren’t just at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, they never were as bad as they are now,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, who chairs the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies, an influential Moscow-based association of policy experts. “It’s unhealthy and abnormal when the leaders of the two nuclear powers capable of destroying each other and the rest of the world don’t meet.” 

Moscow views Trump’s criticism of NATO allies and his recent comments about wanting Russia back in the Group of Seven club of leading industrialized nations with guarded optimism but no euphoria. Initially excited about Trump’s election, the Kremlin has long realized that his hands are bound by the ongoing investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow. 

Konstantin Kosachev, the Kremlin-connected head of the foreign affairs committee in parliament’s upper house, wrote in his blog that Russia won’t engage in vague talk about “illusory subjects,” such as the prospect of lifting Western sanctions or Russia’s return to the G-7.

Putin knows it would be unrealistic to expect U.S. recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea or a quick rollback of sanctions approved by Congress. Instead, he’s likely to focus on issues where compromise is possible to help melt the ice. 

Syria is one area where Moscow and Washington could potentially reach common ground. 

One possible agreement could see Washington give a tacit go-ahead for a Syrian army deployment along the border with Israel in exchange for the withdrawal of Iranian forces and their Hezbollah proxies, whose presence in the area represents a red line for Israel. 

There is little hope for any quick progress on other major issues.

Kosachev said it would be “pointless” to discuss Russian meddling in the U.S. election, which Moscow firmly denies. He also warned that demands for Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine or revise its policy on eastern Ukraine would be equally fruitless. The Kremlin sees Crimea’s status as non-negotiable and puts the blame squarely on the Ukrainian government for the lack of progress on a 2015 plan to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Putin has held the door open for a possible deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to separate the warring sides, but firmly rejected Ukraine’s push for their presence along the border with Russia. 

On arms control, one area where the U.S. and Russia might reach agreement is a possible extension of the New START treaty, set to expire in 2021, which caps the number of deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 for each country. 

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, is supposed to last indefinitely but has increasingly run into trouble. The U.S. has accused Russia of violating the terms of the treaty by developing a new cruise missile, which Moscow has denied. 

Russia has pledged adherence to both treaties, but it has become less focused on arms control agreements than in the past, when it was struggling to maintain nuclear parity with the U.S. 

After complaining about U.S. missile defense plans as a major threat to Russia, Putin in March unveiled an array of new weapons he said would render the U.S. missile shield useless, including a hypersonic intercontinental strike vehicle and a long-range nuclear-powered underwater drone armed with an atomic weapon. 

“Russia was much weaker, and the weak always try to appeal to international law,” Lukyanov said. “But the atmosphere is different now, and Russia is much more self-confident.” 
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Five EU countries have agreed to accept some of the nearly 450 migrants being transported aboard two military ships stuck off the coast of Sicily, Italian Prime Minister Giueseppe Conte said Sunday.

Germany, Spain and Portugal each agreed Sunday to accept 50 of the migrants after France and Malta agreed to do the same on Saturday.

But the Czech Republic rebuffed the appeal, calling the distribution plan a “road to hell.”  

The two ships, one belonging to the European Union border agency Frontex and another to the Italian border police, have been stranded in Italian waters after hardline Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the vessels should be sent to Malta, “or better Libya,” from where the migrants had originally set sail.

Italy’s new populist government, which came to power on June 1, has upended years of migrant policy by banning ships run by migration charities from docking in Italian ports, accusing them of aiding human traffickers.

Salvini, who has vowed not to take in any more migrants unless the burden is shared by other EU countries, repeated that Sunday, telling reporters the “aim was for brotherly redistribution” of the 450 rescued passengers on the two ships.

The number of migrants arriving in Italy so far this year is down about 80 percent compared to 2017. Salvini has vowed to stop all arrivals except for war refugees and a few other exceptions.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump advised British Prime Minister Theresa May to sue the European Union instead of negotiating with the bloc, as part of her Brexit strategy.

“He told me I should sue the EU,” May told BBC television. “Sue the EU. Not go into negotiations — sue them.”

Her revelation about how Trump advised her ended several days of speculation about what advice the U.S. leader had offered the prime minister.

Trump said last week in an interview with The Sun newspaper that he had given May advice, but she did not follow it. The president told the newspaper ahead of his meeting with May that she “didn’t listen” to him.

“I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me. She wanted to go a different route,” Trump said.

Trump did not reveal what advice he offered May in a press conference with her Friday. Instead, he said, “I think she found it too brutal.”

He added, “I could fully understand why she thought it was tough. And maybe someday she’ll do that. If they don’t make the right deal, she may do what I suggested, but it’s not an easy thing.”

May also told the BBC that the president had advised her not to walk away from the negotiations “because then you’re stuck.”

For the past few months, British politics have been obscured by squabbling, irritability and bravado about how, when and on what terms Britain will exit the European Union, and what the country’s relationship will be with its largest trading partner after Brexit.

Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU in a referendum in June 2016.

 
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As the 2018 World Cup reached its climax Sunday, no one could draw more satisfaction from the tournament than Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The mega sporting event, which Putin personally lobbied to secure for Russia, has allowed the Kremlin to burnish the country’s image abroad, say analysts and even Putin’s domestic critics.

And Monday the Russian leader will once again be center stage with a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, ending in some ways the international ostracism the Russian leader has faced since his forcible annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Monday’s meeting in Helsinki for the first face-to-face summit between the leaders of the World’s two biggest nuclear-armed nations has been a hastily-pulled together encounter. European leaders are apprehensive about what may come out of it, fearing Trump may bank too much on personal chemistry and gloss over substance. Former U.S. government officials worry there’s been too little preparatory work by the White House ahead of the high-stakes sit-down.

Both U.S. and Russian diplomats have been playing down expectations for the four-hour summit in the Finnish capital, which will include a lengthy one-on-one discussion between the two leaders, saying they expect no breakthroughs on contentious issues — including on accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential race.

No set agenda

With no set formal agenda, President Trump has suggested the encounter is more about breaking the ice between the two men, who have met briefly twice before on the sidelines of international summits, than anything else. He told reporters last week that he’s going into the meeting “not looking for so much.”

And that is what America’s European allies and some former U.S. officials, who have publicly expressed doubts about the wisdom of holding the summit, hope is the end result, too — namely, nothing much.

They have expressed fears that Trump, who last week berated NATO allies, and hinted unless they increased their defense spending rapidly, he’d consider pulling the U.S. out of the nearly 70-year-old security alliance, will be lured by the more experienced summiteer Vladimir Putin into offering concessions — possibly agreeing to lift sanctions imposed on Russia for the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

Some media commentators have suggested Trump might even agree to recognize formally the annexation — predictions the freewheeling U.S. President prompted after telling reporters on Air Force One on June 29 that he might consider doing so. “We’re going to have to see,” Trump said.

Crimea

In June, too, at an ill-tempered G-7 summit in Quebec, Trump reportedly told other Western leaders — possibly to shake them up — that Crimea might as well belong to Russia because most people living there speak Russian.

The White House, though, has firmly denied that Crimea’s status is up for grabs.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a July 3 press briefing in Washington: “We do not recognize Russia’s attempt to annex Crimea.” She added: “sanctions against Russia remain in place until Russia returns the peninsula to the Ukraine.”

And Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, who met with Trump for 20 minutes during last week’s NATO meeting, has discounted Trump offering any concessions on Crimea, saying he’s satisfied with the assurances he got from the U.S. President.

He told France 24 that he’s certain Trump won’t negotiate about Crimea during his meeting with Putin.

So what will the two men talk about in Helsinki? Trump has declared no issue off the table. And in the past few days he has reiterated his desire to establish warm relations with Putin, saying he doesn’t see him as an enemy but as a competitor, who might one day become a friend.

European concerns

But it is remarks like that which are prompting European apprehension and the alarm especially not only of the British, French and Germans but also Baltic and Polish leaders. They view Putin’s Kremlin as an implacable foe, one determined to sow divisions in the West, drive a wedge between America and Europe and to reassert Russian influence over Central Europe.

Trump’s position is that dialogue is important. The U.S. leader has said in the past that “getting along with Russia [and others] is a good thing, not a bad thing” to explain why he wants to improve relations with Moscow. And his ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, has pressed the importance of channels of communication being open between Washington and Moscow, saying not to talk would be irresponsible.

Tense relations

Not since the Cold War have relations between the West and Moscow been so fraught with clashes over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its pro-separatist operations in eastern Ukraine, as well as its military intervention in Syria. There are also ongoing disputes over nuclear arms treaties, NATO policy, and cybersecurity.

On Saturday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov seemed to echo Washington’s position — that the summit is about initiating U.S.-Russian dialogue. “The ideal outcome would be to agree to engage all the channels on all divisive issues…and also on those issues where we can already usefully cooperate,” he said.

Lavrov also said Putin is “ready to answer any questions” about the alleged involvement of Russian military intelligence officers in the hacking of Democratic Party computers in 2016. His comment came less than 24 hours after the U.S. Justice Department issued criminal indictments of a dozen Russians for interfering in U.S. politics.

Trump’s domestic foes fault him for shying away from criticizing Putin personally, arguing it gives credence to claims made by a former British spy that the Kremlin holds compromising information on the U.S. president. Trump has angrily dismissed the claims.

Russian officials say Putin has no intention of raising Ukraine and Crime. But it seems clear that NATO will come up. Lavrov pointedly criticized Saturday NATO expansion, saying it was “swallowing countries” near Russia’s borders. “Today we have common threats, common enemies. Terrorism, climate change, organized crime, drug trafficking. None of this is being effectively addressed by NATO expansion.”

European officials worry that Putin will seek to exploit disunity within NATO days after last week’s contentious summit in which President Trump clashed repeatedly with European leaders, shaking them up with demands for defense spending hikes beyond previously agreed targets.

European officials worry Trump may during his meeting with Putin offer to axe planned NATO war games in Baltic in a gesture of goodwill. On Thursday, the U.S. President said: “Well, perhaps we’ll talk about that.” In June, Trump shocked South Korea and Japan by telling North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their meeting in Singapore that he would pause joint military exercises.

Mideast

U.S. and Russian officials say Syria will figure prominently in the discussions between Trump and Putin— including ways to wind down the multi-sided conflict in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Putin in Moscow last week for talks focusing on the Iranian presence in Syria, prompting speculation that he was laying the groundwork for the Russian leader and Trump to reach a deal that would see the withdrawal of Iranian forces and their proxy Hezbollah militia from areas bordering Israel.

Netanyahu told his Cabinet Sunday that he had spoken by phone with Trump on Saturday to discuss Syria and Iran. The prime minister said Trump reaffirmed his commitment to Israel.

But it is arms control that’s likely to prove the most fruitful issue for the two leaders. Despite the Cold War-style strains between the U.S. and Russia, the two countries met a February verification deadline required by the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which among other things requires both countries to limit their deployed strategic nuclear warheads and bombs to 1,550 apiece. U.S. ambassador Huntsman told VOA in April that he saw the meeting of the deadline as “a kind of opening,” adding he hoped it would lead to broader discussions on nuclear arms control, something he believes can be built on to help improve U.S.-Russia relations.
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As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares for his first one-on-one summit with President Donald Trump in Helsinki this week, Russian political observers said Kremlin expectations are low but for one key issue: Russia’s symbolic return from international isolation to global powerbroker.

Ahead of the summit, President Trump — after a contentious week of meetings with traditional U.S. allies in Brussels and London — has suggested his talks with the Russian leader “may be the easiest of them all.”

Yet, Russian analysts warn that Trump will be faced with a shrewd negotiator whose arguments have been well-honed during his 18-year reign of power.

“For Putin, there’s always a way to repeat what he’s always said: ‘Russia has never done anything wrong. Russia does not have to improve or change anything,’” said Maria Lipman, Moscow-based editor of Counterpoint, a journal published by the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. 

“If America wants to change its policy, we welcome that. We have nothing to regret, nothing to correct,” she added, describing the Kremlin’s view in recent years.

Relations turnaround

The Helsinki summit comes amid a political fallout in often-contentious relations that nosedived over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and further eroded over allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

Russia’s actions in east Ukraine, Syria, and allegations the Kremlin may be responsible for the poisoning of a former Russian spy — and the related death of a British national just last week from a Russian-made nerve agent on British soil — has only exacerbated the distrust.

In the face of Kremlin denials, the Trump White House has nonetheless expelled dozens of Russian diplomats and ratcheted up sanctions, moves that have led Trump to claim “no one has been tougher on Russia than I have.” 

Yet those penalties have often clashed with Trump’s oft-stated desire to improve relations with Moscow.  It was Trump, observers note, who sent emissaries to Moscow to negotiate the summit with Putin on short notice. 

Adding further intrigue, a federal investigation revealing the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian government surrogates amid his election to the White House in 2016.    

Both Trump loyalists and the Kremlin have adamantly denied wrongdoing.

Optics, for now

Given that backdrop, Kremlin officials have joined the White House in setting the bar low for the upcoming summit.

“Putin does not expect too much from the summit from a practical point of view,” said Nadezhda Arbatova, a foreign policy specialist with the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. “But the summit is important for Moscow, since it will be viewed as a recognition of Russia’s great power status.”

Less clear is what the two sides have to offer one another beyond platitudes aimed at better relations. 

“There can be a compromise on Syria, if Russia agrees to American requirements in exchange for preserving (Syrian leader Bashar) al-Assad at his current position,” Arbatova said. 

“As for Ukraine, no compromise is visible for the time being, since President Trump cannot lift sanctions while bypassing Congress,” she noted. 

Officials on both sides have hinted at a possible deal on arms control, a goal both Trump and Putin have endorsed without mentioning specifics. 

One thing that Kremlin officials don’t put much stock in: Trump’s tweet diplomacy, which has shown passing support for pro-Russian positions on everything from sanctions relief to recognizing Crimea as Russian territory. 

“By now, there was quite enough evidence for Russia to realize that what Trump says should be taken with a grain of salt, to say the least,” Lipman said. 

“I think everyone realizes that it cannot be taken as his intentions or U.S. policies, or even a declaration of intentions,” she said.

What Russians want

Key to Putin’s negotiating tactics: an insistence that Russia is no longer subject to American demands or pressure. 

Yet some analysts argue that it is Russian public opinion that presents its own restraints on Putin. 

“With Putin, there is no direct accountability, but policies are settled on what public opinion allows the government and Putin to do,” said Denis Volkov, a researcher at Levada Center, a leading independent polling research agency in Moscow. 

A recent study co-authored by Volkov and the Moscow Carnegie Center showed Russians support their president’s combative stance with the West, while simultaneously are eager to lessen hostilities.

“People are getting tired of foreign policy, Putin’s foreign agenda. They want the state to spend more resources at home,” Volkov said. “The view of the majority is that we help other countries too much, spend on other countries too much, and it is time to spend more money at home.”   

In other words, a Russian mirror of Trump’s own “American First” platform, where threats and largesse are doled out in pursuit of deals in the national interest. 

“It’s not the case that Putin’s only legitimacy comes from confrontation,” Volkov said. “Legitimacy also comes from cooperation, if it’s done in the proper way.” 
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Norway renewed its financial commitment to NATO after U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met Saturday with Norwegian officials in Oslo.

Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said “Norway is committed to the two percent goal in NATO,” and added without offering specifics, “We will continue to increase defense spending substantially in the coming years.” Currently the oil-rich country spends about 1.6-percent of its GDP on defense.

NATO agreed in 2014 that each member nation would raise military spending to 2-percent of their gross domestic product by 2024. But diplomats say only two-thirds of the 29-nation alliance, excluding the U.S., have a realistic plan to reach the 2-percent level in 2024. The U.S. spent 3.57-percent of its GDP on defense in 2017.

Norway’s recommitment comes after U.S. President Donald Trump again demanded at a two-day NATO summit this week in Brussels that member nations increase their defense spending. Trump claimed to have won assurances from NATO leaders during intense talks.

Norway, which Trump has described as NATO’s “eyes and ears” in northern Europe, is considered one of America’s most valuable allies. In addition to partnering with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East, Norway helps gather intelligence on Russia’s Maritime military activities.

While Trump has criticized Norway, which shares a border with Russia, for not having a plan to boost defense spending, Mattis has praised the Scandinavian country.

After talks Saturday with Bakke-Jensen and Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide, Mattis said Norway’s commitment to the 2-percent goal was encouraging.

“Norway’s leadership in the Nordic region and especially up in the Arctic where you serve as NATO’s sentinel … you are definitely contributing beyond your weight class,” he said.

In addition to hosting one of NATO’s largest exercises in decades this fall, Norway will host up to 700 U.S. marines beginning next year, more than double the number who are presently stationed there.

Russia’s embassy in Oslo said the additional marines “makes Norway less predictable and could cause growing tensions, trigger an arms race and destabilizing the situation in northern Europe.” The embassy also said,” “We see it as clearly unfriendly, and it will not remain free of consequence.”

Trump is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday in Helsinki.
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The U.S. intelligence chief warned on Friday that the threat was growing for a devastating cyber assault on critical U.S. infrastructure, saying the “warning lights are blinking red again” nearly two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are launching daily cyber strikes on the computer networks of federal, state and local government agencies, U.S. corporations, and academic institutions, said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Of the four, “Russia has been the most aggressive foreign actor, no question,” he said.

Coats spoke at the Hudson Institute think tank shortly after the Department of Justice announced the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers on charges of hacking into the computers of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party organizations.

The indictment and Coats’ comments came three days before U.S. President Donald Trump was to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in Helsinki, Trump’s first formal summit with Putin.

The summit will begin with one-on-one talks between the two leaders in which Trump has said he will raise the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia used cyber attacks and other means to meddle in the 2016 election, a charge Moscow denies.

Coats warned that the possibility of a “crippling cyber attack on our critical infrastructure” by a foreign actor is growing.

He likened daily cyber attacks to the “alarming activities” that U.S. intelligence agencies detected before al Qaeda staged the most devastating extremist attack on the U.S. homeland on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The system was blinking red. Here we are nearly two decades later and I’m here to say the warning lights are blinking red again,” he said.

Coats said the U.S. government has not yet detected the kinds of cyber attacks and intrusions that officials say Russia launched against state election boards and voter data bases before the 2016 election.

“However, we fully realize that we are just one click away of the keyboard from a similar situation repeating itself,” Coats continued.

At the same time, he said, some of the same Russian actors who meddled in the 2016 campaign again are using fake social media accounts and other means to spread false information and propaganda to fuel political divisions in the United States, he said.

Coats cited unnamed “individuals” affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based “troll factory” indicted by a federal grand jury in February as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian election meddling.

These individuals have been “creating new social media accounts, masquerading as Americans and then using these accounts to draw attention to divisive issues,” he said.

China, Coats said, is primarily intent on stealing military and industrial secrets and had “capabilities, resources that perhaps Russia doesn’t have.” But he said Moscow aims to undermine U.S. values and democratic institutions.
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Finland is a natural choice for the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The Nordic country, which shares a long border with Russia, has a history of neutrality between Moscow and Washington. Finland has also hosted several sensitive U.S.-Soviet summits, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Helsinki.
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British detectives investigating the poisoning of two people with a military grade nerve agent said Friday that a small bottle found in the home of one of the victims tested positive for Novichok, a lethal substance produced in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, were sickened on June 30 in a southwestern England town not far from Salisbury, where British authorities say a Russian ex-spy and his daughter were poisoned with Novichok in March. 

Sturgess died in a hospital on Sunday. Rowley was in critical condition for more than a week, but has regained consciousness.

The Metropolitan Police said the bottle was found during searches of Rowley’s house Wednesday and scientists confirmed the substance in the bottle was Novichok. Police have interviewed Rowley since he became conscious. 

Police are still looking into where the bottle came from and how it got into Rowley’s house. They said further tests would be done to try to establish if the nerve agent was from the same batch that was used to poison Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. 

More than 100 police officers had been searching for the source of Rowley and Sturgess’ exposure in the town of Amesbury, where they lived, and Salisbury, where the Skripals were poisoned.

The Skripals survived and were released from the Salisbury hospital before Rowley and Sturgess were poisoned and taken there. British authorities took the father and daughter to a secret protected location.

British police said earlier they suspected the new victims had handled a container contaminated with Novichok and had no reason to think Rowley and Sturgess were targeted deliberately. 

Assistant Police Commissioner Neil Basu, Britain’s top counterterrorism officer, told local residents this week that Novichok could remain active for 50 years if it kept in a sealed container. He said he could not guarantee there were no more traces of the lethal poison in the area.

Basu said Friday that cordons would remain in place in some locations to protect the public despite the apparent breakthrough in the case. He would not provide more information about the bottle found in Rowley’s home. 

“This is clearly a significant and positive development. However, we cannot guarantee that there isn’t any more of the substance left,” Basu said. The continued blocking off of areas would “allow thorough searches to continue as a precautionary measure for public safety and to assist the investigation team.”

Britain’s Foreign Office said Friday that the U.K. has asked the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to collect samples for analysis at its labs. The organization has the power to assign blame for chemical weapons use.

The Novichok saga began in March when the Skripals mysteriously fell ill on a park bench in Salisbury. They were found to have been poisoned with Novichok. 

Prime Minister Theresa May blamed the Russian government for the attack, which the Kremlin has vehemently denied. The case led the United States and other countries to expel a large number of Russian diplomats.

Public health officials said the risk of exposure to the public is low, but advised people not to pick up any strange items.
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As Finnish citizens await the arrival of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin for their historic summit in Helsinki on Monday, they have reason to contemplate their own nation’s complex relationship with their powerful eastern neighbor.

Sandwiched between Sweden and Russia, Finland is often referred to as a nation “between East and West,” both for its geographic situation and the balancing act it performed during the Cold War, when it maintained a careful neutrality.

That stance was designed to “resolve the latent conflict between ideological ties and strategic realities,” wrote Max Jakobson, one-time Finnish ambassador to the United Nations, in his book Finland: Myth and Reality.

Finland, he says, is “a Western country ideologically and culturally, as well as part of the Western economic system.” But that leaning is overlaid with layers of complexity due to its location and history with Russia.

For roughly a century before it declared independence in 1917, Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian empire, subject to the differing approaches of various Russian monarchs. Emperor Alexander II (1818-81) ruled as a moderate who encouraged liberal institutions in Finland; today, he is remembered with a well-regarded statue in Helsinki’s Senate Square.

Later leaders, in contrast, tried to Russify Finland and insisted that its internal administration must not “conflict with the interests and honor of Russia.”

EU member, not NATO

A Finnish-Soviet Friendship Treaty dissolved with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Helsinki became a member of the European Union in 1995, an act that puts Finland squarely in the Western camp. But the majority of Finns still are uninterested in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), at least in part for fear of antagonizing their neighbor to the east.

In an apparent nod to cordial relations, Russia’s Putin visited Helsinki for Finland’s centennial celebration last year; the event was marked by pictures of him and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto sightseeing aboard a steamboat en route to dinner and a ballet performance.

On the other hand, Finland has lodged, on average, more than one land mine per meter along the nations’ 1,300-kilometer border. In the words of Pekka Toveri, brigadier general and defense attache at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, if you come to Finland you had better be invited.

“Finland doesn’t have a defense force,” Toveri told an audience at The Institute of World Politics earlier this year. “Finland is a defense force.”

“We are the most capable defense force in Northern Europe,” supported by a conscription policy and a readily deployable 280,000-strong wartime army, he added. “We have a capable neighbor, sometimes not so aggressive, sometimes a little bit more aggressive, but it’s always there, and you have to be prepared for that.”

Winter War and beyond

The world witnessed Finland’s vigilance and will to independence in the Winter War that started with a Soviet invasion in November 1939. Directed by Finland’s legendary Marshall Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, world skiing champion Pekka Niemi and others of his countrymen led squads on skis that penetrated the Soviet front lines and inflicted severe casualties. In the end, Finland lost more territory than the Stalin-led Soviet government had initially demanded, but it taught its “capable neighbor” the cost of fighting the Finns.

In recent surveys, Toveri said, 78 percent of Finns still say the country should resist any attack, “even if the end result is uncertain.”

Analysts say Finland’s history with Russia may offer lessons for the United States heading into the Trump-Putin summit.

“Finland has always been very clear-eyed about Russia,” said Erik Brattberg, a native of Sweden who heads the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based global think tank. “At the same time, Finland has kept a ‘businesslike’ relationship toward Russia.”

Brattberg warned that continuing to view Finland as a neutral country could lead to a “false narrative.” Even though Helsinki has been chosen to host the summit, Finland “is firmly part of the West and a deep partner of U.S. and NATO” and a strong proponent of a rules-based order among states.

“That’s why Finland is supportive of maintaining sanctions against Russia over the issue of Crimea. They would not like to have Crimea be recognized as part of Russia, as that would undermine the type of rules-based order — things like national sovereignty, territorial integrity — that a small country with a long border facing Russia, like Finland, ultimately depends on,” he said.

Great powers, smaller states

Kirsti Kauppi, Finland’s ambassador to the United States since 2015, said in an interview it is not “sustainable” for the large countries to think they can set the rules of international relations.

“We think that we need broad-based cooperation, that small and medium-sized countries also have a lot to contribute and a lot at stake,” Kauppi said.

Kauppi called for closer cooperation not only between the United States and Finland, but also between Washington and the European Union and the Nordic region generally: “The world is broader than the transatlantic community, certainly, but the basic link between the U.S. and the EU is extremely important in terms of how the international community takes shape.”

Urho Kekkonen, Finland’s president from 1956 to 1982, once acknowledged that small states have little power to influence the course of international events. But, he said, “Great Powers possessing the means of destroying the world bear the responsibility for the maintenance of peace,” while “smaller states can and must constantly remind them of this responsibility.”
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Filipinos tapped out text messages on their cellphones to mobilize protests against President Joseph Estrada. The effort mushroomed within hours into a “people power” revolution that forced Estrada to step down.

That was 2001. Since then, technology has created increasingly powerful smartphones that can link to the internet, provide instant access to news and connect people through social media.

In response, authorities in some countries are waging a battle to control what their people see and hear, with the goal of limiting dissent and heading off more “people power” takeovers.

“At first, it was journalists who were being threatened, it was media being suspended,” said Arnaud Froger, head of the Africa desk at Reporters Without Borders. “But now the authorities are preventing information from being spread on the internet.”

“It’s a clear attempt to silence critical voices and critical information,” Froger told VOA’s English to Africa service.

From China to Africa to Russia to the Middle East, countries have used national security as justification for passing vague laws against “inciting against public order” or even just spreading gossip. They have persuaded sites like Facebook and Google to take down content that they consider offensive.

Many countries have created their own strong web presences, both to ensure their messages get out and to monitor for anything remotely resembling criticism.

In Pakistan, bloggers have been kidnapped, allegedly by security forces, and tortured, with the purpose of intimidating them and others against criticizing the government. Vietnam has established a 10,000-strong military cyberwarfare unit to counter “wrong” views on the internet and collect data on government critics.

Saudi Arabia has arrested dozens for spreading dissent. Activists abroad have had their Facebook accounts deactivated for reporting on alleged Saudi war crimes against Yemen.

China allows only local internet companies operating under strict rules. And in North Korea, internet access essentially doesn’t exist for the general populace.

Bypassing restrictions

The restrictions have sparked a cat-and-mouse game for those seeking to get around restrictions. VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) have provided one avenue by masking the user’s identity and location. In response, several countries have banned them.

Encrypted applications like Telegram have been banned in Iran and elsewhere. Several African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, have imposed taxes on internet and social media use — even remittances from overseas relatives — or ordered websites to purchase expensive operating licenses.

“We are actually very much concerned,” Froger said. “It’s as if countries in central, eastern and southern Africa were involved in a race to restrict access to the internet in general and social media in particular.

“Journalists and citizen journalists are actually very much affected by this as they very often use Facebook to post articles and use Whatsapp to communicate with their sources.”

More protests

But in a sign of how much people have become dependent on the internet and social media, anger has started to bloom into legal action and the very protests that their governments have been trying to prevent.

Ugandan officials say they’ll rethink the country’s social media tax after a massive protest this week that police dispersed by firing tear gas and warning shots.

“Sometimes things can work out,” Froger said. “Legal actions can be taken, and protests can be held in the streets. Cameroon is now the first state ever in Africa to be brought before its own constitutional court for an internet blackout. Sometimes just by denouncing, alerting, raising public awareness is sufficient to encourage the government to back down.”
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