Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused NATO of constantly trying to provoke Russia in an attempt to draw them into a confrontation. He also said that members of the alliance continue to interfere in Russia’s domestic affairs. RT reports: The accusations came as Putin addressed senior members of the Russian intelligence agency FSB on Thursday.
In a move that is sure to unleash a fresh firestorm of accusations that Russia is interfering in the upcoming French elections, Wikileaks has has released three classified CIA "tasking orders" revealing details of a seven-month long spying campaign and involvement by the agency ahead of the 2012 French presidential election.
The 7 pages of documents reveal that all major French political parties "were targeted for infiltration by the CIA's human ("HUMINT") and electronic ("SIGINT") spies in the seven months leading up to France's 2012 presidential election."
A Senate committee has been urged to carefully consider Donald Trump’s nomination for ambassador to Israel, saying that he is an “extremist” who is unqualified for the job. In a letter sent to the Senate foreign relations committee, five former US ambassadors said that Trumps pick, hard liner David Friedman, had presented “extreme, radical positions” on Israel, supported illegal settlements and opposed a two-state solution for the Palestinian conflict.
Trump's honeymoon with capital markets is on the rocks, kept alive only by the occasional soundbite about "massive" or "phenomenal" tax cuts; it now appears that the US president's - until recently - amicable relationship with Russia is also quickly souring.
One day after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told US NATO allies they will have to pay up and meet their mandatory quota of 2% of GDP (which only 5 nations currently satisfy, among them the US and Greece), on Thursday the Pentagon's new chief also had some bad news for Russia when he rejected any kind of military collaboration with Russia, despite previous calls by Putin for the West to work with his country on Syria and other issues.