Russia

Vitaly Churkin, who served as Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations “died suddenly” in New York On Monday morning the Russian Foreign Ministry has announced.

Update: according to Reuters, Vladimir Putin was deeply upset to learn of the death of Vitaly Churkin, Russian news agencies cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Monday.

"The head of state highly valued Churkin's professionalism and diplomatic talent," Peskov said.

* * *

Via The Saker,

For a lot of Trump supporters the past week has been a painful one. Whether we chose to react with abject panic or pretended like nothing happened, something did happen and it was something big: the Tree Letter Agencies pulled-off a de facto coup against Donald Trump by forcing him to fire his most important foreign policy advisor and the man who had dared to declare that he wanted to reform the bloated and largely ineffective US intelligence community.

Via The National Interest,

Victory by the 'Russia scare' coalition will limit America’s ability to fight ISIL, complicate efforts to win UNSC support for tough enforcement of the Iran nuclear deal and give China more leverage over both Moscow and Washington.

The "Russia hacked the US election" is getting its second wind.

One day after Reuters provided further details of the ongoing FBI probes - of which there are now reportedly three - into activities that are generally classified as the Kremlin's hacking of the US presidential election, the Senate Intelligence Committee has likewise escalated its probe into Russian interference, and is requesting that agencies preserve all materials that could tie into the committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.