Russia

There is a reason Vladimir Putin and the Russian top political echelon has been avoiding the media following the onslaught of allegations lobbed at the Kremlin, and Trump: as AP writes, careful not to hurt chances for a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations, President Putin and other Russian officials "have deferred questions about their plans for future contacts with Trump and any agenda for those talks until he takes office on Friday." In short, the "Kremlin is counting the days to his inauguration and venting its anger at Barack Obama's outgoing administration, no holds barred."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the US intelligence services of performing a massive cyberattack against Russia.  According to a senior security official, Russia is facing “increased cyber attacks” originating in the U.S. Reuters reports: U.S. intelligence agencies say Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyber campaign aimed at boosting Donald Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign. Russia has dismissed the accusations as a “witch-hunt”.

What Obama Means By “The Russian Threat”

Paul Craig Roberts

What does Obama mean when he alleges Moscow “continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

He does not mean that Russia is a threat in the ordinary meaning of the word. To understand what Obama means by threat, it is necessary to understand what is the foreign policy of the United States. The foreign policy of the US is to establish American hegemony over the world.

In his first full interview of the new year, President-elect Donald Trump explains his approach to foreign policy from a "realpolitik" lens, when he told the WSJ overnight that relations with China and Russia will depend on the degree to which the two countries cooperate with U.S. economic, diplomatic and military priorities. 

Having learned previously both the identity of the former British intelligence officer who compiled the "Trump dossier", revealed by the WSJ earlier this week as former MI-6 staffer Christopher Steele, currently director of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence, and that John McCain was the person who delivered the report to the FBI, one question remained: who commissioned the original report meant to uncover a material,i.e., campaign-ending, weakness in Donald Trump's past.