Politics
Thursday 18 January 2018
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“US training a “New Syrian Army” near refugee camp in Al-Hasakah to fight the government, core fighters of the group are ISIS terrorists allowed to leave Raqqa (as BBC has revealed)”
The New Syrian Army has a well-established record of fighting against the Islamic State. There is no evidence to suggest that the U.S. is deliberately arming or training ISIS fighters. -
…in 2005 the concerned parties came to an agreement with North Korea that it would terminate its nuclear weapons programme ... Only several months later, the United States decided that these agreements were not enough. The US side promptly froze the accounts of North Korean banks and said that North Korea had to do something else outside the framework of these agreements. But North Korea decided not to bother and withdrew from all those agreements, and started developing its nuclear programme once again. Why did you do that? ... In reality, you provoked North Korea to withdraw.
It was a local government-controlled Macau bank that, threatened by U.S. sanctions, froze the illicit funds. Yet, North Korea signed the 2005 deal announced days later, and continued to participate in the talks after a months-long hiatus, while conducting unauthorized missile and nuclear tests. -
“Why do we seem to have vocal and proactive opposition members in this country but they do not really provide any serious competition to the incumbent authorities? You know, Russia’s path in the past decades has been quite remarkable, to put it mildly. Why is that? Of course, some younger people do not remember or do not even know what was happening here in the 1990s and the early 2000s. So they cannot really compare it to the present situation.”
Putin explains that the reason he faces no serious rivals for the presidency is due to the accomplishments of Russia during his tenure, and implies that the opposition has no program. However, both domestic and foreign analyses of the past 17 years say that Russia’s accomplishments have been largely negated thanks to Putin’s own policies. There also are domestic political reasons why Putin’s rivals are weakened, which he does not mention. -
“There is no Russian army on the territory of Donbas but there have been created military-police formations, ready to repulse an offensive against Donbas.”
President Putin’s responses at his annual news conference repeat his claim that Russia is not involved in the Ukraine conflict, that Crimeans freely chose annexation. He turned his view of interference in the U.S. election to disputes over Russian state media – RT and Sputnik. Polygraph has fact checked many similar comments by the president. -
«… a significant part of the Russian military contingent stationed in Syrian Arab Republic is returning home to Russia. I order the Minister of Defense, the chief of General Staff to proceed with the withdrawal of the Russian group of forces to the places of their permanent deployment."
Two days after publicly ordering the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Syria, Vladimir Putin requested Parliamentary approval to significantly expand of Russia’s Naval presence in the country. -
“Actually, there is a civil war in Ukraine between the DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic], the LNR [Luhansk People’s Republic], and the rest of Ukraine. It is completely unclear why Russia should bear any responsibility for this.”
RT is predominantly citing experts and politicians who agree with the Kremlin’s claim, that Russia is not a party to the war in Ukraine, which it calls a “civil war.” There is, however factual proof of Russia’s active involvement in creating the conflict, and was behind the creation of the secessionist “republics,” which Moscow sustains financially and logistically. -
“Terrorists have been completely destroyed on the both banks of the Euphrates River. Naturally, there might be some spots of resistance, but the military work has been largely completed in the area and at the time. Completed with a full victory, I repeat, with a victory and defeat of the terrorists.”
Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday, December 6 announced a complete liberation of Syria from the Islamic State. An hour after Putin’s announcement, his statement was backed up by Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Command of Russia’s Armed Forced, who said, “The Army General Sergey Shoigu briefed the commander-in-chief, Russian President Vladimir Putin an hour ago that all ISIS terrorist groups in Syria have been destroyed and the territory was liberated.” His statement is bold, but largely accurate, with some caveats. -
“To all the self-righteous defenders of 'freedom of speech' who oh-so-ardently proclaimed that FARA registration places no restrictions whatsoever on RT's journalistic work in the US: Withdrawal of Congressional credentials speaks much louder than empty platitudes. And to borrow from Orwell, all ‘foreign agents‘ are equal, but looks like only RT is denied congressional accreditation on the basis of FARA status, while the likes of NHK and China Daily carry on business as usual, and U.S. officials continue to claim that the forced FARA registration for RT America's operating company isn't at all discriminatory.”
FARA does not restrict a media outlet's ability to cover the news. The Galleries stripped RT of credentials to cover the U.S. Congress in person. While it may appear that RT has been singled out, it is not entirely clear which outlets registered as foreign agents continue to have the credentials. -
“Closing a 55 kilometer zone around the U.S. base in At Tanf, the U.S. group established an area in which more than 50,000 people, according to various estimates, are isolated. This has created an unprecedented case of protracted blocking of humanitarian assistance to needy people. In the refugee camp, the opportunity to obtain sufficient food and appropriate medical care is absent, and children cannot go to school.”
Documents obtained by Polygraph.info, as well as Russian media reports, show that the U.S. is not solely responsible for the crisis in the Rukban refugee camp. In fact, the American side has repeatedly offered assistance in delivering aid. There are strong indicators that, the U.S. military in Syria, while being portrayed as a victimizer by the Russian Defense Ministry, is actually the target of a massive coordinated media campaign in Russia. -
Micalessin claims to have obtained “exclusive interviews” with three alleged Georgian mercenaries who took responsibility for shooting civilians during the Maidan protests
Despite overwhelming evidence that the Maidan shooters were members of the Victor Yanukovych's security services, pro-Kremlin sources have repeatedly tried to pin the killings on political opposition parties or foreign mercenaries. This story includes claims that have already been debunked. -
“The introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 prevented the West from carrying out a coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia using the technology of ‘velvet’ revolutions and preserved peace and harmony with all the peoples of the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization for more than twenty years.”
The official media outlet of the Russian Defense Ministry, TV Zvezda, published a controversial op-ed that said Czechs should be grateful for the Soviet military invasion of Czechoslovakia in response to Prague Spring in 1968. -
“[A] U.S. State Department claim that Russia’s military strength eclipses that of European Union states is especially ludicrous... [I]t [Russia] is not stronger than the European Union, by any measure, and the State Department’s [Brian] Hook [senior policy advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State] is spreading clear disinformation. All to serve an agenda that has nothing to do with Europe’s security.”
The EU does not have a military, and the U.S. and NATO have some military disadvantages in Europe, while Russia’s rapid military modernization and actions in Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine make it a conventional military threat to the region.