ІНСАЙДЕР УКРАЇНА

Sweeping accusations that the Kremlin tried to sway the 2016 U.S. election haven’t chastened Russian trolls, hackers and spies — and might even have emboldened them.

U.S. officials and tech companies say Russians have continued online activity targeted at American voters during the campaign for Tuesday’s election, masquerading as U.S. institutions and creating faux-American social media posts to aggravate tensions around issues like migration and gun control.

Russia denies any interference. So far U.S. authorities haven’t announced any huge hacks or the kind of multipronged campaign suspected in the 2016 election, and it’s hard to judge whether the more recent Russian actions have any link to the Kremlin or will have any electoral impact.

But why do they appear to be at it again? Dozens of Russians suspected of meddling in 2016 have been hit with U.S. charges or sanctions, including well-placed magnates. Moscow’s ties with the West have deteriorated badly amid ever-more-shocking allegations of Russian interference abroad.

And some argue that Russian meddlers don’t need to mess with the U.S. midterms this year because they got what they wanted in 2016: Donald Trump in the White House and mass disillusionment with the democratic process.

The Kremlin likes Trump because he’s one of the rare Western leaders to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin, but its hoped-for Russian-American rapprochement hasn’t really materialized. A Democratic House or Senate after Tuesday’s U.S. election would make that an even more distant prospect.

“Russians have a preference and they will do what they can to swing (the result) in their favor, especially if margins are tight,” said James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia program at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

He cautions, however, that “Russia is not responsible for all of America’s problems. America has splits and fissures like all of us, and Russia puts in a lever and pries them open.”

Some Russians, meanwhile, wear the U.S. accusations as a badge of honor, a sign that their country is a fearsome world power again.

The first person charged with foreign interference in the 2018 midterms, Elena Khusyaynova, said “my heart filled with pride” at the news. Speaking last week on Russian TV after being accused in the United States of a covert social media campaign for both the 2016 and 2018 votes, she added, “It turns out that a simple Russian woman could help citizens of a superpower elect their president.”

Pavel Koshkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies called accusations of meddling “a gift to Russian propaganda and Russian politicians,” who can use U.S. anti-Russian sentiment “as a tool in stirring anti-Americanism and increasing their approval ratings.”

The 2016 U.S. election thrust Russian foreign interference into the spotlight, but it wasn’t an isolated project. It fit into a yearslong effort by Putin’s Kremlin to take revenge over what’s seen as the U.S.-led humiliation of post-Soviet Russia, through crippling loan programs and NATO’s post-Cold War expansion.

The Kremlin also resents what it considers U.S. interference in the politics of countries once under Moscow’s sphere of influence, from Ukraine to the Caucasus. To many Russians, what’s happening now in the U.S. is just payback.

The resulting U.S. sanctions have damaged the Russian economy, but if the goal was changing Russian foreign policy, “this goal certainly hasn’t been achieved,” said analyst Masha Lipman. “In fact, the opposite is true. The more pressure (on Russia), the lower the desire or willingness to concede.”

As special counsel Robert Mueller has investigated possible Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign, Moscow has increased efforts to make its mark elsewhere — in Syria, Libya, and in political debates across Europe.

So far in 2018, Russian agents have been accused of a nerve agent attack in Britain, trying to hack the world’s chemical weapons watchdog in the Netherlands, and seeking to derail a referendum in Macedonia to stop the country from joining NATO and the European Union.

Even after Mueller’s team in February indicted a dozen Russians linked to the Internet Research Agency, the so-called troll farm in St. Petersburg, its sponsors openly continued to target U.S. audiences.

One of its projects, a news site called USAReally, covers tight U.S. congressional races and is closely following the migrant caravan heading north from Latin America.

“Yes, we are a Russian site. We talk to Americans about America. But is that forbidden?” its chief editor Alexander Malkevich, an avowed Trump fan, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Influence readers? Every media wants to do that. … and so what?”

He acknowledged that Russian-American relations are unlikely to improve quickly no matter the outcome Tuesday — and expressed interest in the 2020 U.S. presidential race.

Malkevich also assails what he calls the myth of American democracy. That’s one more way that alleged Russian manipulation of U.S. social media serves the Kremlin’s interests: By discrediting Western democracy, that strengthens Putin’s argument to his own voters that his authoritarian model of governance is best.

“The growing confrontation with the West and a focus on it on national television channels probably helped consolidate this effect of a fortress under siege,” one of Putin’s metaphors for modern Russia, Lipman said. “And pledging allegiance to the leader is a matter not only of loyalty but even of national security and national identity. ”

Many of the Russians accused of interference in the 2016 U.S. campaign have moved underground or moved on. Some shut down their social media presence. Some have changed jobs.

One of the indicted troll factory workers, Sergei Polozov, announced on the Russian social network VKontakte that he was “using his notoriety for a good cause” and had persuaded Russian censors to block four Ukrainian news sites. He vowed to continue fighting those who “try to drag Russia through the mud” and thanked “those who want to join me in the fight against informational enemies.”

The troll factory, meanwhile, has moved to bigger offices in St. Petersburg, just 2.5 kilometers (a mile and a half) across town.
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Italy’s president has recalled World War I’s roots in “aggressive nationalism” and urged young people to remember the conflict’s lessons while striving for peaceful co-existence.

Italian head of state Sergio Mattarella attended several ceremonies in Italy on Sunday, part of a week of observances marking the 100th anniversary of the war’s end.

One was in Trieste, an Adriatic port not far from some of the final, deadliest battles between Italian soldiers and troops of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.

Mattarella said the war demonstrated the “incapacity of the European ruling class” to pursue “national aspirations and interests in a peaceful” way and surrender to “aggressive nationalism” and quests for power.

Mattarella said an “active” memory for the victims of wars can shore up freedom and peaceful co-existence as “irreversible” choices for Europeans.

 
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Adventurer Ross Edgley became the first man to swim around the coast of mainland Britain as he completed a 1,780 mile-trip to make a triumphant return to dry land in Margate on Sunday.

The 33-year-old, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, had left the Kent town on June 1, swimming in a clockwise direction. He had not set foot on land once and slept in a support boat.

Edgley, who swam up to 12 hours a day, battled through strong tides, hundreds of jellyfish stings and had to cope with a disintegrating tongue caused by salt water during his Great British Swim.

He expended an estimated 500,000 calories during the journey, and ate more than 500 bananas to provide him with a constant source of energy.

In mid-August, he broke the world record for the longest stage sea swim of 73 days set by Benoit Lecomte, who swam across the Atlantic Ocean in 1998.

This was Edgley’s latest record-breaking feat. In April 2016, he completed the world’s longest rope climb, equivalent to the height of Mount Everest. That was two months after he completed a marathon while pulling a car.
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Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigner Kateryna Gandzyuk, seriously injured in an acid attack in July, has died in hospital, sources said Sunday.

“Katya (Kateryna) is dead. Details will be available in a while,” posted a Facebook group that publishes updates about Gandzyuk’s health and news on the investigation into the attack.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the news and expressed condolences to Gandzyuk’s relatives at a meeting with representatives of the Ukrainian community in Turkey’s Antalya, where he is on an official visit.

“I appeal to law enforcement officers to do everything possible so that the murderers of Kateryna Gandzyuk are found, put on trial and punished,” Poroshenko tweeted.

Gandzyuk, 33, who worked as an adviser to the mayor of Ukraine’s southern city Kherson, was leaving home early on the morning of July 31 when a man poured about a liter of acid over her and ran away.

Gandzyuk was immediately hospitalized in serious condition, with burns on 30 percent of her body, including her upper torso, arms, and face.

Gandzyuk was an outspoken critic of law enforcement agencies, especially the police.
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Heavy rain and gales devastating parts of Italy have killed two more people, pushing the overall death toll to at least 17, and laid waste to vast swaths of forest. 

A German tourist died Friday when hit by lightning on the island of Sardinia, while another person struck by lightning several days ago died in a hospital, Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said Saturday. 

A spokeswoman said 17 deaths related to the severe weather had been reported to the agency so far. 

Many of the victims have been killed by falling trees. Coldiretti, the association of Italian agricultural companies, said in a statement that gales had destroyed about 14 million trees, many in the far north. 

Areas from the far northeast to Sicily in the southwest have been affected by the storms, with the worst damage in the northern regions of Trentino and Veneto — the region around Venice — where villages and roads have been cut off by landslides.

In the Alps near Belluno, 100 km (60 miles) north of Venice, pine trees and red spruces were snapped wholesale like matchsticks.

The surface of the Comelico Superiore dam, farther north near the Austrian border, was covered with the trunks of trees that had fallen into the Piave river.

“We’ll need at least a century to return to normality,” Coldiretti said. 

Many of the squares and walkways of Venice itself have been submerged in the highest floods the canal city has seen in a decade.

The governor of Veneto, Luca Zaia, said the region’s storm damage amounted to at least a billion euros ($1.1 billion).

Angelo Borrelli, head of the Civil Protection Department, said Veneto had seen winds of up to 180 kph (112 mph), and that the situation there was “apocalyptic.”

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was due to visit the region Sunday. 
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Turkey’s president says Donald Trump has promised to review possible U.S. measures against a Turkish bank for evading sanctions on Iran. 

Speaking Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave details about a phone conversation he had with Trump on Thursday as strained relations between the two countries ease following Turkey’s release of a jailed American pastor. 

Erdogan said he raised the issue of the state-owned Halkbank, which had an executive charged in New York for taking part in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Turkey maintains Halkbank did not violate the sanctions. 

Erdogan said Trump “said he would immediately instruct his ministers about this.” It was not clear what Trump could do. 

They also discussed joint military patrols in Manbij in northern Syria. 

Erdogan said he would meet with Trump in France next weekend.
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Brexit is undermining Northern Ireland’s hard-won peace by creating tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Saturday, even as hopes rose for a solution to the Irish border problem that has deadlocked negotiations. 

“Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement” — the 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of violence in Northern Ireland — “and it is fraying relationships between Britain and Ireland,” Varadkar said. 

“Anything that pulls the two communities apart in Northern Ireland undermines the Good Friday Agreement, and anything that pulls Britain and Ireland apart undermines that relationship,” he told Ireland’s RTE radio. 

Negotiations between Britain and the European Union over Britain’s departure from the bloc have stalled over the issue of the border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. 

Both sides agree there must be no customs posts or other barriers that could disrupt businesses and residents or undermine Northern Ireland’s peace. But they haven’t agreed on how to guarantee that — and Britain is due to leave the bloc on March 29. 

The border impasse has heightened fears that the U.K. might crash out of the EU without a deal on divorce terms and future relations, leading to chaos at ports and economic turmoil. 

The EU has proposed keeping Northern Ireland inside a customs union with the bloc to remove the need for border checks on the island. 

But Britain’s Conservative government and its Northern Irish ally, the Democratic Unionist Party, won’t accept that because it would mean customs and regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. 

Britain wants instead to keep the whole U.K. in an EU customs union, but only temporarily. 

Although there has been no outward sign of a Brexit breakthrough, Irish and British officials say they are increasingly optimistic that a solution can be found. 

After meeting Friday with Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney in Dublin, British Prime Minister Theresa May’s deputy, David Lidington, said negotiators were “very close” to an agreement. 

Coveney agreed there had been “a lot of progress.” 

“I think it is possible to get a deal in November,” he said. 
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With just days to go until the U.S. midterm elections, there are growing fears that Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy extend far beyond the polls on Nov. 6 or the presidential election in 2020.

Defense and security officials worry that as part of Moscow’s plan to sow division and discord, it is trying to conquer the U.S. military — not with bullets or missiles but with tweets and memes.

The tactic is an outgrowth of Russia’s overarching strategy to find seams within U.S. society where distrust or anger exist and widen those divisions with targeted messaging.

In the case of the U.S. military, according to current and former U.S. and Western officials, the Kremlin’s aim is likely to establish what is known as reflexive control. By seeding U.S. troops with the right type of disinformation, they say, Russia can predispose them to make choices or decisions that are favorable for Moscow.

The exact extent to which U.S. military personnel have been targeted or swayed is unclear.

VOA spoke with multiple defense and security officials, all of whom declined to comment on the nature or scope of Russia’s military-oriented influence operations. Still, almost all of the officials admitted Russia’s targeting of U.S. military personnel with influence operations, and the way it is being done, is a concern.

“We know it goes on,” said Ed Wilson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. “That’s why we’ve amped up and increased the attention that we’re paying.

“We’re taking a renewed look at how we train and educate the broader force,” he said, noting that efforts go beyond just the military to the Defense Department’s partner agencies.

The former commanding general for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, Army Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, described the need to educate and shield troops from disinformation campaigns as a matter of “force protection.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical force or an information force,” Funk said. “Are you concerned about it? Of course. Do you have to have campaigns where you inform your soldiers of those kinds of things that happen? Sure.”

Reflexive control

Officials and experts say Russia’s use of influence operations to target the U.S. armed forces should come as no surprise. Russian President Vladimir Putin has tested the approach, using social media especially, in places like Ukraine, and since then it has become an ever more critical part of Russia’s overarching strategy.

“There’s nothing new with Russia or the Soviet Union wanting to have that degree of influence,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in September. “This is really kind of something that is in Putin’s DNA as a former KGB agent.”

U.S. officials have been aware of the effort for some time. At least as far back as March 2017, a Defense Information School presentation to Army public affairs officers identified disinformation on social media as a high-risk problem, capable of eroding “trust and confidence” in the ranks as well as in the Army as a whole.

But much of the military’s focus in dealing with social media, at least from what has been shared publicly, has concentrated on scams targeting military personnel, or on inappropriate or even unlawful behavior.

Some top U.S. officials have tried to downplay the dangers of Russia’s influence operation, saying in some ways the threat posed to U.S. troops is no different from the threat to anyone else.

“Like all Americans, we have to be alert to the people who would try to manipulate an election in the information age, when there’s so many feeds coming in to everybody,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said when asked about the threat in August.

“Certainly, we pay attention to that,” Mattis said. “But it’s part of the larger domain of protecting America.”

Already working?

Experts worry that simply treating the Russian influence operations targeting the military as an American problem and not a military problem has left the U.S. military vulnerable to Russia’s social media onslaught.

“U.S. military personnel and veterans — it is the uncovered stone in the Russian influence effort that no one is really taking enough of an interest in,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and now a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.

And Watts, who has testified before Congress on Russian influence operations, thinks the Russians have already made considerable headway.

“At the enlisted ranks in the U.S. military, Russia won over a huge base of support in this country that still continues on today,” he said.

Some of the early Russian success could be traced back to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, when their push to sway the election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump, amplifying messages like “America First” and his tough talk on terrorism, may have resonated with rank-and-file members of the military.

A May 2016 unscientific survey by the Military Times found “Donald Trump emerged as active-duty service members’ preference to become the next U.S. president, topping Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin.”

More recent polling by Military Times and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University suggests opinions may be changing. More than 70 percent of troops surveyed said Russia was a significant threat, an increase of 18 percent from the previous year.

Yet experts and former officials say there is evidence to suggest Russian influence operations targeting U.S. military personnel and their families have continued unabated.

“Whether that’s Facebook, Twitter and others, we’re seeing where it [Russia] is focusing on identifying affinity groups,” said Heather Conley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Now a senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Conley says the military is just one of several such groups in Russia’s sights, such as law enforcement and religious organizations.

“These unwittingly are being used to promote disinformation and malign influence,” she said. “It starts identifying the key voices within these broader groups.”

Phony military ties

At least in part, Russia has been trying to reach out to those voices on platforms like Twitter, using fake accounts purporting to be those of Americans with ties to the military.

In Twitter’s latest release of accounts linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (on Oct. 17), at least 39 had user descriptions promoting links to the military.

Some gained little to no traction, like one that described the user as “Fighting to Make America Great Again strong #military supporter. Combat #Vet ????#OORAH Ret. #Frogman ???? #Sheepdog #Patriot ???? Follow me,” which did not attract a single follower.

Others did better, getting hundreds of followers. One Russian account, describing the user as a “Proud AMERICAN, wife, mother, conservative, served my country in USMC,” had more than 2,000 followers.

“We certainly are still seeing a lot of the accounts that we’re looking at that continue to have what seemed to be clear military connections,” Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy, told VOA.

Schafer, along with his colleagues, have been studying Russia’s outreach on social media to U.S. military personnel and their families. He said the use of terms like “veteran” or “Navy mom” is not unusual.

“You’ll see a lot of banners on Twitter, the account pictures that will be kind of non-identifiable in terms of a specific person, but a member of the military or just some sort of graphic that connotes that person is part of the military or a family member,” he said.

Still, Schafer said it is difficult to determine just how much Russia has managed to penetrate the U.S. military community, whether on Twitter or other social media platforms, like Facebook.

“My guess is a lot of this probably would be happening more in closed Facebook groups in which there are many with the military, and frankly, nobody has any idea what’s really happening for those groups, because of course Facebook doesn’t share those with researchers,” he said.

Isolated community

And there are worries that the U.S. military may be especially vulnerable as officials admit the defense community’s connection to the rest of the country is as weak as it has been in a long time.

“My concern is the broader isolation from the community we serve, and that’s a discussion [in Congress] as well,” Army Secretary Mark Esper said during a breakfast forum in August. “On the Army staff alone, you look at any number of the senior leaders, I think they all have at least one son or daughter, if not more, who are army officers or who are serving.”

“We’ve become more segmented,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. “I’m very concerned about that.”

Reed, like Esper, downplayed concerns that the problem is one the Russians could exploit.

“I can’t think of an institution that’s more committed to America, one America and one that’s governed by the Constitution, than the military,” he said recently.

US allies already targeted by Moscow

But U.S. allies say there is reason to worry as they have seen Russia use disinformation to repeatedly target their forces.

“We have seen attempts to erode trust within the alliance,” NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu told VOA by email.

NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Latvia, working with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, has seen several large-scale disinformation campaigns and also smaller-scale attacks targeting NATO’s enhanced forward presence in the Baltics.

“Our personnel get guidance and instruction regarding misinformation and information security as part of their pre-deployment training and their arrival process in order to increase their resilience,” according to Maj. Mark Peebles with NATO’s Task Force Latvia Headquarters.

“They are aware that it’s out there and are advised to maintain a critical eye to what they see on social media,” he said.

The British, too, have seen indications that Russia and others may be trying to cause dissent in the ranks.

“Quite a few senior commanders, increasingly, I see now, having had evidence of false Facebook websites coming up routinely in their names,” said Lt. Gen. Nick Pope, British army deputy chief of the general staff, describing efforts to take the fake pages down as “whack a rat.”

“The fact is that our potential adversaries, hostile agencies, are using cybercrime, if you call it that, as a mechanism now to try to unhinge reliable, evidence-based platforms,” he said.
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Britain and Ireland will seek to hold regular summits between leaders and ministers after Brexit to maintain ties strained by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, senior ministers from both governments said on Friday.

Relations between the two have improved markedly since Ireland gained independence from Britain following a bloody struggle almost a century ago.

But ties have been tested over the last two years with Ireland a key player on the opposite side of the Brexit negotiating table to Britain. Arguments over how to manage the the border between EU-member state Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland have threatened the talks.

“What we’ve agreed is that we should aim for a model which is based upon a pattern of top level summits involving heads of government and senior ministers, probably alternating between the United Kingdom and Ireland year-by-year, and backed up by close bilateral work between ministers,” Britain’s Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington told a news conference.

“There is that shared commitment that we are not going to let political turbulence, which is a reality at the moment, deflect us from recognising that we have so much in common and so much both to gain from continued close work together.”

Lidington, Prime Minister Theresa May’s de facto deputy, was speaking after a meeting of a British-Irish cooperative body that was convened for the first time in a decade earlier this year as a result of a political deadlock in Northern Ireland.

Britain and Ireland are co-guarantors of the 1998 peace deal that ended 30 years of sectarian violence in the province and introduced devolved government. However the power-sharing executive has not met for almost two years following a breakdown between Irish nationalist and pro-British unionist politicians.

Lidington said officials would come up with proposals by early next year to replace the current regular meetings at EU meetings that helped improve the “indispensable relationship.”

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney also sought to play down a number of recent newspaper stories that highlighted a deterioration in relations between the neighbouring countries.

“Some of what you read about the stresses and strains that are sometimes reported between the British and Irish government, on a personal that is certainly not the case,” Coveney said.
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President Vladimir Putin congratulated Russia’s GRU military intelligence on its centenary Friday, hailing the agency that has been accused by the West of election meddling, nerve agent poisonings and hacking attacks against chemical weapons probes and anti-doping sports bodies.

“I’m confident of your professionalism, courage and determination,” the Russian leader said in a speech to GRU officers in Moscow.

Putin said he highly appreciates the intelligence information and the analytics produced by the GRU and also praised the agency for its actions in Syria, saying it strongly contributed to the success of Russia’s campaign there.

The United States and its allies have accused the GRU of involvement in the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in Britain, hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and disrupting anti-doping efforts in world sports. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations, calling them part of a Western smear campaign.

Putin made no reference to Western accusations against the GRU, but noted rising global tensions.

“The conflict potential in the world is growing,” Putin said in Friday’s speech. “There are provocations and blatant lies, as well as attempts to upset strategic parity.”

The GRU has recently faced a series of exposures that revealed its inner workings.

In September, British intelligence released surveillance images of GRU agents accused of the March nerve agent attack on former GRU officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. The investigative group Bellingcat and the Russian site The Insider quickly exposed the agents’ real names. 

Dutch authorities also have recently identified four alleged GRU agents who tried to hack the world’s chemical weapons watchdog from a hotel parking lot.

While the GRU counts its history from 1918, when it was created in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, Putin also mentioned its predecessors in imperial Russia. He noted that some imperial army officers helped the Bolsheviks organize military intelligence after the 1917 revolution. 

“They realized that there is no worse shame than to betray the Motherland, betray comrades, and at the time of turmoil and revolutionary upheavals helped preserve the continuity of the service’s traditions,” he said.

Putin added “military intelligence officers showed the same loyalty to their duty in the early 1990s following the breakup of the Soviet Union, helping preserve the GRU potential.”
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The fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi said the Trump administration’s response to Khashoggi’s death has been “devoid of moral foundation.”

“Of all nations, the United States should be leading the way in bringing the perpetrators to justice,” Hatice Cengiz wrote in an op-ed piece appearing Friday in The Washington Post.

Instead, Cengiz said, “Some in Washington are hoping this matter will be forgotten with simple delaying tactics. But we will continue to push the Trump administration to help find justice for Jamal.  There will be no coverup.”

The New York Times, quoting two people familiar with the matter, reported Friday that White House officials knew from an Oct. 9 phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that he considered Khashoggi a dangerous Islamist, and therefore knew the Saudi prince had a potential motive for the killing.  But because of its deep investment in Prince Mohammed as the main lynchpin of the administration’s Middle East agenda, the Trump Adminstation concluded it could not feasibly limit his power.

Instead, the White House “has joined governments around the region in weighing what effect the stigma of the Khashoggi killing may have on the crown prince’s ability to rule – and what benefit can be extracted from his potential weakness,” the Times said, quoting people familiar with the administration’s deliberations.

Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, disappeared last month when he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get a document he needed to get married.

The journalist, who was also a columnist for The Washington Post, was critical of Saudi Arabia.  He is reported to have been strangled and dismembered in the consulate.  “There is no explanation for this hate,” his fiancee said.

Governments, Cengiz said, “must all ask themselves a fundamental question: If the democracies of the world do not take genuine steps to bring to justice the perpetrators of this brazen, callous act – one that has caused universal outrage among their citizens – what moral authority are they left with?  Whose freedom and human rights can they credibly continue to defend?”

Cengiz said in The Washington Post Friday that it has been one month since she last saw her fiance as he entered the Saudi consulate.  She noted that Friday is also United Nations International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.

 “The coincidence is tragic and painful,” she said.

 
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U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will visit Ukraine, Poland and other eastern European countries next week as the Trump administration seeks to offer them alternatives to buying coal and gas from Russia.

Perry will also visit Hungary and the Czech Republic on the trip. He will meet with government officials on topics from nuclear energy to cyber security and coal and liquefied natural gas exports, the Department of Energy said in a release on Thursday.

The Trump administration is seeking foreign markets for coal as domestic consumption has dropped to the lowest level since 1983 due to closures of coal-fired power plants that are suffering from abundant, cheap supplies of natural gas.

In July, 2017 Centrenergo PJSC, one of the largest power companies in Ukraine, agreed to buy 700,000 tons of U.S. coal.

Last month, Poland’s top natural gas company, PGNiG, finalized the terms of a deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from U.S. company Venture Global LNG, as part of a move to cut reliance on Russia.

Poland has relied on Russia’s Gazprom for more than half of its gas under a long-term deal that expires in 2022.

The United States is touting its LNG as more reliable than pipelined gas from Russia, but LNG is more expensive because of the costs of shipping and super-cooling the fuel to the point where it becomes a liquid.

 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says it may be a “handful more weeks” before the U.S. has enough evidence to slap sanctions on those behind the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was killed after he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month, according to a Turkish prosecutor. His body has not been found.

Pompeo told St. Louis radio station KMOX Thursday the administration is “reviewing putting sanctions on the individuals that we have been able to identify to date that … were engaged in that murder.”

“We’re going to find the fact pattern,” Pompeo added. “The president said we will demand accountability for those who were involved in the commission of this heinous crime.”

The United States is urging Saudi Arabia to locate Khashoggi’s body and return it to his family as soon as possible.

WATCH: US Calls on Saudis to Return Khashoggi’s Remains for Burial

Killed inside Saudi consulate

Khashoggi was killed when he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month, according to a Turkish prosecutor. His body has not been found, although Turkish police last month searched a forest on Istanbul’s outskirts and near Yalova, a city near the Sea of Marmara, for Khashoggi’s remains.

Khashoggi’s friends and family say they want just a piece of his body so they can carry out his wish to be buried in the city of Medina, Islam’s second holiest site.

“We are calling the entire world to put the necessary pressure, international pressure, on the Saudi government to find his remains, to be able to bury him, even before finding those who are responsible, before this issue is covered up,” Faith Oke, executive director of the Turkey-Arab Media Association, said Thursday.

Turkish officials said chief prosecutor Irfan Fidan failed to get answers about the location of Khashoggi’s body and who ordered his killing during three days of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation in Istanbul.

The Saudis have given a shifting account of what happened to Khashoggi on Oct. 2. After initially denying Khashoggi had been killed, the Saudi government claimed he died in an unplanned “rogue operation.” Saudi public prosecutor Saud al-Mojeb offered a different explanation last week when he said the killing was premeditated.

After talks with Mojeb earlier this week, Fidan also said the killing was premeditated, with Khashoggi being suffocated immediately after entering the consulate and his body dismembered.

Turkey is trying to extradite 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia so they can be tried in a Turkish court. Among the suspects are 15 members of an alleged “hit squad” that Turkey claims was sent to Istanbul to kill The Washington Post columnist who had written critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Some of the people suspected of being involved in the killing have close ties to the prince, whose condemnation has failed to alleviate suspicions he was involved.

Khashoggi entered the consulate last month to get a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. 
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U.S. and Turkish forces have begun joint patrols in the area of Manbij, Syria, where Kurdish militia fighters have been critical to defeating Islamic State fighters.

Two U.S. defense officials and Turkish officials confirmed the patrols in northern Syria on Thursday.

The Pentagon has said the purpose of the patrols is to support “long-term security in Manbij” and uphold its commitments to NATO-ally Turkey.

Kurdish militia fighters in Manbij are supported by Washington but slammed by Ankara as anti-Turkey terrorists.

Before Thursday, U.S. and Turkish forces had conducted what the Pentagon described as “coordinated but independent” patrols in the area.

The patrols come as Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour region temporarily suspended their offensive against the Islamic State terror group due to recent Turkish shelling attacks.

Turkish forces this week struck several Kurdish militia targets near the town of Kobani in northern Syria.

The SDF said Wednesday that they fired back in self-defense, and “as a result, a Turkish military vehicle was destroyed.”

Army Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the counter-Islamic State coalition, said Thursday the U.S. was in communication with both Turkey and the SDF “to de-escalate the situation.”

“Unity of focus on the defeat of ISIS is the Goal!” Ryan said on Twitter.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed Syria in a phone call Thursday.

Earlier this week, Erdogan increased threats to launch a major offensive against Syrian Kurdish fighters near the Euphrates River.

“We will destroy the terror structure east of the Euphrates River. We have completed preparations and plans regarding this issue,” Erdogan said in a speech to lawmakers from his ruling AK Party on Tuesday.

VOA’s Sirwan Kajjo contributed to this story.

 
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Turkey’s justice minister again called on Saudi Arabia to fully cooperate in the investigation into last month’s killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Abdulhamit Gul said Turkish chief prosecutor Irfan Fidan failed to get answers about the location of Khashoggi’s body and who ordered his killing during three days of Turkish-Saudi investigative efforts in Istanbul.

“This issue has become a world matter,” Gul told reporters Thursday in Ankara. “This case cannot be covered up, and we are expecting close cooperation from Saudi authorities on the investigation we are conducting transparently and meticulously.”

After initially denying Khashoggi had been murdered, the Saudi government claimed he died in an unplanned “rogue operation.”

Saudi public prosecutor Saud Al Mojeb offered a different explanation last week when he said the killing was premeditated.

Fidan also said after talks with Mojeb earlier this week the killing was premeditated, with Khashoggi being suffocated immediately after entering the consulate and his body dismembered before it was disposed of.

Turkey is trying to extradite 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia so they can be tried in a Turkish court. Among them are 15 members of an alleged “hit squad” Turkey claims was sent to Istanbul to kill the Washington Post columnist who had written critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Some of the people suspected of being involved in the murder have close ties to the prince whose condemnation of the murder has failed to alleviate suspicions he was involved.

Khashoggi entered the consulate on October 2 to get a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee.
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More than 100,000 people who were dismissed from their jobs in the wake of the failed coup in Turkey in 2016 are still awaiting justice – and their lives have been shattered, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group says in most cases the government has failed to present any evidence justifying the mass purge of public workers. Dozens of journalists and human rights workers have also been arrested since the failed coup attempt. More from Henry Ridgwell.
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NATO and Russia envoys on Wednesday discussed their respective large-scale military exercises and a Cold War-era missile treaty that Washington vows to quit over accusations of Russian non-compliance, the Western alliance said.

The talks, the first between the former Cold War foes since May, came against a backdrop of renewed tensions between the West and Russia, most notably over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine.

A NATO statement said the sides had an “open exchange” of views on Ukraine, Russia’s Vostok military exercises and NATO’s ongoing Trident Juncture drills, as well as on Afghanistan and hybrid security threats.

NATO this month launched its largest exercises since the Cold War in Norway, whose non-NATO Nordic neighbors Sweden and Finland have drawn closer to the alliance since being spooked by Russia’s role in the turmoil in Ukraine.

NATO troops are manoeuvring close to the borders of Russia, which held its huge annual Vostok military drill in September. The two are regularly irked by each other’s exercises, where a show of force and deterrence play a major role.

The drills have steadily grown in size in recent years as an atmosphere of stand-off between Russia and the West has grown. Russia’s 2018 edition of Vostok mobilized 300,000 troops and included joint exercises with the Chinese army — the biggest such drills since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg also called on Russia to make quick changes to comply in full with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Russia denies violating it.

“We all agree that the INF Treaty has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security … Allies have repeatedly expressed serious concerns about the new Russian missile system, known as the 9M729 or SSC-8,” Stoltenberg said in the statement.

He said development of the SSC-8 land-based, intermediate-range Cruise missile posed “a serious risk to strategic stability.”

“NATO has urged Russia repeatedly to address these concerns in a substantial and transparent way, and to actively engage in a constructive dialogue with the United States … We regret that Russia has not heeded our calls,” Stoltenberg added. At the same time, NATO hopes Washington — whose other rivals China or Iran are not constrained by the treaty that rid Europe of land-based nuclear missiles — will not pull out in the end. 

European leaders worry any collapse of the INF treaty could lead to a new, destabilizing arms race.
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Britain’s Brexit secretary has told lawmakers that he expects a long-elusive divorce deal with the European Union to be finalized before November 21, though there is still little sign of a breakthrough on the vexed issue of the Irish border.

Dominic Raab told Parliament’s Exiting the EU Committee in a letter that he would give evidence to the panel “when a deal is finalized, and currently expect 21 November to be suitable.”

The committee released the October 24 letter Wednesday. Raab’s Department for Exiting the European Union said later “there is no set date for the negotiations to conclude” and that the secretary mentioned November 21 in response to a suggestion that he appear before the committee on that date.

Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, but London and Brussels have not reached an agreement on their divorce terms and a smooth transition to a new relationship. The stalemate has heightened fears that the U.K. might leave without a deal in place, leading to chaos at ports and economic turmoil.

Prime Minister Theresa May has said a Brexit deal is 95 percent done, but the two sides remain at odds over the issue of the border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.

Britain and the EU agree there must be no customs posts or other barriers that could disrupt businesses and residents on either side of the border and undermine Northern Ireland’s hard-won peace process. But the two parties have rejected each other’s proposed solution.

Raab said in his letter that “despite our differences, we are not far from an agreement on this issue.”

He said the U.K. and the EU agree “on the principle of a U.K.-wide customs backstop” – a plan to keep the U.K. in a customs union with the bloc, rendering border checks on goods unnecessary.

Britain has said such a solution must be temporary, while the EU wants a permanent fix. But Raab said agreement should be possible, and “the end is now firmly in sight.”

An October 17-18 EU summit that had been billed as the deadline for a breakthrough ended with the talks still deadlocked. But behind-the-scenes talks have continued.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Wednesday in Paris that a deal in the next month was feasible, but “if they want to conclude the text of a withdrawal treaty in November, then the negotiations need to intensify.”

Any agreement reached by the two sides must be approved by the British and European parliaments. 

May’s proposed deal faces strong domestic opposition both from pro-Brexit lawmakers, who say it keeps Britain bound too closely to the bloc, and from pro-EU legislators, who argue it will create barriers between the U.K. and its biggest trading partner.

 
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Adding 16 teams to the 2022 World Cup is about far more than sports. The head of world soccer thinks the proposal can help solve the bitter diplomatic fight between host Qatar and a Saudi Arabian-led coalition trying to isolate the tiny nation.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has visions of the World Cup uniting the region. He says the World Cup should expand from 32 to 48 teams by playing some of the matches in stadiums in the very nations who have cut ties with Qatar and closed land, air and sea passage to and from the oil-rich nation of 2.6 million people, all but about 300,000 of them foreign workers.

Qatar will have eight stadiums to host 64 games in an already-congested 28-day window. The World Cup was moved from June-July to November-December because of the extreme heat in the Persian Gulf, and the tournament schedule was condensed to minimize the disruption to the top leagues around the world.

Adding 16 more nations would mean 80 games, and that would require more stadiums. Infantino asked the emir of Qatar if he would consider allowing matches to be held in other nations, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, all are part of an economic and travel boycott against his country.

“This is something that would probably be a nice message,” Infantino said.

When the joint bid from the United States, Canada and Mexico won the right to host the 2026 World Cup in June, a trade fight was rumbling between the North American nations. Eventually, a new trade pact was negotiated.

At the time of the 2026 vote, “the relations were a little bit tense right between these countries,” Infantino said. “It’s something that’s comparable with the Gulf region. But for me, you know if there is a possibility [of sharing games], if there is a chance at least to even discuss, we should try.”

With travel to Qatar currently blocked by its neighbors, Infantino cautions that “maybe it will never happen.” He says he brought it up with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar, and the emir was open to the idea.

“When we speak it remains between us of course,” Infantino said. “What is, I think, important is that he told us, `Let’s continue the discussions together and see if this can (work).”‘

Qatar’s World Cup organizing committee is wary about changing plans almost a decade in the making, and having already irritated European soccer leagues with the FIFA-imposed switch to start in November.

“We need to know pretty soon,” said Nasser Al Khater, deputy secretary general of the organizing committee. “So we need to understand basically we’re looking to change the format, increase the number of days. Can we do it with eight [stadiums] and increasing the number of days?”

The FIFA membership has already voted on expanding its showpiece even to 48 teams in 2026. Infantino has been saying since March he is considering fast-tracking those plans by four years and acknowledged there has been little progress since then.

“Obviously we cannot even start discussing anything like that in a serious way without Qatar,” Infantino said. “I was discussing with [Qatar] federation officials and also with the Emir of Qatar and they want to look at it together with us and what kind of options … sharing some matches with some other countries or not … and these kind of things. These are topics that first, of course, the Qataris, of course, have to be comfortable with. Could they do it on their own? No.”

Infantino hopes to have resolved the number of finalists by March, with the qualifying draw scheduled for next year. If new conditions are added to the 2022 schedule, a bidding process for the extra games might be necessary.

“This is all will all be part of their studies and the discussions,” Infantino said. “We’ll study it we have to make sure that we have a proper process in place.”

The decision to award the tournament to Qatar in a 2010 vote forced FIFA to deal with concerns about labor conditions for migrant workers, many building the stadiums. The bidding process for the 2026 World Cup was the first where FIFA assessed the human rights records of countries.

If Qatar’s neighbors joined in hosting games in 2022, human rights conditions would come into focus again.

“This will obviously be part of discussions,” Infantino said. “Without the decision to go to Qatar would anything have changed? Who knows?But certainly, the fact that there was a World Cup in the spotlight for everyone has contributed to the fact that we are going, we’re speaking to them and we’re trying to tell them, `Guys try at least to change and so on.”‘

The United Arab Emirates already has close ties to FIFA, hosting the Club World Cup again in Abu Dhabi in December.

Saudi Arabia would be keen on joining the 2022 World Cup but it has angered soccer federations by hosting a television network that has allegedly been pirating Qatar’s beIN Sports since the boycott of Doha began in 2017.

A partnership with the Saudis could also be problematic in the fallout from the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi after he entered the country’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

“There are other countries in the region as well,” Infantino said, when asked about Saudi Arabia.

Qatar is still waiting for a proper consultation process to begin.

“Right now, as of today, we’re hosting a 32 team World Cup,” Al Khater said. “Our infrastructure, our stadiums are all based on the 32-team World Cup. That’s as much as we know and that’s as much as it’s confirmed by now.”
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