Section: European Voice (EU)
Donald Trump: I’ll start off trusting Putin
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will invite British Prime Minister Theresa May to visit him “right after” his inauguration and will strike a “fair” trade agreement with the U.K. “very quickly,” he told The Times in an interview published Sunday. Brexit “is going to end up being a great thing†and other countries will follow the...
Why Russia loves the idea of California seceding
On a sunny late September day, a trio of tourists gathered on Moscow’s Red Square. Well-dressed, carrying a Russian flag, the visitors bunched in front of the Kremlin’s walls to snap a selfie. Like so many others before, the man taking the photo, Louis Marinelli, took to his Twitter account, and shared the shot for the...
Trump open to lifting Russian sanctions if ‘we get along’: report
President-elect Donald Trump expressed a willingness Friday to lift sanctions on Russia if it assists the U.S. in other efforts such as counterterrorism. Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he intended to keep sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to cyber attacks during the election “at least for a...
Putin opponent to Trump: Don’t abandon Ukraine
A leading Russian opposition politician and critic of Vladimir Putin has a message for the incoming Trump administration: don’t trade Ukraine for a deal in Syria. Ilya Yashin warns that any detente with Russia that includes permitting its 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine to stand — even in return for...
US envoy’s message to Trump: Don’t screw it up in Europe
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is at risk of botching the transatlantic alliance that has served the interests of the Western allies since the end of World War II, the outgoing American ambassador to the EU warned Friday. In an unusually frank conversation with reporters, the ambassador, Anthony Gardner, said Trump and his team should not rely...
Fake or foul, Donald Trump dossier serves Kremlin’s aims
MOSCOW — The reaction in Russia to allegations in a U.S. intelligence report about the Kremlin, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and reportedly lurid video footage can probably best be described as a Slavic shrug. The unverified claims — the most explosive of which is that Russian intelligence secretly recorded sexual...
Tim Barrow, invisible ambassador
MOSCOW — “Tim who?” That was the reaction of the majority of Russians asked about the four-year tenure of Tim Barrow — the career diplomat named this month as the United Kingdom’s new ambassador to the EU — as head of the British embassy in Moscow. Appointed as Britain’s ambassador to...
Trump takes tougher tone against Putin
After months of extending his hand to Vladimir Putin, is Donald Trump going to get tough on Russia? That’s what the president-elect on Wednesday suggested he might just do, given what he called the “good chance†that he might not get along with the Russian president after all. The claim contradicted...
Tillerson ducks questions on whether Putin is ‘war criminal,’ Russia sanctions
Secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson on Wednesday ducked several Russia-related questions from Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and other lawmakers, declining to say if he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal” or whether he backs existing and future sanctions on Moscow. The former ExxonMobil CEO’s relationship with...
Green warning: France dangerously naive on Russian hacking
PARIS — Leading French politicians are worryingly complacent about the threat of Russian interference in elections and must prove their independence from Moscow, the Green candidate for president warned. Yannick Jadot, who won a party primary in November to compete in the presidential election, said Russian President Vladimir Putin...
