u.s. defense secretary james mattis will step down from his post at the end of february . shortly after president decision to withdraw u.s. troops from syria plus. wrapping up the presidential question and answer session on two thousand eight hundred biggest events. gives at moscow's stance on the threat of nuclear war the ukraine crisis and among much much more. many western politicians experts and even ordinary people trapped they even think that you want to rule the world of course i do some fun there international journalists even pressed the russian leader about potential plans for a global takeover thankfully everyone sees the funny side of it all.

broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow this is our international thomas really glad to have you with us we start with a very developing a breaking story this hour u.s. defense secretary james madison well he's announced his resignation following trump's decision to withdraw u.s. troops from syria minorities killed and picks up the story for us is known as mad dog mattis the u.s. secretary of defense one of the military men that trump referred to as one of my generals well it seems he'll be leaving the job at the end of february here's what we saw on social media trumps tweets about the departure of the u.s. secretary of defense. general jim mattis will be retiring with distinction at the end of february after having served my administration as secretary of defense for

the past two years during jim's tenure tremendous progress has been made especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting equipment general mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations a new secretary of defense will be named shortly i greatly think jim for his service now it's being reported that apparently mattis did not agree with trump's announcement to withdraw u.s. forces from syria madison argued that it was necessary to maintain some small u.s. military presence in syria for the purpose of fighting against terrorism he did not agree with it that's what's being reported now the resignation letter of mattis has surfaced and it contains the phrase because you have the right to a secretary of defense whose views are more aligned with yours now the letter makes reference to the fight against terrorism it also makes reference to the rising influence of russia and china around the world now the letter itself doesn't

specifically name a solid disagreement between the president and the secretary of defense but it's been widely reported that there was indeed a disagreement about the decision to withdraw from syria now donald trump is now going to have to announce a replacement for the secretary of defense that replacement will then have to be confirmed by the u.s. congress at the end of february u.s. secretary of defense mad dog james mattis will be leaving the trumpet ministration president trump claimed victory over islamic state in syria on wednesday and announced the rapid withdrawal of all two thousand u.s. troops from the war torn country the american president took to twitter giving his nation and himself much credit for the defeating the terrorists although his words seemed to perplex his administration allies in advisors. we have won against isis we've beaten them and we've beaten him badly now we've won it's time to come back.

because we remain on the ground to the physical defeat of the caliphate until we have the pieces in place to ensure that the defeat is under. the knock of the hell out of isis will become another syria like very soon. to u.s. officials tell n.b.c. news the president reluctantly agreeing to keep troops in syria and some analysts point out that the u.s. backed kurdish fighters will now be left abandoned and vulnerable turkey has threatened an offensive in northern syria against the kurds who they view as terrorists the official spokesperson of the syrian democratic forces which includes the kurds told us why they opposed. but the american decision to withdraw from syria is sudden and shocking to us and even for the american troops here on the ground and the american withdrawal will surely contribute in one way or another to escalating the continuous turkish threats toward the north of syria in general and towards the kurdish people in particular. or to discuss this issue

a little bit further let's cross live now to calling cavell who's a professor of political science at bluefield state college. you are someone who can help us really see into this in a kind of a different perspective so this resignation it comes hot on the heels of trump's decision about bringing the troops back from syria was that enough to push maddest to actually leave his post. apparently so mr thomas there have been numerous disagreements between secretary of defense james madison and president donald trump including the banning of transgender troops in the u.s. military the starting of a space force the putting on of a costly military perennially as well as pulling the exercises of south korea out and also. secretary matters with again the united states withdrawing from the joint conference

a plan of action with iran so there's been numerous disagreements previously but this decision by president truong to pull u.s. troops out of syria was apparently the straw that made bad as tender his resignation for a very very twenty eight twenty nine thing so we heard our correspondent there talking about that resignation letter in it mattis said the u.s. president has the right to have a secretary whose views better align with his. that's fair and all presidents have that right to have their cabinet back their own agenda but what does that leave us for candidates in terms of a secretary of defense in the u.s. . well for this particular candidates donald trump will find someone who is more in line with his worldview in particular with regards to syria you know donald trump ran on pulling u.s. troops out of syria this was an illegal war never sanctioned by the united nations

never stopped sanctioned by nato this was a war that was started even though syria never attacked the united states the united states was never invited into syria and fact the united states had to create an oppositional force and then claim that it was being under the attack by the elected president of syria bashar al assad so that we could then supply weapon and logistics and hourman and this was all part and parcel of the cia operation kember sycamore whips to donald trump credit ended funding for last year so how do you expect us foreign policy to change now that a mattress is leaving and trumps syria pullout is happening will it change at all. well it will turn the jiggly has gone to intensify the conflict in the united

states between the deep state democratic party and trust republican party the deep state does not want to pull out of there this was one of their key linchpin if you want hillary clinton's campaign they want this war to continue because they want to build a pipeline from the gulf monarchies to supply western europe with oil and natural gas they do not want or with natural gas be coming from russia and that is why they want this war to continue in syria so that they can eventually they hope overthrow the elected government of bastareaud so as this conflict intense abuzz and the united states in the next year with a democratic controlled out and yet do it republican controlled senate we're going to see major conflict over foreign policy and dumb from will have to. bear down harder to try to get his people in the key positions of power typically in control

of the us department of the film another aborted agency all right collen cavell professor of political science at bluefield state college certainly good to hear your thoughts on this thanks for being with us here on art international. and. the russian president has held his fourteenth annual q. and a with the media in attendance from all around the globe r.t. was front and center for the whole event and our special coverage starts right now . vladimir putin spent almost four hours answering a ray of questions from both russian and foreign journalists ranging from the economy pensions and education to sniping back and a question about world domination our correspondent comments. not quite the five

hours that his record but you know pretty near four hours solid enough but there was so much covered so much from fuel prices to protests to even nuclear war breaks it mentioning those i mentioned relations with various countries chance of conflict but one thing that stood out towards the end was an interesting question of the validity of moon about whether he wants to rule the world and he does. many why some politicians experts and even ordinary people see russia as a threat they even think that you want to rule the world of course i do i just want to know if you really want this was the real end of your foreign policy. concerning ruling the world we know where the headquarters are located of those who want to do this and it's not in moscow you can connect this to defense spending the u.s. spends over seven hundred billion dollars on it or russia only forty six billion.

do you really think that's our aim is to rule the world you know that this is just a cliche that's being imposed by the west in order to resolve their own domestic problems in the blog. also asked about tribes and now this month resident declaration yesterday resident tweet i suppose that he is going to pull out american troops from syria now that the job has been done and isis has been destroyed it hasn't but. says it has and live near putin. i was asked what he thought about that intent concerning the u.s. withdrawal from syria i don't really know what that means for example the us has been present in afghanistan for the past seventeen years and almost every year they say that they are withdrawing their troops but they are still there now is the presence of american troops needed in syria you pushed you quite don't think so but let's not forget that the presence there is illegitimate but it was not agreed with

either with the un security council human along with the syrian leadership so if the u.s. plans to withdraw is the right decision ukrainian journalists are also always welcome at this press conference in recent years of the more nationalistic li minded and zealously anti putin ones seem to favor displaying their colors. for everyone to see. flags or banners or indeed provocative questions. to ask god to do good i just wanted to ask you how much money do you spend on done by people are starving and they've turned into slaves of russian frankly speaking as a way to be sure three members of the puzzles. just tell me this. is between you on the us and the rest of ukraine and i'm going to russia you know it was done by the ukrainian authorities they have been forced a full economic blockade of the territory they consider their own. consider their

own citizens almost every day civilians die though we provide humanitarian support for those living mansions but only not to let those people starve to death another important thing that people have been talking about for some years several years now escalation growing tensions in the world armament an arms race and vladimir putin was asked about potential nuclear war he said that would be catastrophic but the risk is their big. as the google security order the global security mechanism is unraveling it is failing it is being destroyed nations are pulling out of arms treaties out of arms limitation treaties developing these new weapons capable of defeating all defenses and there is the problem that balance is gone there is no mutually assured destruction there is no parity and so everybody's trying to make new weapons there's a global arms race and it isn't due to end well. the issue for us is now leaving

the i.m.f. treaty going to happen it's hard to imagine what is the rockets are located in europe what should we do of course we will have to ensure our security with concrete steps that you will not say later that we are trying to get an advantage we're not trying to get some advantage with this but merely to seek your pilots to assure our security watch more covered that we don't have time to pack in now almost four hours the record as well one thousand seven hundred and two accredited journalists in attendance with a lot of questions in the times a very chaotic with journalists screaming and shouting in jumping to be noticed and to get their question of the crisis and solution to the. only one. many more journalists. with time ticking and journalists desperate to get their question to

the president those in attendance trying to stand out from the crowd in any way that they could. the touch. with utter utter. utter. utter utter shock. ironically it was among the journalists through his questions to the president he had even brought his own poster those a bit on the small side. when you're sitting there when you're trying to hold this

little thing actually the size of this was the limit to this year for all the journalists when you're desperate to get this question you can feel every minute of it possibly even second and then when it gets closer to the end it really really puts a lot of pressure on you but i was lucky enough to get a chance to ask my questions about ask questions after about one and a half hours while we were there in that room you know if you get a chance it is still not much because it's only thirty seconds maybe a bit more than that if you don't finish your question within that time other people will start screaming at you you know making noises that that's really something that makes it difficult to do the job but then in these thirty seconds what you're really trying to do is squeeze in some kind of stuff about the most important invention of the year so why began is that the my question and when i mentioned the script all case and also the killing of the saudi journalist jamal

that was the moment i did that and you can block them are putin decided to draw the line between these two immediately i'm sure you would be cautious he was assassinated everyone knows that there is evidence script is alone however there are sanctions against russia and complete silence in the case of saudi arabia is that this politicized russia for you because approach is just one of the reasons why it's such a russian if it was not script they would have thought of something else this is obvious to me and the amish want to hold russia's growth at any cost of speaking of other double standards i went on to talk about more things for example the arrest of russian journalist in fact he is used to be the head of a russian news agency in ukraine carol this is a city in ukraine he's been arrested for months the arrests of maria buttin in the u.s. and the recent detention. of the wall way financial director in canada by the way

donald trump refers to her house of bargaining chips in the trade war game possibly even openly doing that and i went on to ask whether this is possible in russia to detain foreigners whether we'll ever see that on under some dodgy pretext to then possibly exchange the prisoners that are under arrest in the west and if we take the rules of the game that are being set by america and some other western countries in this case whether that is at all acceptable the answer from the russian president was no he said that russia will never try to use this kind of tactic we spoke to former u.s. congressman ron paul who gave us his take on some of the issues addressed by the russian president. i don't think it means that something horrible is eminent but i think it's

a shame that that has happened because when we do that as american citizens we see our government doing this then there's a response from the russian government and i see that going in the wrong direction but i don't think it should be a great alarm that next month there will be a clash. and trump although he has his ups and downs i think that he has taken a good position he said he wanted to get out of out of syria and he said in the campaign he said that isis is not a threat there and that it's time to come home and i just wanted to be complete yes move the troops out our couple thousand troops but i want to make sure that you know the cia's out in the special forces are out and that we don't use sanctions and that we move in that direction where we just have hands off and deal with diplomacy and getting along with people but in that philosophy that i just spoke it also means though for in a way our problem is if we dominate and militarized

a country then we finance all that and if we converted into friendship then we send them millions of dollars because we still own you so we still should be concerned it's great to do troops are leaving and as i mentioned as we began that i wanted to be more inclusive you know i'm not saying we're going to remove two thousand troops because we've been in a many many countries we continue to be in countries but we start off with our cia agents and we start off with special forces we start off with interfering with sanctions and we just don't we don't need any of that if we're noninterventionist and we just want friendship and trade you don't spend that money because it gets us into trouble. where you leaks of founder julian assange has received some welcome visitors as he remains holed up at the ecuadorian embassy in london we'll tell you more about it coming up stay with us.

what is the pin that's going to pop the global bubble back in two thousand and eight it was a two thousand a subprime crisis. today i think we can safely say that the bubble popped but the collapse of deutsche bank. much bigger economic power much or wall inter. i

think. you have to live with that. and there's lots of advantages that the europeans as well as america. international and for the first time in a half a year julian assange has had visitors to the ecuadorian embassy in london to german m.p.'s met with a whistleblower to express their solidarity and hopes that they can find a legal solution to the wiki leaks founder situation he was honest he has truckin. m.p.'s from the german bund to stop and it's committee on foreign affairs who authored a letter in support of we q leaks founder julian assange signed by dozens of m.p.'s have been visiting him here at the ecuadorian embassy in the british capital they are demanding that the u.k.

provide assurances that the song would be able to leave this embassy without being extradited to the u.s. we see the next step in this ever lasting case is the responsibility the united kingdom united kingdom has to take the measures now. to thank you solution which is in the frame of international law and not in the frame off the u.s. at a new station boys again it's international law and against actually the u.s. war i mean against the first amendment they are taking measures like the protection of journalists and freedom of speech and the freedom of press so we have to actually protect them from that of a self. not to a violate their first amendment julian assange just father also visited him here on thursday saying he did not find his son in the best of conditions but declining as

you would expect of a future. straight. pool patient. motion was restricted this is toast. to a communication snow job for. most friends. the m.p.'s visiting from berlin have demanded that the international community listen up to the united nations ruling that has now quite a long time ago found that julian assange has detention is arbitrary united kingdom government tried to appeal the un decision and but they lost. and still they are not accepting and. accepting this u.n. decision and this has to be stopped they have to i mean it's a member of the united nations it's have a seat in the security council and in my point of view you can't united kingdom is

dead to accept and respect the international law and international rights of someone local who likes to you know songs ecuadorian officials have legally been increasingly indicating that the wiki leaks founder has outstayed his welcome behind these walls while his son she spent the last sixteen years here fearing that if he leaves the premises he will be extradited to the u.s. and prosecuted for his work as we cue weeks publisher that's released information that washington would rather have kept under wraps reporting from london on the stay with r.t. . for this very low which is reeling under crippling hyperinflation has pegged its hopes of recovery on the cryptocurrency many businesses there are. technology to accept payments in crypto but it's not all going smoothly. behind me as one of

caracas is famous for a valid kind of trade not been as well as capital no one can say how many people leaving those slabs. some studies as to mate the more than eighty percent of been israel is thirty million population leaving dire poverty once relatively well off the country's own independent economy simply collapsed when prices slumped fuel is fast becoming one of the few things anyone can afford in venezuela according to today's rate for just one u.s. dollar i can get attention eleven thousand tons of fuel. sounds absurd right with hyper inflation here in the country a week later or the same amount i would be able to get it wouldn't more than that annual inflation has topped one million percent and in attempts to curb it five

zeroes have been knocked off the currency's value it actually gasoline is cheap if people are starving who don't get proper health care and education and want the security situation getting worse every day. all we've got to starvation and it's to fall out of this government. experts say been as well as economy can hardly survive without international donations in reality u.s. sanctions make it impossible for him as well it to pay off debt let alone borrow money and donald trump has never made washington's aim as secret i'm not going to rule out a military option we have many options for venezuela it's a regime that frankly could be toppled very quickly by the military and the military decides to get cut off from the dollar the countries unable to import food and medicine putin and even heavier burden on the already exhausted population even though the sanctions do not affect or prove that the importation. of basic goods is

a fair fact that there are financial sanctions under this bill that has made it very difficult for the country to go for the government rather to engage in our financial transactions over almost any kind of mentally than that is we are also depends to a large extent of the true ninety something percent of that software and i include in that it's hard currency earnings it depends on oil production in oil production is declining because it would be almost impossible for the government to import badly needed replacement parts for the oil industry and so while production has declined by as much as fifty percent in the past two years in a digital money firm dash there who sees this catastrophe differently they are calling it. a creep to revolution trying to encourage people to avoid hyper inflation and secure their money electronically dash is digital cash much like bitcoin but unlike bitcoin it's really the first form of digital cash that works just like physical cash the group says its cash could be successfully used to pay

for airplane tickets head tells a lunch as we heard that food chains like papa john's subway may accept cryptic currency we're going to take it out now this sticker actually means that they do accept cryptic currency by whether this. i can pay with cash or we currently i cannot accept the payments and dash i need a smartphone to scan the code that you'll receive on your phone to complete the transaction but the boss took the smartphone how many people pay with cryptic currencies and popular. when we have the equipment during the weekends sometimes we get four people in one day confused a bit which tried couple of other restaurants of the same chain and another one reportedly except in payments encrypt but the best we got was the dash sticker we saw through a closed glass door do you pay with crypto currency no i don't why because i don't have any don't know i personally don't use it they will go on to pay pensions and

cryptocurrency but i don't know whether that seven worked out people do have access but they can't afford it all they make goes towards buying food. optimist's a group the current says can help those who fled the broad some estimate the number is already into the millions to transfer money to their families still here in venezuela but until fundamental changes come into effect the so called a creep to revolution war and ease the months of hardship cryptocurrency. could work i think. and of course people would be interested in using it if one were. smore less certain that the price of oil were going to go up but when it's going down not very many people going to be interested in investing in it so also that's been a bit of a problem for the government because recently the present while has been going down it's going to be very difficult under these circumstance.