they didn't have a viable military option and they first had to deal with russian and russian partnered up early on with the right people, like israel and others in order, if you have to intervene in the middle east and you're going to be israel's new neighbor across the border, that's something you have to deconflict and coordinate right off the bat. they knuckled under turkey and some other states and they did a pretty good job with the united states which quickly moved off to fight a complementary counterterrorism campaign. against isis. in that sense, they were effective early on at claiming their part of the conflict and slowly starting to work on it. with respect to terms of friction and putin, there's some inherent problems in any coalition, plus it's the middle east so you're going to have some pretty big contradictions no matter which region nal partners you pick. if your partners are iran, turkey, israel. you have a deconflict line. you're going to have a lot of issues. i think on the whole, probably the biggest problems for russia came more some years back in that they had ad

and russian speakers. clearly, we know there is a cynical game when they talk about the well-being. it happened november 25 as part of this russian tightening of the clamp. in september ukraine sent its naval ships through the straits into the sea of azov. the russians let it happen. my understanding is that putin ultimately did not say no but was not enthusiastic. and did not want it to happen a second time. that is the second data point if you look at this. the third data point ukraine is in the process of winning a critical victory in its war for true independence on the religious front. we all know the constantinople patriarch has announced his intention to grant ukraine mercifully very soon. this will lead to the unified ukrainian orthodox church which will take up substantial chunk of the patriarch churches with it and become the second largest church in the orthodox world which will be a counter to kremlin interest in the orthodox community. putin is not amused by this. next point. putin's own domes

x, russian y.lot of those characters in the trump world you just put up have different stories with regard to their contacts with the russians. some, it's because they have had genuine business relationships. michael flynn is probably the most prominent of that. maybe paul manafort as well and those who work for paul manafort, like rick gates. but in other situations, the most infamous, i guess you would say, is the trump tower meeting in 2016. it's because the russians were so aggressive and so blatant about trying to get into and trying to influence the campaign against hillary clinton. and they had at least willing listeners. and, again, we've been talking about this for over two years. is that a crime? you know, probably not. but the question is what happens after that, and just protocol. this is the reason why protocol is such that when you are working on a campaign and you get a call from any foreign operative, you hang up the phone, you pick up the phone again and you call the fbi. >> yeah.

you know russian russian media is doing the job that i would be you should be doing neal do you think because that you know we've seen an all for a lot of russian rhetoric going on for quite a while now in your opinion do you think russian media outlets are an easy target perhaps. but absolutely i mean a lot of things are going wrong in britain the moment we've got the bricks it. indecision chaos crisis what i want to call about that we've got rising poverty record numbers of people sleeping on the streets wrecking homelessness etc so i think for the establishment it's a pretty good easy target really to go at russian russian media and i think it's quite extraordinary the what you know what's been happening is it's i would good for us call it harassment i think putting the pictures of photographs of people who work for sport the on a in a newspaper like that i think is tantamount to incitement almost it might put those people's lives in danger as a russian senator has said this morning i believe and so i think really i mean i'm a member of the national union of journalists and i'll be

>>> russian interaction. we're tracking the growing list of key figures from trump world whose contacts with the russians have been revealed. tonight the number is 16 and counting as mueller prepares to drop more bombshells. >>> felonies and lies. federal prosecutors now have implicated the president in two crimes, and they're digging deeper tonight, focusing in on mr. trump's business and his family. what will they uncover? >>> and not if. a top contender to replace john kelly as white house chief of staff just says no. now mr. trump is said to be furious about how this is all playing out. we're going to tell you what we're learning and who he is blaming. >>> we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the rich eisen show". ♪ >> you're in "the situation room." >> we're following breaking news on the search for a new chief of staff. multiple sources telling cnn mr. trump is angry and feels humiliated after he was turned down by the vice president's ch

because the russian state claimed i hate the us it's not about the russians i mean whatever russians do did not influence the. potence of precious miss today and your friend the comedy hour of the alleged. russia's most profits for the right. day got zero point sixty one percentages during the president showed elections in the ukraine in two thousand and three and says a lot of nationalist. ultranationalists in ukraine you would not argue that doesn't russia however you cannot say to see two aspects of the conflicts between russia and ukraine first it's a tragedy imagine all these millions when mommy is ukrainian and daddy is russian from a lot like me and just the other day ukrainian president not just the right sector but the ukrainian presidency banned all russians from visiting their relatives in ukraine don't get earlier to it as that order was still in force you've been critical of russia you noted there russia's missteps do you think that a country that wants to be part of the european union should respond to a never naval arctic altercation by banning the entire population of

three ukrainian patrol boats say the russians were approaching russian territorial waters which they ended they were asked what they intended to do they said that they had no intention of crossing the street of. but the continued making their way forward a certain point refusing all communications from russian border patrol vessels then ounce their intent to cross the strait of kutch without the russians say filing notification notification that it's there to make sure that the passage of the strait of courage which is very narrow and there's a lot of traffic to make it safe what ensued was a dangerous high speed chase in the streets of vassal after which the ukrainian vessels were fired upon eventually seized in the cruise twenty four people in old sailors offices and s.b.u. counter-espionage agents detained the russian side also claims to have found documents that ordered these vessels to proceed with maximum stealth they found tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition dozens and dozens of weapons from brigade launches to machine guns the ukrainian side for its part claims that he'

point of view directly from perceived it from a russian point of view. and that really jars was a lot of people in britain because they found out the unsettling and find it very very difficult to counter. the usual accusations that it is biased and and so on is if you like normal in the information war and all weapons are being used and russia is the main target in europe and therefore it's not surprising the support that has been picked out as r.t. has in the past been picked out as well for their reporting many in britain but many in the british media and the establishment don't like the point of view. the opinions which are briggs broached and many bashing sputnik in the times article the outlined science defense fellow with the atlantic council on call sputnik an instrument of russian state power not an independent journalism outlet and the name is not a new one in the integrity initiative scandal already appearing in released documents showing his alleged links to the group spreading anti russian sentiment and is not a low elite paper suggest that t

the russian side and the american side. there's lots of americans and lots of russians involved in this, right? number one is just the quantity of the contacts and the number of different places. that suggests a lot of probing, to me, on the russian side, but, two, is the quality and the substance of the contacts. what are they talking about? they're not talking about a u.s./russian bilateral relations. they're not talking about u.s. policy in the middle east and russia policy in the middle east. at least to the best of our knowledge so far. those are the kinds of contacts you might see from time to time, you know, during a campaign cycle with foreign policy elites from both moscow and washington. this list is not that. they were talking about other things for hour. >> julia, what strikes you about the 14 who we are showing on the air? >> so, i think what's interesting is that for the most part, we knew about all of these contacts. we've just read about them in, you know, dribs and drabs over the last couple years. when you

or for that matter russian speakers. the way to understand the stakes of what's happening in eastern ukraine as if moscow succeeds in upending the territorial integrity of ukraine, the chance of moscow provoking the baltic states goes up because 25% of the population is estonia, latvia and my russian speakers beyond that. make sure moscow gets bogged down until it decides to leave. if you look at the crisis happening right now, why did it happen on november 25? the first thing to understand if moscow began a new part of its hybrid campaign against ukraine in april when it began to inspect ships coming to and from the ukraine ports of valuable. while it is a side of oregon remains an important economic area for ukraine. as a result of the inspections, the delays in shipping come imports and exports for ukrainian port is rarely available to 50% according to some firms as they told me last week, 66%. either way, that's a major hit to ukraine's economy. for those of you who remember for the welfare of russians and russian sp

three ukrainian patrol boats say the russians were approaching russian territorial waters which they ended they were asked what they intended to do they said that they had no intention of crossing the street of. but continued making their way forward to certain point refusing all communications from russian border patrol vessels then ounce their intent to cross the strait of kutch without the russians say filing notification notification that it's there to make sure that the passage of the strait of kutch which is very narrow and there's a lot of traffic to make it safe the federal security service is also in possession of information that says the provocative actions of the ukrainian fleet were ordered by the government in kiev the territorial waters in which some of this showdown this case took place and were russian woods is even before the reunion of crimea and russia twenty four people in old sailors offices and s.b.u. counter-espionage agent detained the russian side also claims to have found documents that ordered these vessels to proceed with maximum stealth. tens of thousand

aeroflot russian airlines. you know world of big partisan movies lot of things and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. teraflops russian headlights. welcome to unique edition of crosstalk we answer questions from you the viewers some of you scenting very interesting question. welcome back to politicking i'm talking with stephen cohen the russian scholar the new book is war with russia from kootenai in ukraine to trump and russia gate he's in new york city all right my scholar friend. do you wish hillary were president. that's. stead of donald trump that's what you're asking me right because if i had my wish neither of them would be president we think of somebody else who had two choices you only had t

sets of russian nationals than we have in the u.k. the u.k. government must look again at work to be done that is pretty harsh rhetoric but that would have been a hit if the sunday times hadn't printed it along with the photographs of all the people that work in sputnik up in edinburgh it reads a bit like a wall of shame editorially there doesn't seem any reason for those photographs to be there other than sort of the newspaper outing these people as sort of being involved in anti british activities it almost reads a bit like an incitement to violence in terms of why the spotlight has fallen on the radio station up in edinburgh and sputnik well it appears that some of the reporting that they've been doing has been rubbing politicians up the wrong way in particular the radio station just like r.t. has reported on the leaked integrity initiative documents and they have been to reveal that the u.k. foreign office happens to be funding and anti russian public influence campaign through a british think tank and that's been quite a major story both.

seven to nine which is the russian. agreement and what we ought to do is not only extend new start we ought to bring china into the negotiations now because they have developed into immediate range. missiles and they are becoming an increasing factor in the international system so that's what we ought to do not get rid of it expand it and this idea that you can have arms control of the other side for example the russians in crimea you know we can't do it no that's absolutely wrong during the cold war we started in one nine hundred seventy two with the first reduction treaty right after that the russians went into afghanistan we didn't say well we're going to get rid of them no it's a separate issue and i think because of the the destruction that can be caused by those things you have to deal with that even when you have disagreements in other areas are actually going to circle back to china and glad you brought that up the first time so when i put this question to you and these accusations that russia has been violating

aeroflot russian airlines. you know world of big partisan movies a lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. aeroflot russian and lights. seem wrong. wrong just don't call. me that yet to see. a proud disdain comes to etiquette and in games from an equal betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. you know twitter's callout of crazy things going up but people you know. twitter izing and occasionally somebody pops up with something really insightful really interesting. we'll get back to politicking i'm told he was stephen cohen the russian scholar the new book is war with russia from kootenai in ukraine to trump and russia gate he's in new york city all ri

the russian origins are gone. for the rest of the campaign, the press is going to treat the russian hacked content as wikileaks, as wikileaks content. i want you to think for a moment what the implications are in saying it's from wikileaks because wikileaks has put things in public domain that some in this room probably approve of, things that the government probably didn't want us to see. the news has treated wikileaks has a quasi-legitimate news outlet in the past when it released those kind of things. and when you say wikileaks, people don't hear russians as a result. that's a name that's been around for awhile. when people also don't hear is julian assange doesn't like hillary clinton because hillary clinton wanted him prosecuted for what she considered his misuse of national security data when he released some of that other material earlier. so you think the press would be saying wikileaks, run by julian assange, who doesn't like hillary clinton. no. you'd think they'd say wikileaks, passing russian hacked co

online influence operations russian bots real russian bots. ironic again that outlets including the new york times washington post c.n.n. all use the hamilton sixty eight its data to accuse russian boughts of sowing discord and conspiracies online wonder how much of that was fake but food for thought there was more by luck than not that we found out about this quote the sea of n.y.t. yet how many more incidents like this could there have been that we don't and never will know anything about food for thought. we can now bring in dave lindorff who is the editor of the news website this can't be happening dot com thanks for being with us here on archie international as always. so the republican candidate won more he ended up narrowly losing the alabama state election. there is a lot of other things happening there but do you think this bot operation called hamilton sixty eight could have actually swung the results. it's hard to tell which which way the that would have worked i mean they were making it look like. you know trying to say that he was

americans not the russians have at least set up one army of pseudo russian bots to sway opinion and boost election turnout it's the big story this december and as more and more details come out as the new year gets closer those involved are having to do more explaining. scott shane started the domino effect by writing about the whole false like scheme in the new york times a week later another outlet reveals his scoop was from way back in september when he was invited to speak at an off the record event for the group behind the bots project but the journalist didn't see a thing about that in his article i don't think there's any kind of disclosure that's relevant so i'm happy to be corrected it's always a tradeoff as to what the ground rules of whether you get something useful for your readers journalists also eventually got hold of a report assessing how well the scheme worked and it the experts don't call it an experiment like scott shane did the journalists also wrote that the whole thing was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race compare that to these words enormous

impartial terms a greater number of russians and russian speakers. barely we know it's a cynical game. now what happened on november 25 it was part of russia's tightening of the clamp on dunbar. to come in september hugh crane spent -- sent naval ships through the kerch strait into the sea of basel. my understanding and i will leave it at that is mr. putin after this happened although he did not say no was not an uzi stec about it. he did not want it to happen a second time. the third data point which has nothing to do with this ukraine one or is in the process of winning a critical victory in its war for true independence. you will note the constantinople patriarch in the orthodox world has announced his intention to grant ukraine auto so fully very soon. this lead to the creation of unified ukrainian orthodox church recognized by world orthodoxy which will take up substantial amount of churches with it and become the second largest church in the out orthodox world which will also be a counter to kremlin influence. mr. putin is not amused by this. t

russian president vladimir putin speaks out about the case of accused russian spy, maria butina, offering sympathy, but denying knowledge of her. we're learning brand-new details of her plea deal with u.s. prosecutors, including her attempts to secretly win influence with prominent politicians close to the president. >>> manafort's misdeed. the judge in the case of former trump campaign chairman, paul manafort, is demanding more details of his alleged lies to the special counsel, robert mueller. tonight, why she wants to meet again in january, and why manafort's lawyers may not want to talk. >>> and pleading for mercy. we're standing by for a sentencing memo from former national security adviser, michael flynn's attorneys. the first time we'll hear flynn's side of the story about lying to the fbi and his cooperation with the mueller team. >>> i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." >>> this is cnn breaking news. >> we're following breaking news. president trump doubling down on a government shutdown, saying a few moments ago, and i'm quoting the president now, i don't mind ownin

government has taken such an interest in the russian media i i. it seems to be just as much about promoting ensuring up official u.k. policy towards russia as it is about actually countering any russian threat the u.k. government and other western governments in the us in recent years have had increasing difficulties persuading enough of their populations as to food just in the sea of the foreign policies that they've been pursuing and at the same time western countries have been going through a period of political crisis an economic crisis and i think a lot of this drive is as much about trying to shore up shakey official narratives and trying to shore up political systems in a situation of political crisis as it is actually about countering russian propaganda or i think i would suspect that's a little bit of an excuse here that really what's going on the problems much closer to home. on wednesday russia successfully tested a new hypersonic strategic missile called the vanguard president putin called it a major event for the armed forces in the c

it's not just the russians. china has attacked, and they attacked sony, when they put out a movie they didn't like. there are terrorist groups and people who want to do it for kicks. we have a system that's highly vulnerable and has anyone really heard donald trump make this a priority? whether to protect our elections or protect the electrical grid? now, there are good people throughout government who work on this night and day, but having covered washington for decades, i think we both could tell you that if you don't get the orders from the top, it's harder to get things done. and it just brings me back to the -- to that scene that mike described and then i guess we can go to questions, where the guy who attacked the united states, who showed how vulnerable we were, who might have even been able to shut down our electrical system appears on a stage with donald trump and what does he do? he gives him that thumbs up. i mean, we laugh about it, we joke about it, we scratch our head about it, but at the end of th

a radio station which had to curage the russian point of view directly from perceived problem russian point of view. that really jars was a lot of people in britain because they found. followed very very difficult to counter. the usual accusations that it is biased and so on is if you like normal in the information war all weapons are being used russia is the main target in europe and therefore it's not surprising the support that has been picked out as our two years in the past been picked out as well for their reporting. in britain but many in the british. don't like the point of view the opinions which are big broached with many bashing sputnik in the times article the outlet cites benetton in a. with the atlantic council he calls but nick an instrument of russian state power not an independent journalism outlet and the name is not a new one in the integrity initiative scandal already appearing in released documents showing his alleged links to the group spreading anti russia sentiment and he's not alone the leaked papers suggest that the u.k. funded charity has been using journali

use food you know it's pretty alarming when a guy who lives in a fluent russian or speaks fluent russian and is russian it everywhere year later is moving closer to the oval office so now we have a report from the new york times that has revealed that some of these alleged russian bots and trolls were actually coming from an experiment conducted in the united states what people are referring to as alabama project was conducted paid for by billionaire reid hoffman he's one of the creators of linked in and he's a top contributor to the democratic party now and he apparently paid one hundred thousand dollars to essentially set up this operation in which they had individuals in the united states carrying out activities designed to imitate what alleged russian box and trolls did on the internet the democrats have said that one hundred thousand dollars is simply not enough to really have an impact on a u.s. election however when it was alleged that one hundred thousand dollars had been spent by russia it was considered to be impactful people will recall the race how the democrat ended up winni

to materialize but the russian the russians have also reacted the russian foreign ministry they've said that this is merely a political ploy a political play in order to shore up the part. just four months to go until elections and martial law being put in place is an attempt by him to radicalize the solidify the base and to guarantee himself more votes russia meanwhile that said that it is not planning on responding in kind that it isn't going to put in place any sort of restriction on ukrainian coming into russia for now but we've seen other restrictions put in place by the government in kiev we've seen for example foreigners banned from moving into from journeying into crimea from the ukrainian side this includes journalists and this is drastically called complicated job because now foreign correspondents seeking to cover events in crimea even if they do manage to get into crimea they you know they might be punished by the ukrainians but we've seen a c.n.n. crew for example now in marry you pool which is a ukrainian city in the south of ukraine they've been. opinions from people in t

, including somebody that's believed to be a russian spy, or possibly a russian spy.in each of the areas of collusion, possibly of money laundering, and certainly as we've seen before, obstruction of justice, there continues to be more developments in each of those areas. and it is incredibly remarkable to see how far we've gone from a president who said none of my people talked to russia, i never talked to russia, had no business in russia, to where we are now. >> your committee, the intel committee, because of the leadership of that committee that seemed to be somewhat compromised on the republican side didn't get the job done that it was supposed to do. there were people left unintervieweded, things that were not investigated. is that going to change in january when democrats take control of the committee? >> you'll see a different direction under adam schiff, i'm confident. you'll see a fair but very thorough investigation. we're not going to reinvent the wheel, not bring in every single witness again, but there are somewhere between a half dozen and ten very impo

i remember myself being ashamed to speak russian in europe after that. and i'm russian. what do you think was western response should be at that time. what would be a appropriate response, thank you. >> gen. breedlove: so i will not satisfy on nord stream. i think that the things that impede russia from attacking ukraine go beyond nord stream. there were some wonderful things discussed here earlier. it would be a huge step. it would be a costly step, i do also believe that mr. putin has done more damage for himself and the russian people inside of ukraine than even he understands, and so i think there are many other imped mentsz. i don't place nearly as much emphasis on nord stream as the collective here apparently does. i go back to the answer i gave before. i think that we don't have to go very far back in history in the last five years to understand how russia uses energy supplies, energy dynamics, pricing, etc., as a weapon and my suggestion to nations in europe is don't put the weapon to your own head. remind me the second one? mh-17. first and foremost we should ha

policy towards russia as it is about actually countering any russian threat the u.k. government and other western governments in the us in recent years have had increasing difficulties persuading enough of their populations as to the legitimacy of the foreign policies that they have been pursuing and at the same time western countries have been going through a period of political crisis an economic crisis and i think a lot of this drive is as much about trying to shore up shakey official narratives and trying to shore up political systems in a situation of political crisis as it is actually about countering russian propaganda or i think i would suspect that's a little bit of an excuse here that really what's going on at problems much closer to home the outcry surrounding one of germany's star journalist exposed last week as having faked stories for years is deepening class or lotus who was fired from dish legal magazine allegedly appropriated readers donations for people featured in his articles that included often syrian children on the devinsky has more. being accus

interview russian clergy several russian clergy interviewed about exactly what their motivations are and what they're doing and what they're thinking so this is a pretty big new dimension not new perhaps the wrong word but a big extra dimension to the tensions that already exist thank you very much for that and are simmons live for us in care. british m.p.'s have begun five days of debate on teresa mayes prexy deal with the european union the democratic unionist party from northern ireland which props up a minority government says it will vote against the plan early m.p.'s halted to hold the government in contempt of parliament emotionless pass after the prime minister failed to publish in for the legal advice received on the deal or has more from london. or tuesday sourced series of setbacks for to resume a and her government it was supposed to see the start of five days of debate on her breaks that deal ahead of a parliamentary vote on it for next tuesday but that was delayed because politicians from all of the opposition parties here in westminster and the northern irish d u p a d

russian doping scandals are back in the headlines austin police are looking into claims russian biathlete violated and the twenty seven team championships my colleague and . alexey who gave us the details. now we know that on wednesday night the austrian police went into the hotel where the russian national biathlon team was staying in austria during the world cup actually it was a night before some of the athletes accused were supposed to hit the track and participate in the world championships they put forward the accusations that at least four of the athletes and six members of the staff violated the anti-doping regulations back in twenty seventeen during the world championship in austria just a year ago. this is a very serious accusation because in austria it entails a criminal punishment so the athletes were pretty shocked judging by their reaction and i believe we can listen to some of those i've been accused of something i haven't done i can assure you one thousand percent everything i've been accused of is full so i want to ask a rhetorical question do russian athletes really valu

maria britton a russian national detained in the u.s. on charges of being an unregistered foreign agent has entered a guilty plea at a washington d.c. court but i was told she faces up to five years behind bars or could be deported. has the details. well in the washington d.c. court room we saw maria buton that come forward and enter a plea of guilty to acting as an unregistered lobbyist now she has not pled guilty to any of the other charges and sensational accusations that are made in the media regarding being a spy espionage and out of that affect and in her state of affairs she came forward and said that she sought to establish unofficial lines of communication with americans having power and influence over us politics and now at this point we don't know exactly what sentence she'll be facing there will not be a sentencing hearing because she is still cooperating with law enforcement the next hearing will be on february twelfth a status hearing now the prosecution is not asking for more than five years and they could file a downward