Posted on 12/19/2020 4:02:39 PM PST by texas booster
The State Department has informed Congress that it plans to shutter its last two consulates in Russia over caps set by Moscow on the number of diplomats that are allowed in the country.
In a letter to congressional leaders sent Dec. 10 and obtained by The Hill, the administration said it will permanently close its Vladivostok consulate and temporarily halt work at the consulate in Yekaterinburg.
The letter confirming the closures was sent three days before news broke of a major hack of U.S. government agencies that is believed to have been conducted by an elite Russian cyber espionage unit.
The consulate closures are “in response to ongoing staffing challenges of the U.S. Mission in Russia in the wake of the 2017 Russian-imposed personnel cap on the US Mission and resultant impasse with Russia over diplomatic visas,” the letter reads.
The chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and some members of the House and Senate Subcommittees on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs signed the letter.
The move means the U.S. embassy in Moscow will be the only diplomatic installation in Russia. It also leaves the U.S. without a diplomatic presence throughout a massive swath of Russian territory, which will hinder both efforts by Americans to travel to Russia and Russians to obtain visas to the U.S.
Russia ordered the U.S. close its embassy in St. Petersburg as part of a diplomatic row over Moscow’s poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
The reduction of the U.S. diplomatic presence in Russia comes ahead of an expected chilling of relations between Washington and Moscow. While President Trump has declined to confront Russia over its meddling in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and expressed support for President Vladimir Putin, President-elect Joe Biden has indicated he will adopt a tougher tone with Russia over election interference as well as its presence in Ukraine and other areas of contention.
Russia will always be the home of the founding of communism, and therefore will be loved by our elites in DC.
Meanwhile, Mexico continues to operate over 50 “consulates” in the United States, interferes in virtually every aspect of our government, and continues to push its populace into our interior to gain political power over us.
But that’s OK.
I see. In addition to this assertion not being relevant to the story (consulate closures long-preceded the breach), there is so far no technical confirmation whatsoever that the breach was caused by Russians.
Quite the opposite - and deliberately excluded from the current news dialog - the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) breach is and has been most notably a China PLA phenomenon for the last decade. And this reality has been documented, researched, discovered, and discussed for more many years, by competent and experienced computer security professionals (I don't mean talking head blowhards and news stenographers).
It's pretty obvious (and quite revolting) that this propaganda is being pushed and promoted nonstop. Because it's just a clear and unambiguouos instance of "look there, not here."
Russia, Russia, Russia.
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Meanwhile, we have SIX locations in communist China. we have THREE in the nation of out warm allies, the barbaric Saudis who attacked us on 9/11.
Communism came from Germany with some French inspiration. Two Germans invented it. And as for it rooting in Russia, Germany again is most culpable. In the height of WWI the Kaiser sent Lenin from Switzerland to Russia by train... allowing him to cross Germany to get there. His goal was to get Russia out of the war by removing the Czar.
Then they gave us nazism.
And now, globalism.
keeping in mind that there were free elections in April 1917 AFTER the Tsar abdicated, and the Bolshevik leaders were not even in Russia then. But they returned thereafter (Lenin from Switzerland, Trotsky from Brooklyn, etc.) and committed treason by overthrowing the ELECTED government under Kerensky during wartime.
Clarity is ny something I associate with Pompeo.
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