Posted on 08/30/2018 7:07:43 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Russia's poisoning of a former spy in Britain is part of a Kremlin strategy to divide the West by conducting covert operations and then fomenting doubt and disagreement over who's responsible, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said.
It was part of a pattern seen in Russia's actions, Mattis said, starting in Ukraine in 2014, where he said Moscow sent armed men without insignias into Crimea and has provided fighters and weapons under cover to Ukrainian separatists.
Mattis said Russia's subterfuge continued through covert efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
"They take the insignia off soldiers' uniforms and they go into Crimea. They say they have nothing to do with what's going on with the separatists in eastern Ukraine," Mattis added.
"I'm not sure how they can say that with a straight face," he said, but "they're doing things that they believe are deniable."
"And so they're trying to break the unity of the Western alliance, NATO," he said, by promoting doubt and disputes over who is responsible."
(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...
Russians are poisoning all over and carrying out assassinations, if people are going to make comparisons, it’s clear where the greater evil is, the Kremlin.
Mattis, the Warrior Monk, knows his stuff, this was proven in Iraq. Only idiots put him down, I hear the putinistas do.
But the Russian government hasnt been penatrated by the Islamic Terrorists like the UK has.
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