Putin says Trump not to blame for lack of improvement in Russia-U.S. ties

Moscow is not blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for failing to improve U.S.-Russian relations, a pledge he had made during his election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Arab broadcasters.

“We know that, including during his previous election campaign, he spoke in favor of a normalization (of U.S.-Russia relations), but unfortunately it has not happened yet,” Putin told Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia and RT Arabic.

“But we have no claims because we see what’s going on in U.S. domestic politics,” he said, according to a transcript published on the Kremlin’s website on Sunday.

Putin said the “internal political agenda” was not allowing Trump to take steps aimed at a drastic improvement of bilateral relations, adding Moscow would in any case work with any U.S. administration to the extent that Washington itself wants.

Does George Soros dare set foot in Russia these days?

No, convicted felon Soros is wanted in Russia and Hungary on several charges, but Interpol will not honor any warrants for him even though he has been convicted in France of insider trading that destroyed the economies of Thailand and Malaysia.

Western authorities always seem to have trouble with the paperwork required to publish warrants against Soros internationally, seems it is never correctly filled out.

That's why Putin should take him into custody wherever he may be.

Gen John Nicholson said he'd seen "destabilising activity by the Russians."

He said Russian weapons were smuggled across the Tajik border to the Taliban, but could not say in what quantity. Russia has denied such US allegations in the past, citing a lack of evidence.

Interesting, and so is this:

General’s (John Nicholson) Secret Weapon to Keep Trump in Afghanistan: Fox News

Seems the General, whose wife (Norine MacDonald, a researcher who campaigned for licensing opium for medicine) has monetized the Afghan Opium trade for "medical" purposes prior to the US "Opioid crisis", loves to spend lives in Afghanistan.

And the US history of supplying Afghan Terrorists:

Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert program to arm and finance the Jihadi warriors, mujahideen, in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of its client, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The program leaned heavily toward supporting militant Islamic groups that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken. Funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987. Funding continued after 1989 as the mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah’s PDPA during the civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).

The U.S.-built Stinger antiaircraft missile, supplied to the mujahideen in very large numbers beginning in 1986, struck a decisive blow to the Soviet war effort as it allowed the lightly armed Afghans to effectively defend against Soviet helicopter landings in strategic areas. The Stingers were so renowned and deadly that in the 1990s, the United States conducted a “buy-back” program to keep unused missiles from falling into the hands of anti-American terrorists. This program may have been covertly renewed following the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001 out of fear that remaining Stingers could be used against U.S. forces in the country.

Operation Cyclone was the most successful covert operation of all time. It played the biggest role in Reagan bringing down the Soviet Union.

Soviets were the ones creating the mess in Afghanistan. Before they barged in with their crap Afghanistan was a rather decent, if backwards, country developing in good direction. Then they put their commie madmen in charge and later had to send in their army.

Reagan breaking the dogma and allowing Stingers was an icing on the cake, but according to Mike Vickers the Soviets were already going to lose pre-Stinger with his combination of Oettinger guns, Tennessee mules, Blowpipe missiles and Russian heavy machine-guns.

This is what brought the Soviet Union down and it was a success to be celebrated!

Clinton should have bombed Taliban in 1995, when they were still small, but even with that failure the nuisance of Taliban is in no way comparable to taking down the existential threat of the Soviet Union.

Operation Cyclone has nothing to do with the result of the Afghan war.

That is reasonably accurate, but not the point of my post.

The point was that the US knew they were arming terrorists in Afghanistan to the point that they worried about the disposition of the Stinger Missiles that the Afghans did not use.

Gen John Nicholson knew this history when he accused Russia and Putin of supplying arms to the Taliban with about zero evidence, for the purpose of forcing President Trump to remain in Afghanistan against his better judgement.

Gen John Nicholson is also quite aware that Russia and Putin allowed the US to resupply ground forces by land using the Tajikistan Road when the Turks would not allow any land resupply of US or NATO at all.

This was an attempt to undermine President Trump and unfairly demonize Russia in the hope of fomenting conflict between the two.

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