ST. PETERSBURG, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday mocked US special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Kremlin interference in the 2016 presidential election, saying “a mountain gave birth to a mouse.”
In his first comments since Mueller finished his probe, Putin sought to cast the 22-month investigation as a failure and disregarded the special counsel’s exposure of a Russian operation to put Donald Trump in the White House.
“It was clear for us from the start that it would end like this,” the Russian leader said as the Trump administration and Congress sparred over making Mueller’s still-confidential investigation report public.
Attorney General William Barr wrote in a summary of Mueller’s report that the special counsel found no evidence the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian government to influence the election.
However, Mueller uncovered evidence of a Kremlin operation to interfere with the 2016 vote. He charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with breaking into Democratic Party computers and the email accounts of officials with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Another indictment detailed Russia’s use of phony social media accounts to spread divisive rhetoric and to undermine the US political system.
Putin on Tuesday nevertheless repeated Moscow’s across-the-board disavowals of election meddling, with or without participation from the Trump campaign. He also reiterated that the Russian government had no contact with Trump when he visited Moscow as a businessman.
“We have been saying from the start that this notorious commission led by Mr. Mueller won’t find anything, because no one knows better than us: Russia has not meddled in any US election,” Putin said while attending an Arctic forum in St. Petersburg.
The Russian leader described allegations of collusion between Trump’s camp and Russia as “sheer nonsense aimed at a domestic audience and used for domestic political infighting in the United States.”
Mueller found numerous people associated with Trump were receptive to Russia’s help, but Barr’s summary said the special counsel didn’t find evidence of a criminal conspiracy in meetings and other contact between Russian and Trump campaign officials.
Putin alleged Trump’s political foes now were “searching for new pretexts” to undermine him.
“Those groups which are attacking the legitimately elected president, what are they doing?” Putin said. “They disagree with the choice of the American people and seek to reduce the results to zero.”
Putin’s rhetoric resembled Trump’s statements disparaging Democrats. Asked if he agreed with Trump’s description of the probe as a “witch hunt,” Putin said “President Trump knows better.”
At the same time, he insisted he wasn’t vouching for the US president with his comments on Mueller’s investigation.
“I’m not defending President Trump. We have plenty of disagreements,” Putin said. “His administration has introduced numerous sanctions against Russia, something we disagree with and will never accept.”
The Russian leader added that despite differences, Moscow and Washington have found some common ground on the conflict in Syria. Putin said he hoped the United States and Russia could focus on more areas of mutual interest, such as nuclear arms control, fighting terrorism and climate change.
Russia knows Mueller probe ‘gave birth to a mouse’: Putin
Russia knows Mueller probe ‘gave birth to a mouse’: Putin
- Putin on Tuesday nevertheless repeated Moscow’s across-the-board disavowals of election meddling, with or without participation from the Trump campaign
Villagers massacred in South Sudan food aid trap
- Civilians killed after being lured from homes with promise of aid, witnesses say
NAIROBI: More than a dozen civilians were killed after being lured from their homes by fighters allied to South Sudan’s government under the pretense of being registered for humanitarian food aid, according to two people who survived the attack.
The killings took place on Saturday morning in the village of Pankor, in Ayod county, in the conflict-hit Jonglei state, about 400km north of the capital, Juba.
Women and children were among the victims.
HIGHLIGHTS
• The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured. • Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
Several dozen fighters arrived in pickup trucks and announced over a loudspeaker that they had come to register residents for food assistance, said the two survivors.
“They gathered them in a luak,” said one witness, referring to a traditional mud hut used to house cattle.
“People were thinking they would get aid or some help.”
The fighters then bound the hands of several men and opened fire on the group.
The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured.
The government-appointed county commissioner said 16 people were killed.
Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
The images, which were shared with AP by an opposition representative, are too graphic to publish.
Makuach Muot, 34, traveled to Pankor on Sunday for the funerals of eight relatives.
Most of the village’s residents had fled fighting months earlier, he said, leaving behind mainly elderly people and young children.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang could not be reached for comment.
James Chuol Jiek, the government-appointed county commissioner of Ayod, confirmed that more than a dozen people, mostly women and children, had been killed in the attack.
He said the gunmen belonged to the Agwelek militia, a force drawn from the Shilluk ethnic group that has not been fully integrated into the national army but that has been deeply involved in recent military operations.
Jiek said the fighters had left their barracks overnight without their commander’s knowledge.
He said they told him the killings were revenge for attacks by a Nuer militia on Shilluk villages in 2022, during which hundreds of civilians were killed or abducted.
The government county commissioner condemned the killings and said that several officers had been arrested and that the army had disarmed 150 fighters from the battalion involved.
He disputed that people had been lured out for an aid registration. “This is an opposition lie,” he said.
In January, Agwelek militia commander Lt. Gen. Johnson Olony was filmed ordering his forces to kill civilians during military operations in Jonglei state. “Spare no lives,” he said.
“When we arrive there, don’t spare an elderly, don’t spare a chicken, don’t spare a house or anything.”
His remarks drew widespread rebuke from the UN and others. Olony has since apologized.
Armed clashes, aerial bombardments, and years of extreme flooding have left more than half of Ayod county’s population facing severe food insecurity.
Ayod county lies in northern Jonglei state, an opposition stronghold and a flashpoint in renewed fighting that the UN estimates displaced 280,000people since December.
Aid groups have warned that access restrictions to opposition-held parts of the state were endangering civilian lives.
Residents of northern Jonglei are overwhelmingly from the Nuer ethnic group of suspended vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar.
Opposition officials have repeatedly called the government’s actions in Nuer areas of the country “genocidal.”
Reath Tang Muoch, a senior official in the SPLM-IO, called Olony’s remarks “an early indicator of genocidal intent.”
