MOSCOW: Russia scrapped a law enforcement agreement with the United States yesterday, further turning back the clock on a "reset" in relations since President Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin last year.
An order to end the deal, signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, was posted on the government's website. It said the agreement, under which Washington provides financial assistance for law enforcement and drugs control programmes, "does not address current realities and has exhausted its potential."
Lawmaker Alexei Pushkov, a Putin ally who heads the parliamentary committee on international affairs, welcomed the move.
"Russia is reformatting its relationship with the USA: This is already the third agreement canceled in the last half-year. We are saying farewell to our dependence on 'Power No. 1'," he said on Twitter.
Since Putin's return to the Kremlin in May, his foreign policy rhetoric has become increasingly focused on external threats, including from the United States which Russia has accused of trying to meddle in Russian politics. Moscow was infuriated by a US human rights bill that barred Russians accused of human rights abuses from entering the United States and freezed any assets they have there.
It responded with a bill in December imposing similar measures and banned the adoption of Russian children by American families, clouding what was left of the "reset" in ties hailed by US President Barack Obama at the start of his first term. Moscow also outlawed US-funded "non-profit organizations that engage in political activity" and last October ordered the US Agency for International Development to cease operations in Russia, saying Washington was using the mission to interfere in politics.
The government statement yesterday said Russia's Foreign Ministry had been told to inform US authorities about the withdrawal from the 11-year-old law enforcement agreement. The US Embassy in Moscow declined immediate comment.
Russia announced last October that it was withdrawing from a decades-old agreement under which Washington helped it dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons. Russia argued it now had the power and finances to carry out disarmament itself.
Dmitry Trenin, director at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, said Putin was playing on Russians' patriotism by portraying Washington as a meddling foreign power in an attempt to cast dissenters as traitors working for an outside threat.
"Mr. Putin's goal is to reduce as much as he can US influence on Russia internally," he said.
"I'm sure there will be a lot of damage but they believe the pay-off will be bigger: Whoever opposes the leadership here will be seen as a fifth column who is doing the bidding of the United States, unpatriotic at minimum and very likely a traitor." Several members of a protest movement against Putin, which started after allegations of vote rigging after a 2011 parliamentary election, have been portrayed by the media as being on the payroll of foreign countries.
The United States withdrew from a bilateral civil society group earlier this month to protest against what it said was Moscow's clampdown on civil rights and public activism.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the US human rights bill, named after lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in detention in 2009, as "odious", but said Moscow wants constructive ties with the United States.
Trenin said that while Russia was likely to continue to reduce the United States' presence in the country, Moscow was unlikely to cut major initiatives. Russia allows the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to use a rail route through its territory to transport equipment.
He added that some of recent deal-breaking with the United States was being driven by a desire to shed its image as an aid recipient.
FROM: REUTERS
Russia scraps law deal with US in new blow to ties
Russia scraps law deal with US in new blow to ties
Trump urges Iranian Kurds to attack Iran as war widens
- Azerbaijan preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday
- The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel on Friday said it had started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country’s military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
Azerbaijan prepares to retaliate
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbor.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border between the countries in a message posted on its Telegram channel in Hebrew early on Friday.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
Us munitions full
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing about operations that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The Pentagon earlier this week said the military campaign, known as Operation Epic Fury, is focused on destroying Iran’s offensive missiles, missile production and navy, while not allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier.
He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran’s missile production facilities.
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90 percent since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83 percent in that time frame, he said. In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
