UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg in October helped give a renewed push to the negotiations between the U.S. and Russia that eventually led to the release of basketball star Brittney Griner, a source with direct knowledge of the issue told Axios.
How the UAE helped the U.S. with Brittney Griner’s release
Tag: Paul Whelan
US discourages Dennis Rodman from going to Russia to help Brittney Griner; he now says he’s not going
The U.S. government on Monday strongly discouraged former NBA player Dennis Rodman from traveling to Russia to help secure the release of detained WNBA star Brittney Griner — a trip that Rodman himself now maintains isn’t in the offing.
US discourages Dennis Rodman from going to Russia to help Brittney Griner; he now says he’s not going
H/T: Emil Cosman
Previously:
Dennis Rodman Planning Trip to Russia to Seek Brittney Griner Release: ‘I Know Putin Too Well’
Blinken and Russian foreign minister discussed proposal for Griner, Whelan + More
Blinken and Russian foreign minister discussed proposal for Griner, Whelan
On the call, Blinken also urged Russia to act on its commitments to end a blockade on Ukrainian ports, in order to allow grain exports. He reiterated his concern about Russia potentially annexing additional parts of Ukraine — or, as he put it, Putin “gobbling up as much Ukrainian territory as he can.”
Related:
Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call
Ukraine says 1st ship being loaded with grain since beginning of war
Read More »Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call
Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call
Blinken also added a second topic he’d like to discuss with Lavrov —implementation of the recent “grain deal”. Washington played no role in negotiating the deal and is presumably hoping to make a lateral entry into the matrix now. Blinken claimed he is “seeing and hearing around the world a desperate need for food, a desperate need for prices to decrease. And if we can help through our direct diplomacy encourage the Russians to make good on the commitments they’ve made, that will help people around the world, and I’m determined to do it.”
Interestingly, in a veiled reference to the US, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuсoglu stated Wednesday on broadcaster Tv100 that there were countries who “wanted to block” the grain deal between Russia and Turkey, who want the Ukraine conflict “to prolong”, as they think the longer Moscow’s special military operation continues, “the weaker Russia will be.”
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Indeed, the war has spun out of US algorithm. As Hungarian PM Orban pointed out last week, anti-Russian sanctions “have not shaken Moscow,” but Europe has already lost four governments and is in an economic and political crisis.
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The spectre of the collapse of EU economies is rattling the Biden Administration. A CNN report yesterday was titled US officials say ‘biggest fear’ has come true as Russia cuts gas supplies to Europe. It said the Biden administration “is working furiously behind the scenes to keep European allies united” as the blowback from the sanctions against Russia hits them and the “impact on Europe could boomerang back onto the US, spiking natural gas and electricity prices.”
The report quoted an unnamed US official saying Russia’s retaliation for western sanctions has put the West in “unchartered territory.” Suffice to say, Blinken’s call underscores the desperate urgency in Washington to open a line of communication to Moscow at the political level.
US officials warn against all travel to Russia, citing ‘terrorism’ concerns & inability to provide consular support
RT | June 29, 2021
The US State Department has told its citizens not to travel to Russia under any circumstances, with Washington suggesting that Americans could be kidnapped, arrested, tortured and even supposedly jailed on trumped-up charges.
US officials warn against all travel to Russia, citing ‘terrorism’ concerns & inability to provide consular support
20 YEARS OF TALKING WITH US PRESIDENTS HAVE BEEN A WASTE OF RUSSIAN BREATH
The release of the White House records of telephone and face-to-face conversations with Putin from 1999 to 2001 ought to have begun a decade ago, according to the archive notes at the Clinton presidential library. But declassification was delayed until 2019; public release was postponed until last month.
Clinton’s conversations with Yeltsin, and the opinion of Yeltsin which Clinton shared in secret with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were revealed at the start of 2016. They told each other Yeltsin was an ingratiating fool whom they could rely on to do what they wanted so long as his health held. When it didn’t, they were happy to see him out of the way by staging, as they planned, his succession by Victor Chernomyrdin. That regime-changing scheme failed; read the story in the Clinton-Blair papers here.
Press review: Putin gears up to aid Lukashenko and US-Russian prisoner swap in the works
Press review — Putin gears up to aid Lukashenko and US-Russian prisoner swap in the works
**Upon the request of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russia has formed a backup law enforcement unit, which, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, would not be used “unless extremist elements hiding behind political slogans cross certain lines,” namely, unless they begin to “torch houses, banks, to try seizing administrative buildings.” Poland condemned Putin’s statements immediately, accusing Moscow of planning a “military intervention under the false premise of restoring control.” On the whole, Europe remains undecided, not ready for radical steps. The session of EU foreign ministers has shown that even the introduction of sanctions against Belarusian officials remains an undecided issue.
**A prisoner swap between Russia and the United States may be held in about a month, after both countries’ diplomats agree on the details, Vladimir Zherebenkov, an attorney of jailed US national Paul Whelan, told Izvestia. Whelan may be swapped for Russian nationals Konstantin Yaroshenko and Viktor Bout, who are serving prison sentences in the United States. The Russian Foreign Ministry is calling on the American authorities to release the Russian prisoners from jail due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ministry has not officially confirmed to Izvestia that prisoner swap talks are underway.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 