It didn’t take much effort for the US and UK to make the EU fall in line in the Skripal case, Virginia State Senator Richard Black told RT. The bloc is a “soft dictatorship” in which only key players need to be swayed, he said. The White House’s claims that it played a key role in making European countries act in unison when punishing Russia with expulsions over the Skripal saga might not [...]

The opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to expel Russian diplomats without obtaining firm proof of Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning first. The opposition party rebuked Merkel's government for its decision to expel Russian diplomats over Russia's alleged involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in S [...]

Scores of non-Western countries refuse to take the UK’s assertion that Russia was behind the incident in Salisbury at face value, demanding it present the evidence, Moscow’s embassy in London said. Some 160 states share that view. [...]

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Russia must take responsibility for the alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the UK if it wants to improve relations with the United States, US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said during a press briefing on Tuesday. "If Russia wants to improve relations it needs to first acknowledge its responsibility for this attack and cease its recklessly aggressive be [...]

The UN declined to comment on the legality of Washington’s move to expel 12 Russian staff working there, saying only that it had been “notified.” The US envoy to Russia hinted they hadn’t even sent notification in advance.  Speaking to reporters, the UN spokesman declined to comment on the US move to expel 12 Russian diplomats from the permanent mission to the UN, citing the “sensitivi [...]

China is the world's biggest crude consumer and buys most of its oil from Russia. However, most settlements are still in US dollars. The launch of the petro-yuan now allows Moscow and Beijing to use national currencies instead. China and Russia are actively reducing dependence on the dollar in bilateral trade. In October 2017, Beijing launched a payment system for transactions in yuan and Russian [...]

The Israeli defense minister hailed the US’ hefty contribution to the missile defense program, thanking Washington for its $705 million in aid – $558 million more than Israel’s initial request. “I am pleased to announce that the US Congress has approved a record amount for missile defense: $705 million in 2018,” Avigdor Liberman tweeted. [...]

Boris Johnson has insisted that British chemical lab Porton Down told him the nerve agent used to attack the Skripals was definitely Novichok. However, court documents suggest there is no such certainty. [...]

The UK must provide solid evidence of Russia's alleged involvement in the Skripal case, the Czech president has said. While he did not oppose the country’s move to expel Russian diplomats, he believes it to be “a bit superfluous.” “I want to see the facts. I will certainly welcome if the United Kingdom presents some evidence that the Russians wanted to kill the double agent Skripal,” Cz [...]

Russia’s L-44M amphibian plane was put to the hard test when it was made to belly-land on a snowfield and take off moments later. In a video, posted by the Samara-based aircraft maker Chaika, the dual-engine aircraft is seen coming in for landing and belly landing with its wheels up. [...]

Higinio Polo has for a long time predicted the current tension in international relations. He spoke about this, in particular, in his book “USA: The State-Offender” ('USA: el Estado delincuente'), which was published in 2004. Higinio Polo wrote in his book that Washington "is developing a dangerous and aggressive foreign policy," whose goal is "to strengthen the new world dominance" that "je [...]

Early in Richard Nixon’s presidency, he told his chief of staff Bob Haldeman that his secret strategy for ending the Vietnam War was to threaten the use of nuclear weapons.  Nixon opined that President Eisenhower’s nuclear threats in 1953 brought a quick end to the Korean War, and that he planned to use the same principle of threatening maximum force.  Nixon called it the “madman theory,� [...]

Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the term ‘Deep State,’ according to recent polling they are nevertheless skeptical of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, John V. Walsh reports. “Public Troubled by Deep State” is the headline that the Monmouth University Polling Institute tags to its recent poll.  Acknowledging that [...]

President Donald Trump has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. It comes in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, which the UK has blamed on Russia. The move follows major diplomatic pressure by the UK on its allies to follow their lead in expelling Russian diplomats. [...]

Moscow won’t leave the provocative acts against Russian diplomats unanswered, the Foreign Ministry said, adding that several countries blindly copied the UK’s “hypocritical” stance on the Skripal case in the absence of evidence. The decision of a number of NATO and other European countries to expel Russian diplomats over the poisoning of the former double-agent Sergei Skripal amounts to a [...]

British politician, broadcaster, and writer George Galloway has slammed Donald Trump’s decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats and close the Russian consulate in Seattle. Galloway regards it as tantamount to a “declaration of war.” Galloway contrasted the US’ actions with those of EU member states. [...]

The United States was developing the gas A-234, we have a document that confirms this, said the head of the laboratory for chemical and analytical control of the scientific center of the Russian Defense Ministry Igor Rybalchenko. "The fact is that back in 1998 when we looked through another version of the spectral library, which was published by the National Bureau of Standards of the Unite [...]

Vienna chose not to expel Russian diplomats as a response to the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, saying it wants to keep dialogue with Moscow open. Some European opposition figures say the move will only create problems. Despite more than a dozen European nations expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal case, not every nation or politician is on board. Dissenting voices are starting [...]

Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Germany, France, Denmark, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Canada, Romania, Finland, Croatia, Albania, Sweden, Spain and the US have decided to expel Russian diplomats amid the Skripal case. "We express a decisive protest over the decision taken by a number of EU and NATO countries to expel Russian diplomats. [...]

Western society is flirting with a disturbing trend where people and nations are being denied the time-honored 'presumption of innocence'. The same undemocratic method is even being used against nations in what is becoming a dangerous game. [...]

Dems are criticizing Trump’s National Security Advisor pick, not because he’s a warmonger who was one of the original members of the Project for a New American Century, but because he’s allegedly too soft on Russia, Caitlin Johnstone explains. As so many of us have been dreading, PNAC’s favorite bloodthirsty child killer John Bolton has been added to the Trump administration. And as m [...]

One must marvel at the first few paragraphs of Amnesty International’s recent press release: “The international community’s catastrophic failure to take concrete action to protect the people of Syria has allowed parties to the conflict, most notably the Syrian government, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with complete impunity, often with assistance of outside powers, partic [...]