The intelligence community (IC) running the political show in Washington DC to abase the elected POTUS. Deep state at its very best. Russia is known for its professionals in diplomacy. What had the US to offer in the last two administrations? John Bolton? Susan Rice? Samantha Power? When an organisation is dysfunctional, one needs to make deep cuts to change the mid- and top level leadership. It will take time and adds to the risks of keeping world peace.
Who is Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador rattling Trump’s presidency? | The Guardian |
Kislyak’s conversations with the former national security adviser Michael Flynn led to Flynn being forced to quit on 13 February for giving a misleading account to the vice-president. Kislyak’s two meetings with Jeff Sessions caused the attorney general to recuse himself from investigations into whether Russia meddled in the US elections.
The second blow came just when Trump was on a high after a relatively well received first address to Congress, indicating that Russia is a cloud over his presidency that will only darken rather than dissipate.
“Kislyak was acting strategically to engage individuals the Russian government thought could be key allies in the incoming US administration,” said Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center in Washington.
Sergey Kislyak, 66, trained as an engineer in Moscow, attended the Soviet Union’s Academy of Foreign Trade and joined the foreign ministry in 1977. His first spell as an envoy to the US was between 1985 and 1989, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing perestroika and glasnost. His focus was arms control.
Steven Pifer, a former US state department official who is now director of the arms control and non-proliferation initiative at the Brookings Institution, a thinktank in Washington, recalled:
“He was working to enhance US-Soviet relations and trying to make progress on arms control.
I did not detect, as I did with some Soviet diplomats, a visceral dislike of the US.”“He’s intelligent. He speaks very good English. He can show a sense of humour. At the same time,
he can also represent his country even when he has a bad brief to represent, for example over
the military intervention in Ukraine. He’s loyal to Russia. I imagine he’s had some interaction
with Putin but didn’t come from his inner circle of intelligence and St Petersburg.”Kislyak was ambassador to Nato from 1998, then a deputy foreign minister from 2003. In 2008, he was appointed ambassador to the US, not long before the election of Barack Obama. Last December, Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 of Kislyak’s colleagues.
In a rare press conference last year, Kislyak said: “We were able to end the cold war, but most probably we weren’t able to build post-cold war peace.”
[Links added to article are mine – Oui]
Presentation on invitation by John Hopkins Institute for International Studies – Oct. 2016
Dean Vali Nasr, The Foreign Policy Institute and the SAIS Russia-Eurasia Club cordially invite you to join Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the US, for a discussion on “The Current State of US-Russian Relations.” The conversation will be moderated by Ambassador Shirin Tahir-Kheli, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Institute.
Ambassador Kislyak currently serves as the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States, and previously as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2008. Prior to that, he served simultaneously as the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Kingdom of Belgium and as the Permanent Representative of Russia to NATO in Brussels, Belgium, from 1998-2003.
Ambassador Kislyak has worked in the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation since 1997, including a variety of high-level positions. He graduated from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1973, as well as from the USSR Academy of Foreign Trade in 1977.
TRAITOR! George Mitchell speaking on Russia Today in interview on Politicking with Larry King.
○ A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order| Carnegie Council |
Oui says
March 3, 2017 at 11:04 PMYou know I value and appreciate your work immensely! However on analysis of Putin, Russia and the start of Cold War 2.0 we differ in opinion. Just read an interview in Dutch press yesterday about former FM and NATO SG De Hoop Scheffer. Confirms my point of view where responsibilities lie.
Reply:
Ben Sanders says
March 5, 2017 at 3:41 PMOui, your comment is not deleted [cached] because of your long history of meaningful comments. The blind eye for the NATO offensive and soros/clinton colorrevolutions in this great blog is really disappointing and shows you how propaganda gets to everybody.
