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Russia Tag

After Russiagate came crashing down, Trump's re-election campaign is targeting six high profile Democrats who, they claim, “made outlandish, false claims, without evidence." Six Democrats were mentioned in a memo sent by the re-election campaign to networks: Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Rep. Jerry Nadler, Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Eric Swalwell, DNC Chair Tom Perez,  and John Brennan, former CIA director.

Weeks after getting the European Union's approval for a gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea, Russia is moving ahead with its plans to construct a new Black Sea pipeline into Western Europe. Moscow intends to extend the existing Turk Stream pipeline that links Russia and Turkey to supply Western Europe with gas, German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.

The Trump administration's decision to suspend the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russian triggered sharp responses from Germany and the European Union. "Europeans aghast as end to INF treaty looms," the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported, adding that the "EU leaders are concerned that the US withdrawal from the INF treaty could spark a new arms race."

The Democrats have been wailing about the Russian influence on the 2016 election, but it turns out, as Mary blogged earlier this week, that they are implicated in creating their own army of fake Russian bots to influence the 2017 Alabama Special Election. According to reports, Democrats spent the same amount of money on fake Russian bots intended to spread disinformation and fake news as the Russians spent on real Russian bots.

*UPDATE 2:42PM: Ukraine's parliament has approved "martial law for 30 days in the regions bordering" Russia. The undeclared war between Ukraine and Russia took a horrific turn on Sunday after Ukraine claimed that Russia opened fire on its navy in the Kerch Strait, which separates the Black and Azoz Seas. The attack wounded six sailors and Russia seized at least three Ukrainian vessels.

The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned an illicit Iranian-Russian network supplying oil to the Syrian regime. The elaborate oil scheme was used to finance the Islamic terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, a department press release said Tuesday. The covert shipment of Iranian oil was run by the aid of the Russian state-owned company Promsyrioimport. The network delivered millions of barrels of oil to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime and hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamic terrorist groups, the Treasury Department disclosed.

Friday, a Russian woman was charged for allegedly interfering in US elections, including the 2018 midterms. The Department of Justice indicated that the criminal charges are not indicative of interference to the degree that electoral outcomes were swayed. Elena Khusyaynova, 44, is accused of attempting to "sow discord", "as part of a conspiracy that exploited thousands of social media accounts and emails that claimed to be owned by U.S. residents, authorities said," reports CNBC.

Poland has signed a long-term gas deal to buy natural gas from the United States to ease its reliance on Moscow. Polish state-run energy company PGNiG signed a 20-year supply contract with Louisiana-based Venture Global LNG. "Today we can fulfill our efforts to improve the sovereignty, security, and competitiveness of our gas sector," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters on Wednesday.