Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual televised call-in show with Russians on Thursday in a semi-choreographed event that highlighted the Russian president’s efforts to raise living standards at home while defending Russian interests abroad. 

Amid Putin’s 18-year rule, the so-called “Direct Line” has emerged as a key symbol of Russia’s top-down system of government, in which Putin often sits as the sole arbiter of problems befalling citizens of the world’s largest country.

State media claimed that Russians submitted over 2.5 million questions to the Russian leader on topics ranging from health care to gas prices, pension payments, mortgage rates and much, much more. 

Despite a grueling live answering session before cameras, the limits of that format were also on display: Putin fielded under a hundred questions in just under 4.5 hours. 

Good (economics) vibrations

As anticipated, domestic issues dominated the session. 

Indeed, Putiin claimed improving Russians’ lives was his priority after a landslide re-election last March that was marred by accusations of vote tampering but secured Putin’s rule through 2024. 

Addressing the economy early on, Putin argued that Russia’s finances were “on the right path” and re-emphasized campaign calls that — despite western sanctions — Russia was poised for “breakthroughs” in its development. 

“Overall, we are heading in the right direction,” said Putin. “We have started on the trajectory toward robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is modest, small, but it is also not falling backward.”

The Russian leader again touched on a campaign pledge to halve Russia’s poverty rate in his next, and — in theory — final six-year term. 

Asked by the event’s moderator whether the current government — whose leadership has gone largely unchanged from his previous term  — was capable of reaching that goal, Putin assured the “government team was optimal.” 

Foreign policy classics 

The event also contained Putin’s well-worn barbs against the West — with the United States, in particular, a long favorite target.  

Putin said that U.S. allies in Europe — currently engaged in a tariff showdown with the Trump administration — were slowly warming to the message he’d been delivering for years: U.S. foreign and economic policy was aimed at extending American power at the expense of the rest of the world. 

“It appears our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions,” said Putin. “But now we are seeing that this is happening.”

Putin also accused the U.S. of fueling a Cold War-style arms race by abandoning key nuclear arms treaties, while expressing hope that the threat of mutual annihilation would continue to play a deterrent role. 

“The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us,” said the Russian leader.

In a related exchange, Putin assured that a new generation of Russian super weapons — unveiled by Putin in a high-profile speech before Russia’s Federal Council last March — were largely now operational and ready to defend Russia, despite doubts from outside experts.

 Hot wars

Russia’s very real conflicts also figured prominently.  

In Ukraine, where Russia has been engaged in a simmering proxy war since 2014, Putin suggested the government in Kyiv would pay a heavy price if rumors of a planned summer offensive against Russian-backed rebels in the country’s east proved true.  

“If this happens, I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general,” said Putin. 

When asked about Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Syria, Putin argued Russia’s military had gained valuable experience from participating in the Syrian conflict but seemed to walk back earlier repeated calls for a large-scale withdrawal of Russian forces. 

“Our soldiers are there in order to secure Russia’s interests in this critically important part of the world, which is so near to us. And they will stay there, for as long as it is in Russia’s interest for them to do so.”

Same old same old

Given this was the 16th Direct Line over the course of Putin’s rule, the event had an air of predictability that even the Russian president seemed to acknowledge. On several occasions, Putin noted several topics had been raised in past call-in programs.  

When asked whether he had chosen a possible successor, the Russian leader again demurred, noting it was a “traditional question.”

Yet the event was not without at least some surprises. For the first time, a live studio audience was jettisoned in favor of video and phone appeals fielded by young pro-Kremlin “volunteers.” 

Key governors and ministers were also a new part of the show, remaining on a direct video feed to address problems in real time — and occasionally faced admonishment from the president — when policies clashed with realities on the ground.

Informed theater

Debate has long simmered over just how choreographed the Direct Line truly is.  Obvious propaganda-style cutaways to highlight the government’s achievements mix with genuine complaints to create an atmosphere of what some called “informed theater.” 

Adding to that blur were screens in the background that posed apparently unfiltered — and occasionally uncomfortable — questions to the Russian leader.

“Why is there money for tanks, bombs, planes and machine guns, but no money for the people?” went one text message that appeared briefly on screen.

If Putin saw the prompt, it went unacknowledged.  

Regardless, the Russian leader looked far more comfortable than he was during a recent interview with Austria’s national ORF channel in which Putin repeatedly grew testy over the journalist’s line of inquiry and repeated follow-up questions. 

Direct Line offered none of that, and Putin seemed to enjoy the comfortable questions from Russian state media hosts.   

“Vladimir Putin, you received a record level of support during the last elections. Do you feel lonely at the top of political Olympus? Lonely without any competitors or competition?”  

“No, I’m not lonely,” he replied, adding, “I have my team.”  

With that, the Russian leader stared at the screen. 
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A 500-year-old copy of a letter in which Christopher Columbus describes his voyage to the Americas has been returned to Spain after U.S. authorities tracked down the document, which had been stolen and replaced with a forgery years ago.

The letter, copied centuries ago from the one Columbus wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain after his first Atlantic crossing, was given to Spain’s Ambassador Pedro Morenes in Washington, law enforcement authorities said on Thursday.

The repatriation of the letter follows seven years of sleuthing by U.S. law enforcement agencies after the discovery that it had been replaced by a forgery at the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona.

“We are truly honored to return this historically important document back to Spain — its rightful owner,” U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss said in a statement.

Columbus, born in Genoa in modern-day Italy, had written the letter in Spanish after his return to Europe in 1493. Ferdinand and Isabella, who sponsored his voyage, sent the document to Rome to be translated into Latin and manually copied, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie McCall said.

“A number of these copies were made and then delivered to various kings and queens in Europe to spread the news of Columbus’s discoveries,” McCall said by telephone.

A Latin copy of the letter, in which Columbus describes the mountains, fertile fields, gold and indigenous people he encountered in the Caribbean, is the one that was illegally swapped for a forgery at the Barcelona library, McCall said.

Authorities said they discovered the theft after a tip in 2011 to an assistant U.S. attorney in Delaware who had become experienced in the subject.

Because the library had digitized its collection before the theft, U.S. investigators said they and Spanish authorities were able to determine in 2012 that the letter it had was a forgery.

The real letter, they said, had been sold in November 2005 by two Italian book dealers for 600,000 euros.

After learning in March 2013 that it had been sold again in 2011 for 900,000 euros, authorities said they made contact with the person who had the letter. They said that person was unaware that it had been stolen.

They said they later concluded “beyond all doubt” that it was the letter taken from the Barcelona library and got it back.

The case is still under investigation, McCall said.
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NATO defense ministers rallied around their latest plans to contain Russia on Thursday, while keeping a lid on their frustrations over new steel tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump has justified on national security grounds.

Briefly putting aside what NATO’s chief said were “serious differences” within the alliance, defense ministers agreed a plan to protect the North Atlantic against increased Russian naval strength, move troops more quickly across Europe and have more combat-ready battalions, ships and planes.

“There are differences related to issues like trade, the Iran nuclear deal and climate change,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

“We have disagreements between NATO allies but we stand together in NATO when it comes to the core task of NATO … to protect each other.”

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said there were “controversial issues” but that “the atmosphere and our cooperation here in the alliance are full of trust.”

At the first meeting in NATO’s new glass and steel headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis appeared relaxed and smiling in parts of the closed-door meetings broadcast to reporters but he did not speak publicly at NATO on Thursday.

Many ministers also avoided public comments.

One alliance diplomat told Reuters that in preparatory meetings, Trump’s decision to target Europe on trade and Iran was absent from debates in an attempt to preserve unity, but that there were “elephants in the room.”

Trump’s “America first” rhetoric and inconsistent statements on NATO have morphed into policy that directly challenges European priorities, the diplomats said, citing new U.S. metal tariffs and Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate change accord and the 2015 Iran nuclear accord.

A second NATO diplomat described the U.S. president as an unknown quantity with a lack of interest in the transatlantic ties that Europe and Canada cherish.

“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came to NATO in April and made a very favorable impression, and everyone respects and admires Jim Mattis. But there’s a fear and an uneasiness about what Trump will do next,” the diplomat said.

DEFENSE SPENDING INCREASE

Trump is expected at a NATO summit in Brussels in July, a year since he first came to the alliance and publicly admonished allies for not spending enough on defense.

Stoltenberg unveiled higher expenditure estimates for NATO in 2018 to defence ministers. Spending by European governments, Turkey and Canada is expected to rise by 3.82 percent in 2018, which would be the fourth straight year of increases and would mean an $87.3 billion cumulative increase since 2015.

But Trump’s envoy to the alliance, Kay Bailey Hutchison, warned before the meeting that the spending issue would remain a sore point for the president.

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO leaders committed to raise their defense spending towards 2 percent of economic output by 2024, but under current projections, only 15 of the 29 allies will meet that target.

“It will be an issue until we have that realized, it was a commitment made in Wales, to strive for that level,” Hutchison said of the 2014 summit at which leaders made the pledge.

Mattis was in a delicate position in Brussels, trying to balance the need for a strong NATO, while backing Trump’s decision to impose tariffs.

Trump infuriated European Union members, Canada and Mexico by imposing tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium, which experts say could bleed into U.S. security relationships, even among America’s closest allies.

“I think it’s still premature to call it a trade war, because as it starts maturing, you know, there’s only give and take on these things,” Mattis told reporters en route to Brussels.
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“Brexit is actually about to get interesting.”

That was the view Thursday of the political sketch writer of Britain’s Daily Telegraph. For the past few months, British politics have been obscured by a mind-numbing fog of squabbling, irritability and bravado about how, when and on what terms Britain will exit the European Union and what the country’s relationship will be with its largest trading partner after Brexit.

So far there has been no clarity — no clear decisions taken by Britain’s ruling Conservatives, who hold office thanks to parliamentary support from a quirky Northern Irish party.

At war with themselves over Brexit, the Conservatives have been more consumed in internecine battling than with actual negotiations with EU officials, who have become more frustrated as British ambiguity has deepened and intransigent as London has demanded free and uninterrupted post-Brexit access to Europe for British goods and so-called “passporting” rights, which allow firms to do business in other European Economic Area nations – for the City of London’s banks.

Next week, Britain’s House of Commons will debate key EU withdrawal legislation. Lawmakers will also vote on amendments passed by the House of Lords that would tie Britain to the EU. The government is facing a rebellion by more than a dozen pro-EU Conservative lawmakers who, along with opposition parties, are likely to inflict a series of embarrassing parliamentary defeats. Those defeats may clarify how Britain exits out that could equally cloud the issue even more and throw doubt on whether Britain departs at all.

Hence Telegraph sketch-writer Michael Deacon’s excitement that something is about to happen after months of skirmishing!

Complex negotiations with Brussels since Britain voted in a referendum narrowly for Brexit have been largely left to civil servants . They complain privately that their political masters have given them no clear mandate. Meanwhile, the civil servants are portrayed as fifth columnists by pro-Brexit tabloid newspapers, which campaigned jingoistically to leave the bloc.

The suspicion of so-called hard Brexiters, those who want a sharp clean break with the European Union, is that the civil servants are treacherously preparing the ground for Britain to retain backdoor membership either by ensuring Britain remains a member of the customs union or its Single Market, which would require Britain to abide by EU regulations, observe rulings by the European Court of Justice and block it from negotiating individual trade deals with non-EU countries.

And there are suspicions May is maneuvering Britain into a position of backdoor membership. She has delayed publishing a formal White Paper outlining the government’s Brexit proposals, partly for fear of provoking a party rebellion. May was accused Thursday of deceiving ministers over Brexit and keeping eurosceptic members of her cabinet, including Brexit minister David Davis, in the dark over a key negotiation document concerning what happens to the border post-Brexit between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Allies say the Brexit minister has considered resigning over May’s plan for Britain to remain in the EU customs union until there is an agreement on the border, allowing “frictionless trade” between the two halves of the island of Ireland. So-called hard Brexiters fear that could be extended indefinitely, enmeshing Britain with the EU.

May’s Cabinet is sharply split between ministers led by the country’s finance minister, Philip Hammond, who want Britain to maintain close ties, like Norway, with the EU post-Brexit, including maintaining membership of the bloc’s customs union and/or membership of the single market, and ministers like the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and environment secretary Michael Gove, who favor a total break allowing the country to become what they term “global Britain.”

The country’s embattled prime minister has made various stabs at trying to define what the terms of exit the government wants and what kind of future relationship Britain should have with the European Union, only to be undermined by her warring Cabinet, or by EU officials. Earlier this year, May and her Cabinet ministers outlined collectively Britain’s Brexit future, as far as they see it, in a series of confusing and contradictory speeches that left questions unanswered and baffled EU officials.

And since then, negotiations within the cabinet and with the European Union have gone nowhere. Decisions keep being deferred. Internecine fights within the Cabinet are started, but then shelved for fear it will collapse the government, trigger a snap general election that the opposition Labour Party is poised to win.

“It has become a shambles,” a Conservative official admits. “If Rubik invented another cube, he should call it Brexit; but I am not sure anyone would be able to solve the puzzle,” he told VOA.
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Leaders of the world’s top industrialized democracies will meet in Quebec, Canada, this weekend at a time of growing tensions over trade and other issues While the G-7 Summit is likely to be overshadowed by another historic meeting next week in Singapore, analysts say the G-7 summit is likely to be no less consequential to the future of the global economy or the continued international leadership of the United States. Mil Arcega has more.
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Vladimir Putin, on a living standards drive at the start of a new presidential term, is expected to try to fix Russians’ everyday problems on live TV later Thursday, handing out real-time orders to regional governors and government ministers.

Putin, who won a landslide re-election victory in March, has taken part in the annual phone-in since 2001, using it to cast himself as a decisive troubleshooter on the home front and as a staunch defender of Russia’s interests on the world stage.

Political theater

Critics say the event, which is being held days before Russia hosts the soccer World Cup, is a stage-managed piece of theater designed to let Russians let off steam and fleetingly feel like they can influence a bureaucratic top-down system.

Putin and his aides say it is an indispensable tool to gauge public sentiment and learn what people’s real problems are.

The 65-year-old politician used the event last year to pledge to eradicate spiraling poverty, fielding almost 70 questions in just less than four hours in an event that Kremlin watchers often liken to a tsar listening to his petitioners.

This year, the Interfax news agency reported Putin would forgo his usual studio audience, field text and video questions on a series of TV monitors, and hand out real time orders to regional governors and government ministers who have been told to be at their desks when the event starts at 0900 GMT.

1.4 million questions

Members of the public have submitted more than 1.4 million questions, Russian news agencies reported, many of them visible on a special website set up for the event.

Questions posted ahead of the event included asking Putin whether he planned to meet U.S. President Donald Trump this year, whether relations with the West would improve anytime soon, how he planned to reduce poverty, and why petrol prices were rising so fast.

Putin, who is at the start of a new six-year term in office, always fields a smattering of foreign policy questions, which he typically uses to lash out at the West with whom Moscow’s relations are at a post Cold War low.

This year, he is expected to focus more heavily on domestic issues because he has said the main priority of his fourth term is raising living standards by sharply increasing social and infrastructure spending.
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Ukrainian journalists have been left puzzled and feeling uneasy since the Ukrainian security service (SBU) staged the assassination of Russian reporter Arkady Babchenko, a U.S. media watchdog says.

Ukrainian authorities have said the elaborate operation was designed to foil a Russian plot to assassinate Babchenko and other members of the Ukrainian media. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that Ukrainian media staffers were upset by SBU’s revelation that it had discovered a “hit list” of 47 journalists, bloggers and activists who may allegedly be targeted by assassins. But veteran journalists told CPJ that while they were perturbed by the news of the list, they were used to being under threat.

Many questioned why the SBU would go through all the trouble to protect Babchenko when it has yet to solve the daylight car bombing that killed Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016.

“I feel the same as I felt before the Babchenko case,” TV reporter Nastya Stanko told CPJ. “I didn’t feel safe then, and I don’t feel safe now.”

Stanko said the Babchenko case had, in fact, made things worse for journalists.

“When some journalists spoke their mind and said journalists shouldn’t work with security services, Babchenko himself said that he wished for these ‘betrayers’ to have a killer knocking on their door,” she said. “I think we are now at a greater risk of that than before.”
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