Kasmaal
Independent Somali news and analysis website .
Home
All News
more news
RECENT POSTS
Somali news
Merkel set for fourth term as chancellor as CDU leads parliamentary vote, exit polls say
Turkey says it will send back ISIS prisoners even if citizenships revoked
General Marchenko: ‘Mykolaiv was to be next city to fall, but Russia terribly failed’
Ukrainian Armed Forces repel enemy attacks in four regions
Somalia president hails lifting of arms embargo as government vows to wipe out al-Shabab militants
Captured Somali pirates arrive in India to face trial over ship hijacking
Stay Connected
RSS for posts
Trump congratulates Putin on ‘sham’ re-election
20 March, 2018 |
Filed under:
All News
,
more news
,
Opinion
,
RECENT POSTS
,
Somali news
|
Posted by:
Abdillahi
U.S. President Donald Trump | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Critics say Russian President Vladimir Putin should be condemned for the nature of his Sunday election victory, but President Donald Trump didn’t mention that — or other alleged Kremlin bad behavior.
By
LOUIS NELSON
President Donald Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on the Russian president’s Sunday election victory, and predicted the two men will soon meet in person—but did not raise the subjects of Russian cyber-aggression or the recent nerve agent attack on British soil widely attributed to Moscow.
“We had a very good call and I suspect that we’ll probably be meeting in the not-too-distant future to discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday, an apparent reference to Putin’s recent boast that Russia has developed new classes of nuclear weapons that can strike the United States.
Top U.S. intelligence and Congressional officials warn that Russia continues to spread digital propaganda and disinformation within the U.S., and is ready to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections. But Trump did not mention the subject on the phone call, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Tuesday.
“I don’t believe it came up on this specific call but it is something that we have spoken extensively about,” said Sanders, who said there are currently no specific plans for the time or place of a Trump-Putin meeting.
Sanders added that Trump did not address the nature of Putin’s victory in what critics called an only cosmetically democratic election. The Russian leader was elected to a third six-year term with about 75 percent of the vote after a campaign in which rival candidates were excluded and state-controlled media showered praise on him. “Sham elections for a dictator,” Freedom House
declared
.
Trump’s call with Putin drew a sharp retort from Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), a fierce Putin critic who said in a statement that “an American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.” McCain added that Trump “insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”
“We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate,” Sanders responded. “What we do know is that Putin has been election in their country, and that’s not something that we can dictate to them, how they operate. We can only focus on the freeness and fairness of elections in our country.”
That attitude is a departure from decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which a succession of administrations have freely criticized anti-democratic events and elections in other nations.
Source:politico.eu
All News
US Appoints New Ambassador to Somalia
US student protests against Israel’s brutal Gaza war go global
EU ready to make ‘full use’ of trade defence tools against China, Von der Leyen warns Xi
Erdoğan vows to defend Palestinian cause against all odds
Five killed in Russian missile attack as Ukraine’s ‘Harry Potter castle’ goes up in flames
EU tightens visa requirements for Ethiopians over a lack of government cooperation on deportations
UN warns of ‘tragedy beyond words’ if Israel attacks Rafah
ICJ throws out Nicaragua’s case asking Germany to halt aid to Israel
Blinken tells GCC foreign ministers Israel must do more to boost Gaza aid
EXPLOSION KILLS SIX HORMUUD TELECOM WORKERS IN MOGADISHU ATTACK