Het dit ‘n rol gespeel – of nie – die tyd gaan ons vorentoe beslis aan ons basse voel as die ANC en EFF hul grondwet wysig om grond, bates en eiendomme te vat sonder vergoeding. MINERALE is die grootste aantrekkingskrag, en ongelukkig sit ons mense daarop. Wie gaan regtig baat by alles? Nie die armes nie en die middelman wat al vir jare “doodwurg” om ‘n bestaan te voer, gaan ook opeindig waar hulle nie wil wees nie, sou dit die waarheid wees. BRICS .. Commonwealth ! Hoe groot is die rol en finansies wat hier ingepomp word en as daar na al die misdaad en moorde gekyk word is dit nog meer as voor 1994. Immigrante word in miljoene ingevoer, maar wie vermoor wie in die land?
Volgens die DA en artikels wat hulle geplaas het, speel die Russe ‘n groot rol in Afrika, maar veral in Suid-Afrika. Wie kan dan vergeet oor al die “ooreenkomste” wat Zuma en sy kabinet aangegaan het – en is dit ooit werklik gekanselleer?
Met partye wie se stemme nie getel is nie, is dit ooglopend dat dit geen demokrasie is nie, maar sedert 1994 reeds ‘n kommunistiese regering. Lees op wie al die befondsings doen. Dit sluit ook vir die DA hierby in.
lees gerus:
Russe en SA verkiesing 2019
“Russe en SA” (2019 verkiesing)
***
In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a dinner for President George W. Bush and other world leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia. In a photo, the man standing behind them is the caterer, wearing a tux and a white bow tie.
His name is Yevgeny Prigozhin.
His nickname is “Putin’s chef.” So what’s the big deal about him?
“He epitomizes a real renaissance man in contemporary Russia, which is to say that he runs some very high-end restaurants,” said Angela Stent, the head of Russian Studies at Georgetown University and author of the forthcoming book Putin’s World.
Interesting. But what else does he do?
“He was the one running this Internet Research Agency, this troll factory in St. Petersburg that managed to mobilize thousands of Americans from 5,000 miles away to demonstrate and protest in the 2016 election,” said Stent.
“He also runs Wagner, one of the largest mercenary private military groups in Russia,” she added. “His troops are in Syria, they’re in Ukraine, they’re in a number of other places, where they are fighting in the Russian state’s interest.”
So he’s got a lot cooking.
Tracking the key figures around Putin, and how they fit into the Russia investigation in this country, can be confusing.
Yet Prigozhin’s name is worth knowing. He’s burly and bald, at age 57. And while his name keeps cropping up, he’s largely invisible — even in Russia.
“He doesn’t have much of a public persona in Russia. Until very recently he was virtually unknown,” said Dimitri Simes, who heads the Center for the National Interest, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “This is not a person who speaks at important political or business meetings. This is not a person who regularly appears on TV.”
So where did Prigozhin come from?
He spent most of his 20s in prison on robbery, fraud and prostitution convictions. In the 1990s, he rebuilt his life with hotdog stands, which evolved into a catering business in St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown.
“He proceeded to get a big break catering high-profile events, one with Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac in 2001,” said Michael Kofman, who closely follows Russia for the U.S. government-funded research organization CNA.
“Eventually, he got a massive contract for feeding the Russian military and the Russian armed forces, which is probably where most of his money comes from.”
At a recent press conference, Putin was dismissive when asked about his putative chef.
“All my chefs are employed by the Federal Guard Service. They are all servicemen holding different ranks. I have no other chefs,” Putin said.
Regarding the private military company, Putin added: “If they comply with Russian laws, they have every right to work and promote their business interests anywhere in the world.”
Those interests extend to Syria. In a dramatic confrontation last year, Russian mercenaries tried to seize an oil facility that was held by the U.S military and its allies.
As it was unfolding, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he wanted to find out who the attackers were and make sure they weren’t part of the formal Russian army. The U.S. military contacted their Russian counterparts on a “deconfliction” hotline the two sides use to make sure they didn’t shoot at each other in Syria.
“The Russia High Command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” Mattis told Congress last year.
Once that was cleared up, Mattis said, “My direction was for the force to be annihilated.” And it was. The Americans say more than 200 Russian mercenaries were killed in withering airstrikes before they retreated from the one-sided fight near the eastern city of Deir el-Zour.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/30/685622639/putins-chef-has-his-fingers-in-many-pies-critics-say
***
The secretive businessman known as Vladimir Putin’s “chef” for his Kremlin catering work is alleged to have helped Russia seize parts of Ukraine, turn the tide in the Syrian war and meddle in US elections. Now he’s reaching deep into Africa with an army of mercenaries and spin doctors in tow to cash in on his newfound expertise.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a restaurateur from Putin’s native St Petersburg, has emerged as an unlikely point man in Russia’s belated push to bolster its geopolitical might by rekindling Cold War ties across a largely underdeveloped region laden with untapped mineral wealth. Lacking the financial muscle of its main rivals, the US, Europe and China, Russia is carving out a niche by shoring up strongmen in unstable but potentially rich states who have a taste for Russian weaponry.
Prigozhin and his hodgepodge of contract soldiers and political operatives are offering security, arms training and electioneering services in exchange for mining rights and other opportunities, two people familiar with the matter said. He’s already active in or moving into 10 countries that Russia’s military already has relationships with: the DRC, Sudan, Libya, Madagascar, Angola, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic.
This spurt of activity comes as Putin prepares to host more than 50 leaders for the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019. It’s an event that will cement “Russia’s active presence in the region”, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said before a sweep through the continent earlier in 2018.
The low-profile nature of Prigozhin’s businesses ensures some deniability for the Kremlin. Putin, who gave Prigozhin an award for his service to the state in 2014, earlier in 2018 compared his old ally’s international work to that of George Soros, the US billionaire financier who’s long been accused by the Kremlin of subverting governments at Washington’s behest.
“The Russians want influence with governments, they want economic access and they’re much more flexible — that’s their advantage,” said Peter Pham, head of the Washington-based Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. “It doesn’t cost very much to send a couple of hundred guys to shore up a president.”
*
Prigozhin didn’t respond to e-mail and phone requests for comment via his Concord Catering company, and officials in the countries he’s targeting had no comment on his activities.
Prigozhin and Concord were among the three Russian businesses and 13 people that special counsel Robert Mueller indicted in February for allegedly interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. On November 15, a US judge rejected a bid to dismiss the charges by another of Prigozhin’s indicted companies.
Africa has been largely an afterthought for Putin, who came to power almost two decades ago focused on regaining Russia’s lost superpower status. After the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse, Russia’s presence in Africa dwindled dramatically; now the region is a focus for Kremlin efforts to reassert its geopolitical prowess and open new markets for domestic companies hamstrung by Western sanctions.
As relations with the West continue to plumb new lows, Putin is finally pursuing a comprehensive strategy for developing commercial and security ties with the continent as a whole, according to Polina Slyusarchuk, who runs Intexpertise, an Africa-focused research group in St Petersburg.Russia has suffered setbacks, particularly in SA.
President Cyril Ramaphosa froze his predecessor’s multibillion-dollar nuclear power project with Russia after he took office in February. But Putin is increasingly putting money behind the courtships, writing off some $20bn of debt held by African countries last year.
More recently, Egypt won a $25bn Russian loan to build its first nuclear power plant. And Russia is in talks with Eritrea to establish its first logistics hub on the Red Sea, not far from the Pentagon’s only permanent base in Africa and China’s first military facility abroad, both in Djibouti.
In March, Lavrov, Putin’s long-serving foreign minister, made a five-nation swing through Africa that included a stop in Zimbabwe, where Russian companies are involved in a $3bn platinum-mining venture, the country’s biggest investment project. Prigozhin wasn’t far behind.
Prigozhin’s political consultants advised Emmerson Mnangagwa on his disputed victory in the July election to succeed Robert Mugabe, who turned Zimbabwe into an international pariah during his four-decade rule, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Mnangagwa’s main opponent accused “Russians” of helping his rival manipulate the polls. The ruling Zanu-PF party has denied any Russian involvement in the election.
Putin gained a military toehold in the heart of the continent early in 2018, after the UN issued a waiver for Russia to arm and defend the government of the Central African Republic. The CAR, which is mired in civil conflict, appealed for help after France, its former colonial master, suddenly ended a three-year peacekeeping mission.
“Like any normal businessman, Prigozhin is looking for the most lucrative places to invest his money”
The work of Prigozhin’s mercenary venture, known loosely in the Russian media as Wagner, has already led to gold and diamond concessions in both the CAR and Sudan, according to Russian and French media reports. Three Russian journalists were murdered in the CAR in July. They were investigating Prigozhin’s activities, according to exiled tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was funding their trip.
Prigozhin is now expanding his reach across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest country in Africa after Algeria and one of the world’s richest in minerals, the people said. The former Belgian colony is about to elect a new leader for the first time since 2001, when Joseph Kabila succeeded his slain father.
Kabila recently named a trusted retired general as his ambassador to Russia, tasking him with negotiating arms supplies and assistance, according to a Western official who asked not to be identified. The DRC said through its embassy in Moscow that Russia hasn’t yet supplied any weapons. It also denied local media reports that Russians are actively involved in the election.
If Kabila’s EU-sanctioned protégé wins as expected, then the DRC’s military ties with Russia will intensify, which in turn will lead to more opportunities for Russian companies, according to Jean-Jacques Wondo, a Congolese security analyst based in Brussels. China has invested heavily in the DRC, but Beijing is reportedly growing increasingly frustrated with Kabila’s shifting demands.
“Kabila is desperate for outside help,” said Martin Fayulu, an opposition candidate in the December 23 poll. “It’s not surprising Russia is moving into the DRC, given our vast mineral wealth.”
Madagascar, the world’s biggest producer of vanilla and a holder of major deposits of nickel, cobalt and uranium, is another chaotic country where Putin and Prigozhin share an interest. A Kremlin envoy flew to the island in March for talks with then-president Hery Rajaonarimampianina.
Russian election consultants affiliated with Prigozhin are in the country amid a tight race for the presidency between two other former leaders that will end next month, one of the people familiar with his activities said. Russia has backed several candidates, according to Jean-Claude de L’Estrac, a former Mauritius foreign minister and expert on Indian Ocean territories. The Madagascar Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
In Guinea, Russia is supporting a bid by President Alpha Conde to scrap term limits so he can seek to stay in power after his mandate ends in 2020, said the Western official with knowledge of Russia-Africa ties. The African state is the single largest supplier of bauxite for Russian aluminium giant United Co Rusal. Guinea foreign minister Mamadi Toure and government spokesperson Aboubacar Sylla didn’t answer calls seeking comment.
Moving into North Africa, Prigozhin attended talks earlier in November between Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, who controls most of the eastern part of the oil-rich state. He’s providing military services to Haftar’s Libyan National Army in return for energy deals, two people familiar with the matter said. LNA spokesperson Ahmed Mesmari didn’t answer repeated phone calls seeking comment.
Prigozhin’s private army, Wagner, which was sanctioned by the US for its role in the 2014 Ukraine rebellion, drew international attention again in February, this time in Syria. As Bloomberg reported at the time, hundreds of its mercenaries were killed or wounded by US forces as they advanced on a base held by Kurdish fighters. Wagner was trying to seize a nearby oil refinery for officials in Damascus who’d reportedly promised a share of future revenue.
“Like any normal businessman, Prigozhin is looking for the most lucrative places to invest his money,” said Irina Abramova, head of Russia’s state-funded Institute for African Studies in Moscow. “He thought, why shouldn’t I give it a go? And he should only be thanked for that if Africans benefit.”
• With from Stepan Kravchenko, David Wainer, Samer Al-Atrush, Kamlesh Bhuckory, Godfrey Marawanyika, Samuel Gebre, Ougna Camara, Borges Nhamire, Alonso Soto, Pauline Bax, Candido Mendes, Paul Richardson and Hayley Warren
***
April 2019
WASHINGTON – Compared to previous independent prosecutor investigations, Special Counsel Robert Mueller moved with uncommon speed in the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.
Over 22 months he issued charges against 34 individuals, including six Trump associates, and three companies.
Here are key dates in the probe:
2017
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- 17 May: Four months after Trump took office, Mueller, now 74, is named to lead the Russia meddling and collusion investigation. The appointment follows Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey. Trump was angry that Comey would not reel back the investigation.
Mueller, also a former FBI director, assembles a team of seasoned investigators and is given broad latitude to examine anything that arises in the investigation, prompting Trump to call it a “witch hunt.” Within weeks, the investigation begins examining Trump for possible obstruction of justice.
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- 30 October: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy chairman Rick Gates are indicted on financial charges mostly related to work they did years before for Russia-backed politicians in Ukraine.
Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos is charged with lying to investigators about his dealings with Russians in 2016. Papadopoulos pleads guilty and pledges to cooperate. He eventually receives a sentence of 14 days in prison.
-
- 1 December: Former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn is charged with lying to investigators over his secret discussions with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak after the November 2016 election. He agrees to plead guilty in a deal that requires him to cooperate with investigators.
2018
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- 16 February: Mueller outlines a Russian “conspiracy” to meddle in the 2016 election, charging Evgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, and 12 others tied to the Internet Research Agency troll farm over their social media disinformation campaign.
Richard Pinedo, a small-time California internet fraudster with no links to the Trump campaign, pleads guilty to selling false online identities to people from the Internet Research Agency.
- 20 February: Alex van der Zwaan, a London-based Dutch lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to investigators about his work with Manafort and Gates on behalf of Ukraine. In April, van der Zwaan will be sentenced to 30 days in prison.
- 23 February: Gates avoids stiff charges in a plea deal with investigators. He pleads guilty to lying to investigators and conspiring to defraud the government in relation to his Ukraine work, while agreeing to cooperate with the Mueller team.
- 9 April: In a Mueller spinoff case, New York prosecutors raid the residence and offices of Michael Cohen, Trump’s then personal lawyer and fixer. They focus on Cohen’s arranging hush payments to women claiming affairs with Trump, as well as financial wrongdoings. Cohen later implicates Trump in the hush money payments.
- 8 June: Mueller expands charges against Manafort in a second case filed in Washington DC, and adds Manafort confidant Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian with intelligence links, to the indictment. Charges include obstruction of justice and money laundering, but nothing tied to Russian election meddling.
- 13 July: Mueller charges 12 members of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, with conspiracy to hack the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016.
- 21 August: A Virginia jury finds Manafort guilty on eight counts of financial fraud in the first case against him. Weeks later, he pleads guilty to reduced charges in the second case as part of a cooperation deal.
- 29 November: Cohen admits to lying to Congress about Trump negotiations in 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Two weeks later he is sentenced to three years in prison.
- 4 December: Flynn gets a recommendation of no jail time after Mueller notes his “substantial assistance” to the investigation.
2019
- 25 January: Longtime Republican operative Roger Stone is arrested for lying to investigators about his communications with WikiLeaks in 2016.
- 7-13 March: Paul Manafort is sentenced to a total of 90 months in prison in his two cases.
- 22 March: Mueller completes his investigation. Neither Trump nor any of his associates are charged with criminal conspiracy in the Russia interference case, and Mueller leaves unanswered the question of whether Trump tried to obstructed the Mueller probe. In a four-page summary of the report, Attorney General Bill Barr says that the evidence does not support obstruction charges.
Trump declares the Mueller report is “a complete and total exoneration.”
- 18 April: A redacted version of the Mueller report is made public.
https://ewn.co.za/2019/04/18/37-charged-in-22-months-a-timeline-of-the-mueller-investigation
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CNA
CNA’s objective, empirical research and analysis helps decision makers develop sound policies, make better-informed decisions, and manage programs more effectively. Our work, which in its early decades focused solely on defense-related matters, has grown to include investigation and analysis of a broad range of national security, defense, and public interest issues including education, homeland security and air traffic management. Through our Center for Naval Analyses and Institute for Public Research, we provide public-sector organizations with the tools they need to tackle the complex challenges of making government more efficient and keeping our country safe and strong.
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CNA roundtable proceedings
https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/DCP-2018-U-017085-Final.pdf
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