Karoline Leavitt
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Asked on Friday whether Sir Tony was aware of the price tag for permanent membership, a spokeswoman said: 'He is not involved in determining membership of the Board of Peace.
'He will be working on the implementation of the Gaza peace plan that has been endorsed by the UN in an unpaid role.'
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday he had been invited to join US President Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" but could not envisage working there alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"We did receive the invitation; our diplomats are working on it," Zelensky told reporters, adding however that: "It's still very hard for me to imagine how we and Russia could be together in any kind of council."
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https://www.barrons.com/news/zelensky-says-invited-to-trump-s-board-of-peace-ab9b548d
A Russian honeytrap for Gen Flynn? Not me…
Published - 12 May 2017
When Svetlana Lokhova saw the internet light up with suggestions she was a Russian spy, she initially thought it was a joke. But the Russian-born academic soon found herself, in her words, "collateral damage" in the controversies surrounding the Trump administration and the swirl of allegations about Russian espionage.
The claims revolved around her contact with Gen Michael Flynn in Cambridge in 2014. Flynn resigned after just 24 days as US National Security Adviser after allegations he had failed to be honest about contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the US during the transition to the Trump administration.
After his resignation in February, there were reports in the US and UK media about Lokhova, including the claim that Flynn's contact with Lokhova "troubled, external" US intelligence officials. On social media, the suggestion, external was that she was some kind of Russian spy or honeytrap.
"Are you a Russian spy?" I begin by asking her. "Absolutely not," she replies. "I have no formal or informal connection with Russian intelligence whatsoever."
She acknowledges that the cynical will respond: "She would say that wouldn't she" - which has left her in what she describes as a "Kafkaesque situation"'.
The context of the story, she acknowledges, was part of the problem. She is female, originally from Russia and linked to Cambridge, home of the famous Cambridge spy ring recruited by the KGB in the 1930s.
"There is a sad irony that someone who is writing about Cambridge traitors ended up being painted as one herself," she says.
The story begins with a dinner in February 2014 in Cambridge. The dinner was organised by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and then master of Pembroke College, who was starting up an organisation called the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSI). Also involved was Christopher Andrew, authorised historian of MI5 and a professor at Corpus Christi College.
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As an expert on Soviet intelligence in the 1930s, Lokhova says she was asked to present some of her research. "The idea was that I would impress the DIA with the Cambridge pedigree of research."
moar…
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39863781
🇺🇸 President Trump meets Ukraine's Zelensky at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland [LIVE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qqg7bmRw8w