'Trident Juncture 2018' About To Kick Off: NATO's Big War Games Near Russia's Borders Never End

The NATO-led Trident Juncture 2018 (TRJE18) exercise that is to be held in October and November is the largest coordinated show of force since the Cold War. It will primarily be hosted by Norway. The training event will largely take place in the central and eastern parts of this Nordic country that neighbors Russia, as well as over the skies and in the seas of Sweden and Finland. The maritime component will be conducted in the surrounding areas of the North Atlantic and in the Baltic Sea. TRJE18-related activities will take place as far away as Iceland. Russia has been invited to send observers to watch the exercise.

Actually, TRJE18 consists of three parts. The deployment phase has been underway since August. A live field exercise will be held from October 25 to November 7 with six brigades fighting each other right in the heart of Norway. A command post training event will be conducted from November 13 to November 24.The drill will involve 45,000 participants from over 30 nations, including 10,000 rolling or tracked vehicles, 150 aircraft, and 60 ships. The main goal is to test the ability of NATO’s new Response Force to rapidly deploy. Norway will evaluate its ability to receive and handle reinforcements sent by its allies.There are 700 US Marines stationed in Norway. That’s not a huge force, but as Adm. James Foggo, who heads all US naval forces in Europe and Africa and commands the Allied Joint Force Command in Naples put it, “that’s 300 Marines today. 3,000 Marines tomorrow.” The American pre-positioned forward storage sites in Norway, a complex of caves, have been upgraded to store weapons and equipment for roughly 15,000 Marines. That Scandinavian country has become the source of a threat to Russia’s national security.The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is also taking part. The aircraft carrier returned to its home base in Norfolk in July following a three-month deployment. It was back in Europe in mid-September. Normally, US carrier groups operate according to a standard seven-month cycle. Now they are being shifted to “dynamic force employment” in order to improve flexibility.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-11/trident-juncture-2018-about-kick-natos-big-war-games-near-russias-borders-never-end

'White House Wants to Kill Me': Maduro Accuses US of Assassination Plot

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro argued on Thursday that the United States had allegedly instructed Colombia to organize his assassination.

"I am saying this to the entire world — the order to kill Maduro was given to the [Colombian] government in Bogota from the White House that wants to kill me," Maduro said as broadcast by a state-run TV channel on Thursday.

Maduro stressed that any future assassination attempt on him would fail.

The attack on Maduro occurred during a military parade in Caracas in early August. Maduro was unharmed while seven Venezuelan soldiers sustained injuries in the incident.

Maduro has repeatedly accused Washington and Bogota, particularly Colombian ex-president Juan Manuel Santos, of having a role in the attack. Moreover, Venezuela said it would put the blame for any future attack on its territory on Colombia. The Colombian Foreign Ministry denied any involvement of Bogota in the assassination attempt on Maduro.

https://sputniknews.com/latam/201810121068816670-venezuela-maduro-usa-colombia-assassination/

Belgium Soccer Scandal – 8 Clubs Raided, 2 Referees Arrested, Competition Stopped

Belgium’s national team, which finished third during this summer’s World Cup, will play Switzerland tonight for the European ‘Nations Cup.’ Although star players like Hazard, Lukaku, and Courtois would rather be asked about their own performances, journalist mostly wants to know what they think about the darkest scandal ever to hit Belgian soccer.

Two days ago, police raided the offices of 8 major soccer clubs, arrested a trainer (of Club Brugge, which plays in the Champions League), 2 player managers and 2 referees. After several press briefings, it is becoming clear that the judiciary has opened a wide investigation into Belgian soccer practices which shows involvement in corruption, money laundering, and match-fixing. Supporters are furious as the rest of European soccer fans look on in amazement.

Club Brugge

The face plastered across all European sports newspapers (L’Equipe in France, Marca in Spain and Gazzetta Dello Sport in Italy) was that of Club Brugge trainer Mr. Ivan Leko who spent 1 night in jail. Mr. Leko’s team plays against Dortmund (Germany) and Valencia (Spain) in the UEFA Champions League this season and all focus will remain squarely on him. He is currently suspected of money laundering.

KV Mechelen

A second team in serious trouble is the old European great KV Mechelen, which won a UEFA title back in the 1980s.

They have recently been relegated to the second division, but it would now appear several of their board members had approached players of other teams as well as two referees to try and arrange matches so they could say in first division last season.

In fact, as European soccer fans know (a similar scandal took place in Italy in the 2000s), in order to fix a match in soccer, all you need to do is approach 4 of the 23 people on the field (11 per team + 1 referee). You pay two defenders and the goalkeeper of the opposing team to make fouls on your players and let in an easy goal and pay the referee to whistle some suspicious penalties.

There are currently 4 matches of last year’s competition which appear to have been fixed.

The Belgian judiciary has decided as of this morning to stop the second division’s competition until further investigation can determine what needs to be done.

Rumors are Brugge would replace their trainer if he is found guilty and Mechelen would either be dropped to a lower division of the authorities would scrap the club from the register altogether.

Source:

lesoir.be/184006/article/2018-10-12/fraudes-dans-le-football-belge-mogi-bayat-laurent-denis-et-karim-mejjati-places

http://www.thegoldwater.com/news/39145-Belgium-Soccer-Scandal-8-Clubs-Raided-2-Referees-Arrested-Competition-Stopped

Israeli Paper: Russia's Latest Moves in Syria Reveal It as an Enemy of the Jewish State

A view from Israel, specifically the religious Zionist right

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu again addressed the changing strategic situation in Syria after Russia delivered its advanced S-300 missile shield to the army of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

At the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said he had conducted a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the two leaders “agreed to meet soon in order to continue the important inter-military security coordination.”

At the same time, the Israeli PM vowed, “Israel will act at all times to prevent Iran from establishing a military presence in Syria and to thwart the transfer of lethal weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

Netanyahu’s remarks came after his Minister of Regional Cooperation Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud) claimed the Israeli Air Force is able to overcome Russia’s latest hostile act against the Jewish state.

Hanegbi last week said Israel’s new 'Adir' warplane, a modified version of the American Lockheed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, was able to carry out combat missions against Iran-related targets in Syria without being detected by the S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.

“You know that we have stealth fighters, the best planes in the world. These batteries (S-300) are not even able to detect them,” Hanegbi told Israeli media.

Last week, Russia delivered the S-300 to Syria in the middle of the night but said it would take another three months before Syrian army officers would be able to operate the missile shield independently.

It appears Israel is now working in tandem with the United States to counter the threat posed by the new Russian-made Syrian anti-aircraft batteries.

During his meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly almost two weeks ago Netanyahu said he had “got everything he wanted from Trump” regarding the crisis with Russia over Syria.

The Israeli-Russian crisis started after the Russian army falsely blamed Israel’s air force (IAF) for the downing of a Ilyushin IL-20 reconnaissance plane which was shot down with a S-200 SAM missile killing 15 Russian servicemen on Sept. 20.

Trump reportedly okayed the immediate delivery of an additional number of F-35 stealth war planes - which are considered the best fighter jets in the world – to the Israeli Air Force, while for the first time deploying a squadron of US F-35s in Abu Dhabi.

https://russia-insider.com/en/israeli-paper-russias-latest-moves-syria-reveal-it-enemy-jewish-state/ri25050

>>3448609

Christie-Lee McNally: Google Does Not ‘Worry About Legislation’ Because They ‘Bought’ Congress

Christie-Lee McNally, executive director of Free Our Internet, warned of large technology companies’ procurement of political influence via lobbying efforts in Washington, DC. She offered her remarks in a Thursday interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.

Free Our Internet is a non-profit organization describing itself as an opponent of the “tech-left” and its political censorship of “conservative speech online.”

McNally said:

They control over 90 percent of the internet, so they don’t need to capitulate to us, they don’t need to capitulate to the Senate [or] the president. They don’t need to capitulate … because they’ve bought them all. The amount they pay in lobbyists — if you look at FEC reports and how much they pay in lobbyists [and in] Washington, DC, they don’t have to worry about legislation.

“Clearly they lied last month when they went up there,” said McNally of Twitter and Facebook executives’ denial of political censorship across their digital platforms during testimony before congressional committees.

Open Secrets itemized Google’s lobbying spending via the technology company’s FEC filings, with its most recent data coming from 2014.

The top recipient of Google’s lobbying spending in 2014 was the Podesta Group, founded by Clinton loyalist and founder of the Center for American Progress and its subsidiary ThinkProgress.

A January-published TIME report noted Google’s lobbying efforts:

When it comes to corporate lobbying efforts, Google outspent other major technology firms last year by millions of dollars, and took the top spot among companies more broadly.

Google (now part of parent company Alphabet) spent over $18 million lobbying politicians in 2017, according to federal disclosure records. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this is the first time a technology company has spent the most on lobbying costs in at least two decades. Google did not return TIME’s request for comment about its lobbying activities.

McNally praised Breitbart News coverage of threats to free speech and expression posed by the growing power of technology companies under left-wing management. She highlighted Breitbart News’s recent publication of a leaked 84-page document detailing some of Google’s political censorship efforts.

“I want to thank you guys for getting this document and informing people of what we have been screaming for a couple of years, now,” said McNally. “[People have been saying], ‘You guys are crazy. This is not happening.’ We watched the hearings and we talked about back in April and May and we were told, ‘This is just a conspiracy,’ and all of what we have been saying is now in our hands, proof that what we’ve been saying is true.”

https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2018/10/11/christie-lee-mcnally-google-does-not-worry-about-legislation-because-they-bought-congress/

>>3448617

You sir are correct

Graham: If Saudi Arabia Murdered Khashoggi, Everything Should Be on the Table

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that if Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi Arabia there should be “all-out sanctions” and everything should be on the table.

Graham said that if Saudi Arabia is responsible for Khashoggi’s death, there will be “hell to pay.” He added that this “means all-out sanctions against those who engaged in this behavior, isolating the regime, treating it with the contempt they showed to us. … And if they, in fact, did this, I want every other country that we deal with to understand what would happen to you. We’d hit them in the wallet and everything, in my view, would be on the table.”

https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/10/11/graham-if-saudi-arabia-murdered-khashoggi-everything-should-be-on-the-table/

US Intelligence Shows Saudi Crown Prince Ordered Operation To Capture Missing Journalist

U.S. intelligence intercepts of communication between Saudi officials revealed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered an operation to capture and extradite Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia.

Details of the plan, as revealed by intelligence intercepts, match reports from Turkish officials about a team of Saudi agents reportedly arriving in Turkey, killing Khashoggi, disposing of his body, and leaving.

Questions abound as to whether U.S. intelligence agencies should have warned Khashoggi given the intelligence they had.

U.S. intelligence indicates that the Saudi crown prince ordered an operation to capture Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and bring him in for interrogation.

The revelation that Mohammed bin Salman ordered the operation that resulted in Khashoggi disappearance after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 came from U.S. intercepts of communication between Saudi officials. The intercepted discussion of the plan involved two Saudi teams totaling 15 men arriving and departing from Turkey at different times, matching reports from Turkish officials that 15 Saudi agents arrived in Turkey on charter flights, assassinated Khashoggi, disposed of his body and departed.

A former U.S. intelligence official who spoke with WaPo on the condition of anonymity said that the details of the plan discussed by Saudi officials bear the hallmarks of a “rendition,” or an operation to illegally extradite someone from one country and transport them to another in order to interrogate them. Turkish officials believe that something went wrong with the operation and that Arab agents killed Khashoggi inside the consulate. An anonymous Turkish official also asserted that the Saudi agents dismembered Khashoggi’s body with a bone saw and disposed of the pieces.

The Saudi government has denied any involvement in Khashoggi disappearance and claims that he left the consulate unharmed through the rear entrance, though they have provided no evidence to back up their claim. The Saudis have also refused to answer U.S. officials’ questions concerning Khashoggi’s disappearance, straining the relationship between Riyadh and the Trump administration.

Surveillance footage shows Khashoggi entering the consulate, but Turkish officials say there is no footage of him leaving. The journalist has yet to be found.

Khashoggi often criticized the Saudi government, including Mohammed bin Salman, and believed that it was not safe for him to return to Saudi Arabia. Close friends of the journalist reported that several senior Saudi officials contacted Khashoggi over the last four months with promises of protection and offers for him to return to the country. Khashoggi believed none of their offers.

“He said: ‘Are you kidding? I don’t trust them one bit,'” Khaled Saffuri, an Arab American political activist, recounted Khashoggi saying after speaking with Saud al-Qahtani, an adviser to the royal court.

A friend also reported that a Saudi businessman who is close to the royal family seemed “keen” to visit with Khashoggi any time he came to DC and told the journalist that he would work with Saudi authorities to allowK hashoggi’s safe return to the country.

Given the U.S. intelligence intercepts describing the Saudi plan to detain Khashoggi, some have questioned whether U.S. intelligence agencies were negligent in their “duty to warn” the journalist of the plot, as they are obligated to do in any case when it is known that a person, U.S. citizen or otherwise, may be kidnapped, injured, or killed.

“Duty to warn applies if harm is intended toward an individual,” a former senior intelligence official told WaPo.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/11/us-intelligence-jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia/

>>3448672

Kinda think it's a distraction

PATHETIC: Arnold Schwarzenegger Apologizes for Using the Phrase ‘Girlie Men’

Arnold Schwarzenegger used to joke that only “girlie men” opposed energetic capitalism and traditional American values. But now, the former bodybuilder, Hollywood star, and California governor is apologizing for popularizing the phrase.

Schwarzenegger once made a name for himself with his he-man political style, making fun of his opponents as weaklings who could not lead.

At least as early as 2004 Schwarzenegger called California Democrats “girlie men” and noted that in the next election the GOP would “terminate” them. His phrase even became the stuff of Saturday Night Live parody in the characters of faux bodybuilders Hans and Franz.

These amusing taunts and his strongman persona eventually led Schwarzenegger to the governor’s mansion in California.

But since the day he took over as the Golden State’s chief executive Schwarzenegger slowly but surely started straying from the very style that so enthused his supporters. And now it seems that the “Governator” has completely abandoned his masculine terminology.

In a new interview with Men’s Health magazine, Schwarzenegger is abjectly apologetic over his “girlie men” taunt.

“At the time it felt like the right thing to do. It was in my gut. I improvised it. I called them girlie men because they weren’t willing to take risks,” the actor told the magazine.

“They were afraid of everything,” he explained. “Politicians, in general, want to do little things, so there’s no risk involved.”

https://govtslaves.info/2018/10/11/pathetic-arnold-schwarzenegger-apologizes-for-using-the-phrase-girlie-men/

Facebook bans Free Thought Project, Press For Truth and The Anti-Media!

@TFTPROJECT: Facebook has unpublished our page After 5 years of building fans Facebook has officially unpublished our page (3.1 million fans) so we can’t post on it anymore. This is truly an outrage and we are devastated. We will do everything we can to recover our page and fight back. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/TFTPROJECT/status/1050456314093002752

@DanDicksPFT: I’ve been memory holed from FaceBook! 350k followers poof gone! There is a dangerous precedent being set here where the big tech companies have appointed themselves as the gate keepers of political thought and opinion! Retweet this if you care about free-speech! SOURCE: https://twitter.com/DanDicksPFT/status/1050477398343311360

@AntiMedia: Our @facebook page with over 2.1 million followers has been unpublished, along with over 800 other pages and accounts. The purge of alt-media is upon us. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/AntiMedia/status/1050476321191669760

Edit, more:

@FordFischer: I just confirmed online with a lot of Facebook friends. CopBlock and Police the Police, as well as anti-drug war pages taken down. @AntiMedia’s FB as well. It seems cop and government accountability pages were major targets. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1050495763934040064

@FordFischer: Holy shit. The Anti-Media’s Page was just removed from Twitter. So Twitter and Facebook are coordinating this. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1050525553164505089

Press For Truth just released a video on their banning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Ismk0PaHo

Facebook removes 559 pages ahead of U.S. midterms for spreading news stories using “coordinated inauthentic behavior” – https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/11/facebook-removes-559-inauthentic-pages-ahead-of-us-midterms.html

https://govtslaves.info/2018/10/11/facebook-bans-free-thought-project-press-for-truth-and-the-anti-media/

>>3448707

Turkey is trying to leverage the Saud's for billions off this too. It's chaotic I think it's a distraction to keep the enemy off balance while final plans are set in motion.

Senators Warn Trump US-Saudi Relationship Is On the Line

Sen. Corker: Journalist's death would merit sanctions at 'highest levels'

While President Trump has made clear that he is reluctant to do anything to the Saudis that might imperil the arms trade, senators are warning him that the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi really is putting the US-Saudi relationship on the line.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) warned that the burden of proof needs to be on the Saudis to prove that they were not participants in any harm that Khasoggi, a permanent resident of the US, has befallen.

Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) concurred, saying that sanctions should be “at the highest levels” if Khashoggi’s death was found to be the result of the Saudi government.

There are already pushes, led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to suspend arms sales to the Saudis over Khashoggi’s disappearance. As it becomes increasingly likely that he was killed outright by the Saudis, the push in Congress to punish them will only grow.

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/10/11/senators-warn-turmp-us-saudi-relationship-is-on-the-line/

>>3448746

>>3448744

>>3448737

>>3448733

Lot of unhappy Israel firsters with all this

WWG1WGA

>>3448772

I'd say so

Moscow Offers Washington to Sign Written Pledges on Mutual Non-Interference

Russia has offered the United States to make written commitments about non-interference in each other's affairs as Moscow is ready to give such guarantees "at any time," but Washington has shown no such desire, Georgy Borisenko, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of North America, told Sputnik.

"Now we are proposing to exchange letters of more or less the same content, for example, between the foreign ministers of Russia and the United States. Unfortunately, Washington is stubbornly ignoring it, they are just categorically rejecting it," Georgy Borisenko noted.

The Russian diplomat said that Moscow had "repeatedly offered to make written commitments on non-interference in each other's internal affairs with the US."

"At the same time, we have pointed out that it is possible to use the experience of restoring diplomatic relations between our countries in 1933. Then the USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov and US President Franklin Roosevelt exchanged personal notes, which contained a commitment not to infringe upon each other's internal affairs. What is interesting is that it was the US authorities who insisted on it, because they were very afraid of Soviet influence during the Great Depression," Borisenko explained.

According to the official, Moscow made a similar proposal to Washington in June, even before the summit in Helsinki.

"We sent a draft of such a letter to our US colleagues so that they could consider it. The United States rejected it… We are ready to give them written guarantees at any time, but the US shows no such desire," Borisenko said.

The United States has repeatedly accused Russia of interference in the 2016 presidential election and is investigating Trump's team members' alleged links to the Kremlin.

Russia, for its part, has refuted all the accusations, calling such claims groundless.

Russia Never Planned to Interfere in US Midterms

Russia has never tampered in US elections and is not going to, Georgy Borisenko, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of North America, told Sputnik.

https://sputniknews.com/world/201810121068818888-russia-us-mutual-non-interference/

Is This the Beginning of the End of the U.S.-Saudi Alliance?

The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi last Tuesday is threatening to upend the terms of the decades-long alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the nine days since Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian resident of Virginia and a Washington Post columnist, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, politicians, media figures and foreign policy elites – even those who have fawned over the authoritarian Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman — have grown increasingly critical of the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

The U.S. has long given the Saudis a blank check, politically and militarily, and there have been voices advocating for a rethinking of that decades-old relationship for nearly as long as it has lasted. But the widespread belief that the Saudis assassinated Khashoggi inside their consulate has brought those voices squarely into the center. Suddenly, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is being called into fundamental question.

President Donald Trump initially responded to questions about Khashoggi’s disappearance by saying “I don’t like hearing about it, and hopefully that will sort itself out.” But on Thursday, he began to sound much less confident in his defense of Saudi Arabia, the first foreign country he visited as president. He said that it was beginning to look as though Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was indeed murdered, but worried that jobs would be at risk if arms sales to the country were halted.

In the Senate, the kingdom is starting to lose its traditional bipartisan support, with almost every member of the Foreign Relations Committee calling on Trump to investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance. The Washington Post, meanwhile, has devoted extraordinary resources, both on the reporting and editorial side, to the case of its columnist.

Washington-based lobbying firms that do business with Saudi Arabia — particularly Hogan and Lovells, the Glover Park Group, and Brownstein — are facing a difficult decision, as pressure mounts across the board to break with the kingdom. The New York Times has withdrawn its sponsorship of an upcoming technology conference in Riyadh. Meanwhile, the Economist editor in chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and CNBC Squawbox co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin have announced they will pull out. A CNN spokesperson told Buzzfeed News they are reconsidering their sponsorship, and a spokespeople for CNBC and Fox Business told The Intercept they are “monitoring the situation.”

The shift in discourse over Saudi Arabia is palpable in the think-tank world as well. The vice president for security at the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, called on the United States to freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s disappearance.

The United States should immediately suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia until we get answers on #JamalKhashoggi. @SenatorMenendez @SenBobCorker @SecPompeo

— Kelly Magsamen (@kellymagsamen) October 10, 2018

Magsamen, a former Bush and Obama National Security Council staffer, also warned that the affair had the potential to unify a bipartisan “anti-Saudi sentiment.” Just two years ago, the think tank was arguing for keeping the U.S.-Saudi relationship more or less the same.

Prominent right-wing columnist and Council of Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot, a long-time defender of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, warned that if the Saudis did indeed kill Khashoggi, there “must be hell to pay.”

https://theintercept.com/2018/10/11/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-us-saudi-alliance/

Russian Oligarch Flees London Assassins for Safety in Russia

Convinced that Britain wants to kill him and finger the Kremlin for the crime a Russian oligarch wanted on criminal charges in Russia fled back to Moscow

Bloomberg:

Britain was great to Sergei Kapchuk. After fleeing Russia to avoid prosecution for alleged fraud in 2005, then escaping from Abu Dhabi on the back of a camel to avoid extradition in 2010, he landed at Gatwick airport with his twin brother's passport. He won political asylum within four months.

For the next eight years, the former regional lawmaker and factory owner from Yekaterinburg led a charmed life in London as Sergi Windsor, dating socialites such as Miss Russia 2008 and partying with other self-imposed exiles whose income streams were always a bit of a mystery.

Then things got really weird.

Emphasis on 'self-imposed'. Contrary to official myth, the vast majority of 'Russian oligarchs' in London went there by choice, although there are certainly grounds for the Russian state to want them in court to answer for their part in the 'plundering 90s'.

In March, a year after Russia put him on the country's so-called London List of most-wanted fugitives, Kapchuk-Windsor went on the run again - this time back into the arms of the countrymen he once feared. He worried Britain wanted to kill him and finger the Kremlin for the crime.

Just about everyone contacted for this article, including fellow exiles and even a KGB veteran, say Kapchuk's claim that U.K. operatives are hunting Russian emigres is outlandish. But his narrative, told over multiple interviews in Moscow, fits the Kremlin line that even former fugitives are safer at home these days than in the West, where Russian wealth is increasingly vulnerable to sanctions.

Russian sleeper agent, British mole, lunatic - nobody knows quite what to make of Kapchuk. However improbably, the 46-year-old bon vivant is now the poster boy for one of many Kremlin efforts to lure back as much as $1 trillion of Russian cash stashed abroad. And like many good yarns involving Vladimir Putin, Kapchuk's story starts with an unexpected visit from a presidential envoy - and a promise that seemed too good to be true.

"You'd need to have your head examined to do that"

Back in February, Putin's business ombudsman, Boris Titov, flew into London with an unusual offer for Kapchuk and a few dozen other wealthy Russians accused of financial crimes. At Pushkin House, a cultural center on Bloomsbury Square, Titov vowed to use the power of his office and an army of lawyers to help the men clear their names through Russian courts. All they had to do was come home.

"You'd need to have your head examined to do that," Ilya Yurov, a former banker, remembers thinking as he left the meeting. Like almost all of the attendees, Yurov received asylum in Britain precisely because Russia's judiciary often functions as an arm of the Kremlin. (A U.K. judge in September rejected a request from Moscow to extradite Yurov.)

https://russia-insider.com/en/russian-oligarch-flees-london-assassins-safety-russia/ri25051

>>3448830

Cheech's love chuld