The former C.I.A. director John Brennan pulled no punches on Wednesday when he was asked why President Trump had congratulated his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for his victory in a rigged election, even after Mr. Trump’s national security staff warned him not to.
.. Some Trump defenders noted that President Barack Obama also called Mr. Putin when he was elected president in 2012.
But the circumstances are very different. In the intervening years, Mr. Putin has become an increasingly authoritarian leader who has crushed most of his political opposition and engineered a deeply lopsided re-election this week.
.. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, is waging war in other parts of Ukraine and is enabling President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
.. While the administration recently imposed its first significant sanctions on Russia for election interference and other malicious cyberattacks and has faulted Russia for the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain, Mr. Trump has refrained from criticizing Mr. Putin or calling him to account. The phone call reinforced that approach.
.. What Mr. Trump didn’t say to Mr. Putin was as significant as what he did say. He did not demand that Mr. Putin stop meddling in American elections or others, he did not even raise Moscow’s role in the poisoning.
.. A senior administration official told The Times that Mr. Trump didn’t want to antagonize Mr. Putin because fostering rapport is the only way to improve relations between the two countries. On Tuesday, the president said he hoped to meet Mr. Putin soon and discuss preventing an arms race — an arms race both leaders have encouraged with loose talk and investment in new weapons.Engaging Russia and preventing an arms race are undeniably important. But it’s hard to see how praising and appeasing a bully will advance American interests. That’s not the approach Mr. Trump has taken with adversaries like North Korea or Iran, or, for that matter, even with some allies... John McCain, Republican of Arizona, slammed Mr. Trump, saying “an American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.” Even the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who rarely crosses Mr. Trump, said calling Mr. Putin “wouldn’t have been high on my list.”
Putin Unveils Nuclear Weapons He Claims Could Breach U.S. Defenses
Russia has developed nuclear weapons capable of penetrating U.S. defense systems, the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, said Thursday, sharpening rhetoric against the West and raising the prospect of a new arms race with Washington.
In language reminiscent of the Cold War, Mr. Putin used his annual state- of-the-union address to boast about Russia’s military prowess and show off a series of new armaments, including intercontinental ballistic missiles and underwater drones.
“Efforts to contain Russia have failed,” he said to Russia’s political elite gathered in the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hal
.. Mr. Putin said would consider any nuclear attack on its allies an attack on Russia and would launch an immediate response
.. “Russia’s growing military might is a reliable guarantee of peace on our planet because it ensures the strategic balance in the world.”
.. The Trump administration has warned that Russia and China are moving to modernize and expand their nuclear arsenals in a bid to “return to Great Power competition.”
.. The U.S., he said, had exploited Russia’s economic, political and military weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union to ignore Moscow’s views, including by moving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization closer to Russia’s borders.
“No one listened to us. Listen to us now,”
.. Mr. Putin said the Syria campaign had allowed the military to show off the results of a modernization program he launched in 2011. “The whole world knows the names of our newest airplanes, submarines, air-defense systems,” he said.
.. Ivan Konovalov, an independent defense analyst in Moscow, said the speech demonstrated how quickly Russia’s arms industry is developing.
“It is developing some of the best weapons in the world, and the United States, if they want to maintain parity, has to answer the challenge quickly,” he said.