U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly worried Islamic State fighters captured as the terror group’s caliphate collapsed in Syria will find their way back to the battlefield.

The concern, they say, is most acute for the approximately 2,000 foreign fighters who are being kept in a state of limbo, held in makeshift prisons run by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as their home countries refuse to take them back.

“We’ve gotten kind of fatalistic about this,” Russell Travers, acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said Friday.

“There’s a growing likelihood that eventually we could see many of these foreign fighters again when they’ve broken out of prison or been released,” he told an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The greatest midterm concern is the retention of those prisoners and not bolstering the [Islamic State] ranks and not seeing a foreign fighter outflow from Syria.”

For months, U.S. officials at the State Department and the Pentagon have urged countries, especially those who joined the coalition to defeat IS, to repatriate and prosecute their citizens or residents who left to fight for the self-declared caliphate.

But those pleas have largely gone nowhere, as European countries especially have raised concerns, arguing their legal systems will not allow for the successful prosecution of IS fighters whose alleged crimes were committed thousands of kilometers away.

Turkish incursions

Making matters more precarious, Turkey’s incursions into northeast Syria last month forced the main U.S. partner on the ground, the mostly Kurdish SDF, to pull guards from the prisons to fight Turkish-backed forces.

Kurdish officials also said they were forced to evacuate some prisons and move captured IS fighters to makeshift facilities after some areas came under attack.

In the process, about 100 prisoners escaped. And there are fears that if Turkish forces drive deeper into Syrian territory, eventually there may not be anyone left to keep the remaining IS detainees under lock and key.

The question is a critical one for U.S. counterterrorism officials, who believe there are likely a total of 15,000 IS fighters in SDF custody, thousands more than suggested by previous estimates from U.S. military or diplomatic officials.

Should a significant portion get free, it could significantly alter the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, home now to at least 14,000 IS fighters.

“We think it’s substantially higher than that,” Travers said, adding, “That number is going to do nothing but grow.”

“There are already no-go areas at night. We see ISIS flags and we see small areas in which Sharia is being implemented,” he added, using an acronym for the terror group. “The insurgency is alive and kicking.”

The United States is not alone in its concern.

Voicing alarm

Officials from Iraqi Kurdistan have likewise been voicing alarm at the developments in Syria, worried that they could give the Islamic State insurgency a significant boost and give hope and inspiration to IS family members languishing in displaced-person camps across Syria and Iraq.

“These camps are a breeding ground. It’s a ticking time bomb,” said Bayan Sami Rahman, the Kurdistan Regional Government representative to the U.S.

“You have children growing up in this kind of atmosphere where the parents are unrepentant ISIS fighters, the mother and the father,” she told VOA. “I’m worried that in 10 years’ time, you and I will be having a conversation about a 5-year-old, who, by then, is 15 in these camps. And what will his mindset be?”

According to U.S. counterterrorism officials, the answer could come down, in part, to how IS decides to operate.

For now, officials say the terror group has played to expectations, rallying support around its new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, after a U.S. raid killed former caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

As for who is #Qurashi? “We’re not at a point of having confirmation” says #NCTC acting Dir Travers, adding Hajji ‘Abdallah was seen as a “logical choice” to take over if/when Abu Bakr al #Baghdadi died

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 8, 2019

What comes next, though, may not be so easy to predict.

“ISIS is a learning organization,” said Travers of the National Counterterrorism Center. “In my own mind, I wonder if they would be content with conducting a prolonged insurgency and staying underground to avoid the kind of pressure they absorbed from the coalition.

“The more we draw down [U.S. forces], the more we siphon resources off to other very high-priority threats, the greater the likelihood we’re not going to understand that dynamic,” he said.

…

Since the start of the impeachment inquiry six weeks ago, more than a dozen current and former Trump administration officials have refused to testify before House of Representatives investigators, raising questions about Congress’ ability to summon key witnesses. 
 
In the latest instance, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney failed to show up for a scheduled deposition on Friday, despite a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee.
 
Lawmakers’ strongest investigative tool is the subpoena — a legal order to appear before a congressional committee. But Congress has had mixed success over the years in utilizing this mechanism to compel testimony. 
 
While Mulvaney, a former Republican House member, is unlikely to cooperate, more than a dozen other officials have stepped forward, in many cases after being subpoenaed. 
 
With the testimony of these officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon and other evidence, House Democrats appear confident they have enough to build a case that Trump abused his power when he pressed the president of Ukraine over the summer to investigate Trump’s political rivals while military aid to Ukraine was withheld. 
 
Here are four things you need to know about congressional subpoenas:  

What is a congressional subpoena? 
 
A congressional subpoena is similar to a grand jury subpoena, a legal order issued to a recalcitrant witness to produce testimony and documents in connection with an investigation. Witnesses — private citizens and government officials alike — are typically requested to provide information on a voluntary basis. When they refuse to do so, congressional committees can serve them with subpoenas to compel their compliance. 
 
What is the source of Congress’ subpoena power? 
 
While there are no constitutional provisions that explicitly give Congress the authority to investigate the executive branch and issue subpoenas, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to imply a power to conduct such investigations, according to Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and author of “How to Read the Constitution.” 
 
“It’s implied in its power to make laws and its power to impeach,” Wehle said of Congress’ power to investigate. “It has to find facts in order to legislate and decide whether to take impeachment action.” 
 
As part of that broad authority, congressional committees can first ask witnesses to testify and produce documents and then subpoena them if they refuse to cooperate. 
 
Can subpoenas be ignored? 
 
Every recipient of a congressional subpoena has a legal obligation to comply. “There is no blanket immunity from having to show up,” Wehle said. 
 
However, while private citizens can find it hard to defy a congressional subpoena, administration officials unwilling to testify possess an oft-used evasive tool: executive privilege. 
 
“That is a constitutionally recognized doctrine which basically safeguards the communications of the president and senior officials and others that work in the executive branch,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. 
 
Nearly as many officials have simply ignored subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry as have complied, while a former deputy national security adviser, Charles Kupperman, has asked a federal judge to rule on whom he should obey: the White House or Congress.  

“A private citizen cannot sue Congress and try to avoid coming in when they’re served with a lawful subpoena,” Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said after Kupperman failed to show up for his scheduled deposition on Oct. 28. 
 
How does Congress enforce subpoenas? Are there penalties for noncompliance? 
 
Congress has a couple of mechanisms to enforce subpoenas issued to executive branch officials.It can petition a federal court and try to convince a judge that the executive branch official is legally obligated to comply. Alternatively, it can ask the Justice Department to bring contempt-of-Congress charges against the defiant party, although Democratic investigators likely would get a cool reception from Attorney General William Barr, a strong proponent of executive power. 

In theory, there is a third way for lawmakers to gain compliance: sending the House sergeant at arms to arrest anyone who refuses to comply. But that’s an option that hasn’t been in use since the early days of the American republic.

Members of Congress have floated various ideas about how to strengthen compliance over the years, including requiring courts to expedite subpoena enforcement lawsuits brought by Congress.

But, said von Spakovsky, Congress is unlikely to go down that route.

“This boils down to a basic constitutional fight, a political fight that involves the separation of powers between the congressional branch and the executive branch. Sometimes the executive branch wins. Sometimes the Congress wins,” he said.

…

The Libyan civil war has found a new battlefield: the halls of Washington. The eight-year conflict shows little sign of ending, and the warring governments are stepping up their efforts to influence policymakers in the United States.

Crucial to these efforts, and the Libyan conflict as a whole, is the country’s oil output. Production currently stands at more than a million barrels a day, and the revenue is crucial to all aspects of the conflict. It funds the weapons, the militias, and the lawyers lobbying officials in the United States.

Most of the oil is shipped to Western Europe, where Libyan oil retains an “outsized significance to the European market,” according to Dr. Cullen Hendrix, professor at the University of Denver and nonresident senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Under army’s control

Most of the oil facilities are located in territory controlled by the Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, even as the revenue generated goes to Libya’s state-owned oil company, the NOC. The oil funds are then distributed through Libya’s central bank, which supplies only the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

The LNA, representing the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR), is currently sieging the GNA’s capital of Tripoli. The U.N. estimates more than 1,000 people have been killed in the seven-month siege alone.

The siege is symptomatic of the international nature of the conflict. Foreign drones dot the air, Turkish and Emirati-made armored personnel carriers bring fighters to the battlefield, and recent reports indicate that Russian and Sudanese mercenaries now are fighting for the LNA.

While the United States officially backs the GNA, it is largely uninvolved outside counterterrorism efforts. Libya’s rival governments are seeking to change that.

In the past year, the rival governments of Libya penned millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with government relations firms in the United States. The U.N.-backed GNA hired Mercury Public Affairs for $2 million a year, not including a $500,000 initial payment. The contract came shortly after President Donald Trump called LNA chief Haftar.

Mercury’s activities are extensive. Its contract details its services as lobbying Congress and the executive branch, identifying interest groups, public relations and international affairs. According to records from the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Mercury contacted congressional offices over 380 times, press agencies upward of 110 times and the White House deputy chief of staff.

These contacts included requests to secure interviews for the Government of National Accord’s deputy prime minister, largely with major press organizations.

Oil exports

The GNA enlisted further help to lobby on behalf of Libya’s oil exports, hiring the international law firm Gerstman Schwartz in August of this year. Gerstman’s efforts are centered on modifying the sanctions surrounding a fund built up by oil exports that is earmarked for Libya’s reconstruction.

The windfall from the export revenue will be crucial to rebuilding efforts, but current sanctions don’t allow the funds to collect any interest. As a result, banks are siphoning money through fees, draining a fund that would be best used in the extensive rebuild Libya will have to undergo after the conflict is resolved.

In September, Tripoli retained another firm, Gotham Government Relations, where Gerstman and Schwartz are partners. According to the contract, Gotham will “highlight the [GNA]’s contributions to combating terrorism; counsel GNA regarding outreach to U.S. and foreign think tanks; and prepare reports on Haftar’s human rights violations and crimes against the Libyan people.”

The contract is worth $1.5 million for the year.

On the other side of the conflict is the Libyan National Army and its nominal government, the eastern-based House of Representatives. In May the two signed a new contract with Linden Strategies after parting ways with the firm Dickens & Madson.

Ari Ben Menashe, the president of Dickens & Madson, described his role as “arranging meetings” between Haftar and officials in Russia and the United States. Menashe “advised Haftar against” the siege of Tripoli, and said he dedicated his time to mediation efforts. The eastern-based government paid handsomely for Dickens & Madson’s services, with a contract totaling $6 million.

Trip to U.S.

Since then, Linden has taken the torch and organized a trip for representatives of the eastern government to the United States. In conjunction with this trip, Linden contacted members of Congress, officials at the State and Defense departments, the National Security Council and the White House.

The Libyan delegation met with these same officials. During these meetings, Linden did not press for U.S. intervention, though it did welcome “continued cooperation” in fighting terrorist elements in Libya, such as Islamic State and al-Qaida. The fees for this agreement reached $5.4 million.

If officials in the U.S. choose to put Washington’s formidable clout to use, these millions of dollars in lobbying contracts will be money well spent.

…

A student at a Hong Kong university who fell during protests earlier this week died Friday, the first student death in months of anti-government demonstrations in the Chinese-ruled city that is likely to be a trigger for fresh unrest.

Chow Tsz-lok, 22, an undergraduate student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, died of injuries sustained early Monday. The circumstances of how he was injured were unclear, but authorities said he was believed to have fallen from the third to the second floor in a parking garage when police dispersed crowds in a district east of the Kowloon Peninsula.

Chow’s death is expected to spark fresh protests and fuel anger and resentment against the police, who are already under pressure amid accusations of excessive force as the city grapples with its worst political crisis in decades.

Demonstrators had thronged the hospital this week to pray for Chow, leaving flowers and hundreds of get-well messages on walls and notice boards inside the building. Students also staged rallies at universities across the former British colony.

“Wake up soon. Remember we need to meet under the LegCo,” said one message, referring to the territory’s Legislative Council, one of the targets of the protest rallies. “There are still lots of things for you to experience in your life.”

Another read: “Please add oil and stay well,” a slogan meaning “keep your strength up” that has become a rallying cry of the protest movement.

Leading the protests

Students and young people have been at the forefront of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since June to press for greater democracy, among other demands, and rally against perceived Chinese meddling in the Asian financial hub.

The protests, ignited by a now-scrapped extradition bill for people to be sent to mainland China for trial, have evolved into wider calls for democracy, posing one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he took charge in 2012.

Protesters have thrown petrol bombs and vandalized banks, stores and metro stations, while police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon and, in some cases, live ammunition in scenes of chaos.

In June, Marco Leung, 35, fell to his death from construction scaffolding after unfurling banners against the extradition bill. Several young people who have taken their own lives in recent months have been linked to the protests.

Graduation day

Chow, an active netball and basketball player according to his university peers, had been studying a two-year undergraduate degree in computer science.

Chow’s death came on graduation day for many students at his university, located in the city’s Clear Water Bay district.

Hundreds of students, some in their black graduation gowns and many wearing now banned face masks, held a silent gathering in the main piazza of the campus after receiving their degrees. Some were in tears.

They later moved to a stage where the graduation ceremonies had been held. Chanting “Stand with Hong Kong” and “Five demands and not one less,” they spray painted Chow’s name and pinned photos and signs of him on nearby walls.

“I can’t put a smile on my face thinking about what has happened,” said Chen, a female graduate in biochemistry, who was wearing a formal gown and holding bouquets of flowers.

A memorial at the carpark where Chow fell and a vigil on campus are planned by students for Friday night.

Hong Kong’s government said in a statement that it expressed “great sorrow and regret” and that the crime unit was conducting a “comprehensive investigation” into Chow’s death.

Further rallies

At a separate event, around 1,000 people rallied in the city’s main financial district to protest against alleged police brutality and actions. Many held white flowers in memory of Chow.

“I am very sad over Chow’s death. If we don’t come out now, more people might need to sacrifice (themselves) in the future,” said Peggy, an 18-year-old university student at the University of Hong Kong.

High school pupils are also planning a rally in the eastern district of Kwun Tong, they said in advertisements before Chow’s death.

Protests scheduled over the weekend include “Shopping Sunday” centered on prominent shopping malls, some of which have previously descended into chaos as riot police stormed areas crowded with families and children.

Last weekend, anti-government protesters crowded a shopping mall in running clashes with police that saw a man slash people with a knife and bite off part of the ear of a local politician.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula, allowing it colonial freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and the right to protest.

China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries for stirring up trouble.

…

U.S.-Chinese trade contracted again in October, despite optimism about possible progress in talks aimed at ending a tariff war that threatens global economic growth.

Chinese imports of U.S. goods fell 14.3% from a year earlier to $9.4 billion, customs data showed Friday. Exports to the United States sank 16.2% to $35.8 billion.

President Donald Trump announced a tentative deal Oct. 12 and suspended a planned tariff hike on Chinese imports. But details have yet to be agreed on and earlier penalties stayed in place. That is depressing trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment.

Beijing announced Thursday the two sides agreed to a gradual reduction in punitive tariffs if talks on the “Phase 1” deal make progress. However, there has been no sign of progress on major disputes about China’s trade surplus and technology ambitions.

Optimism about the talks “could improve the climate for exports in the coming months by improving global sentiment and trade. But we remain cautious,” said Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics in a report.

“It is unlikely that the bulk of existing tariffs will be removed soon,” Kuijs said. He said a “substantial gap” in perceptions about what each side is gaining means “there is a substantial risk of re-escalation of tensions in 2020.”

China’s global exports declined 0.9% to $212.9 billion, a slight improvement over September’s 3% contraction. Imports tumbled 6.4% to $170.1 billion, adding to signs Chinese demand also is cooling.

…

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck northwestern Iran early Friday, killing at least five people and injuring more than 300 others, officials said.

The temblor struck Tark county in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan province at 2:17 a.m., Iran’s seismological center said. The area is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran.

More than 40 aftershocks rattled the rural region nestled in the Alborz Mountains, and residents rushed out of their homes in fear. The quake injured at least 312 people, state television reported, though only 13 needed to be hospitalized. It described many of the injuries happening when people fled in panic.

The head of Iran’s emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand, gave the casualty figures to state television. There were no immediate video or images broadcast from the area.

Rescuers have been dispatched to the region, officials said. State TV reported the earthquake destroyed 30 homes at its epicenter.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake’s epicenter was at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage.

Iran sits on major seismic faults and experiences one earthquake a day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people.

A magnitude 7 earthquake that struck western Iran in 2017 killed more than 600 people and injured more than 9,000.

…

When billboards in Chinese start appearing, along with Korean and Japanese grocery stores and restaurants that span tastes from almost all of Asia, they are signs that you have entered California’s San Gabriel Valley.

For some people, it is a bedroom community of Los Angeles. For others, the Asian enclave is a home away from home.

Known to the locals as the “SGV,” San Gabriel Valley spans 36 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles, with close to half a million Asians living there. Nine cities in the area are majority-Asian.

They include the city of Walnut, where Mike Chou’s family settled in 1989 when they immigrated from Taiwan. Walnut already had an established Chinese community.

“My parents, they didn’t speak English at the time, so it’s made it easier for them to kind of get around,” said Chou, who was 5 when his family arrived in the United States. “It’s so close to all the shopping. It’s so close to the (Chinese) grocery stores. It made fitting in there a lot easier.”

Chinese arrived in 1970s

According to the 2019 San Gabriel Valley Economic Forecast and Regional Overview Report, the SGV has a large ethnic Chinese population that started in the 1970s, with a flood of immigrants from Taiwan.

Chou is now a real estate agent with an 80% Asian clientele — half of them Chinese. Speaking fluent Mandarin and English, Chou has been so successful in real estate that he now leads a multilingual team of agents, including Roxane Sheng, who immigrated to the United States from China in 2005 for graduate school and stayed.

“Most of my clients are Mandarin-speaking Chinese,” Sheng said. “But they’re either living here and work here, or study here. Or they come to United States just to reinvest, to buy investment property. But they still go back to China and live there.”

In the past 10 to 15 years, Chou said people from mainland China have become the new immigrants to the SGV.

WATCH: California’s San Gabriel Valley a Mecca for Asian Americans

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Mild climate, lots of land

Sheng said the area’s mild climate and the relatively close distance to China make Southern California attractive to Chinese homebuyers. A common language is another attraction.

“Everyone speaks Mandarin.” Sheng said. “They can walk into a bank, post office, grocery stores — they can do everything without speaking English.”

For immigrants who largely lived in expensive high-rise apartments in China, the San Gabriel Valley offers an additional perk.

“We have plenty of single-family homes,” Sheng explained. “They just find a house. They get the land. They get the yard, and they have no neighbors up or down below them. And home prices are still cheaper if they move from Beijing or Shanghai.”

Beyond Chinese

Immigrants from other Southeast Asian countries also live in the region.

Annie Xu, another agent on Chou’s real estate team, was raised in the Philippines of ethnic Chinese parents. She speaks Tagalog, Hokkien, Mandarin and English.

“I’ve been doing real estate for three years, because I used to be a stay-at-home mom,” said Xu, who came to the U.S. with her husband. “And then when my youngest turned 2, I decided that I want to do something. Real estate is a business that you don’t need a lot of startup costs.”

As a real estate agent, she has worked with immigrants from China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

One of her clients is Shabana Khan, a half-Pakistani Indian immigrant seeking a house with a yard. Khan moved to the San Gabriel Valley from New York.

“New York has the vibe of the energy and stuff, but you can get it here, too,” Khan said. “But as soon as you have kids, I think California is the best place to settle down. San Gabriel Valley is amazing. You have so many different cultures within Asia.”

Many immigrants, some undocumented

South Asians are among the fastest-growing Asian American groups in the SGV, according to a 2018 report by the civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles.

Using numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, Advancing Justice also found that more than 67% of Asian Americans in the SGV are immigrants, including an estimated 58,000 people who are undocumented. Close to a third in the region are low income, according to the report.

“Some of them just immigrated here, and they haven’t found a stable job. Or their English is not good enough that they have to compromise for a job that’s not ideal for them,” Sheng said.

Regardless of socioeconomic status, the report found that San Gabriel Valley’s Asian population continues to grow.

“You have a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are in Chinese. And some of the workers, they only speak Chinese, so they don’t speak English. It makes it easy if you’re an immigrant to come here and just kind of feel very much at home,” Chou said.

…

Several senior U.S. diplomats, including former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, are key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Trump is accused of having withheld U.S. military aid to Ukraine until that country’s new president agreed to investigate one of Trump’s political opponents, former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden. As transcripts from diplomats’ closed-door Capitol Hill hearings are released, many are questioning why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not shield or even support Yovanovitch from an administration campaign that led to her eventual ouster.

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch told lawmakers in sworn testimony she was shocked to get a phone call in the middle of the night, telling her to leave her post and take the next plane home.

WATCH: Cindy Saine’s video report

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She said she was told she had done nothing wrong but was in immediate diplomatic trouble, not from unrest in Ukraine, but from a potential tweet by President Trump undermining her.

A transcript of her deposition was released this week. She outlined her 33 years as a Foreign Service officer, serving under six presidents. She said U.S. diplomats frequently put themselves in harm’s way, believing that in return, their government will protect them if they come under attack. However, she said this basic understanding no longer holds true.

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Testimony: US Former Ambassador to Ukraine Advised to Tweet Support for Trump

Marie Yovanovitch said she was never disloyal to Trump in newly released testimony to lawmakers

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended her early recall on ABC News “This Week,” saying she is still a diplomat in good standing.

“Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. When a president loses confidence in an ambassador, it is not in that ambassador, the State Department, or America’s interest for them to continue to stay in their post,” he said.

However, another career diplomat, former U.S. Ambassador Laura Kennedy, told VOA that Pompeo’s lack of support for Yovanovitch is extraordinary.

 “She is one of the most straight-arrow, dedicated professionals I know. And the fact that she didn’t even get a hearing or any direct communication with the secretary of state,” Kennedy said.

Yovanovitch testified that U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland had advised her to tweet out her support of Trump to save her job. Unthinkable, former Ambassador Kennedy said.

“We support, of course, the policy of the administration which we serve, we are obligated to support that policy publicly, that’s our job,” she said. ” But again, we, the career diplomats, as other public servants, they pledged their support to the Constitution, not to any particular person.”

Some former diplomats say confidence in Pompeo has taken a hit at the State Department, and they fear it has already hurt recruitment efforts.

WATCH: What does Quid Pro Quo Mean?

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…

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova is clear. There is nothing the Kremlin can do about Russian military contractors operating in Africa.

During one of her weekly press briefings shortly after news broke that more than two dozen Russians had been killed in Libya, I pressed her about whether the Kremlin endorsed their presence.

And if it did not, what would be done to prevent Russian veterans pursing freelance foreign policies.

“I have no detailed information about what soldiers you are talking about,” she said. She added there is nothing the Kremlin can do to stop Russian military outfits waging secret wars overseas. It is reminiscent of 2014 when the Kremlin presumably could do nothing about the so-called “little green men” who miraculously appeared in Crimea but paved the way for the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. 

“We have no laws to stop this,” Zakharova said, throwing her arms wide open.

No socializing

Afterward, I talked with her deputy who, before taking up his role at the foreign ministry in Moscow, had been Russia’s press attaché in Berlin, and someone who I thought therefore might be open to some sociable contact with reporters. I sent a follow-up email and suggested lunch.

He has not replied.

That is par for the course. Russian officials are wary nowadays of socializing with foreign journalists, especially from international public broadcasters, deemed to be what the Russian government has labeled “foreign agents.” VOA, BBC, France 24, Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle are all in the frame.

On the margins of a press conference the other day a soberly suited man who said he was a lawyer but who I assumed was some kind of spook, asked me who I worked for and finding out, declared, “Oh, we are enemies then.” I responded, “No. I am just a reporter.”

Some old guard Kremlin-types will flout what appears to be a general ban on socializing with foreign reporters, but on the whole, we are given a wide berth outside the confines of stilted formal meetings. The one exception is Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He is been known to drink with foreign journalists in hotel bars, but only on overseas trips. Despite his mien, akin to that of an undertaker, he is said to have an uproarious sense of humor.

Lavrov on Wednesday came out formally against banning foreign international public broadcasters from working in Russia, something being proposed by lawmakers who have accused the broadcasters of breaking legislation covering election reporting.

Difficult to pin down

Even securing a formal meeting with some officials can be an uphill struggle. Take Boris Titov, the presidential commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights. His role is to defend business interests and to act not only as a liaison between the Kremlin and Russia’s entrepreneurs but to promote their views.

Recently, I requested an interview with Titov to discuss how Western sanctions are impacting Russian business. I wanted to ask him also about whether Russian entrepreneurs who took advantage of a tax amnesty offered by President Vladimir Putin may now feel cheated.

Putin had promised Russians repatriating assets held overseas that they would not face unpaid taxes. And they have not, but some declarations apparently are being used as evidence in fraud cases. Last week, financier Andrey Kakovkin, who had recently returned to Russia assuming all would be well, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony for embezzlement of $157,000.

I still have not heard back from Titov.

Trolls and bots

Shunning foreign journalists does not help the Kremlin get its spin on the news. But then it prefers apparently to do that unfiltered via trolls and bots, and through the assistance of oligarchs like Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Putin, whose soldiers were the ones killed in Libya fighting on the side of Gadhafi-era renegade general Khalifa Haftar.

Seven more Wagner Group soldiers are believed to have been killed in Mozambique last month.

Prigozhin seemingly hasn’t been deterred by the indictment filed against him last year by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller for overseeing a troll factory that spearheaded alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Prigozhin mocked the Mueller indictment, telling the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti: “The Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see. I have a lot of respect for them. I am not upset at all that I ended up on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”

Last week, Facebook revealed that Prigozhin was behind a network of 200 fake accounts pumping out disinformation to assist local political clients of the Kremlin in eight African countries. The countries were Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan, and Libya.

“While many of Prigozhin’s activities in Africa are known, we provide evidence that he is engaged in social media activities in several African countries to a much wider extent than we have previously known,” tweeted Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which partnered with Facebook on the investigation.

According to Facebook, the most recent of the Prigozhin-tied disinformation campaigns was launched in Mozambique last September, just weeks before the country held presidential and parliamentary polls. The content supported the incumbent president and sought to tarnish the opposition.

Boosting defenses

Hardly a day goes by now without some announcement from the Kremlin of a test firing of this or that new missile, a military exercise here or there or the launching of a new warship or development of a fresh weapon system. On Wednesday, President Putin assured military commanders that Russia won’t stop boosting its defensive capabilities with state-of-the-art weaponry.

“Hypersonic, laser and other state-of-the-art weapon systems, which no other country possesses, will be put in service,” Putin told the military commanders. But he added these new generation weapons “are no excuse for Russia to threaten anybody.”

Some Western military analysts say quite a lot of smoke and mirrors may be involved when it comes to the military buildup — at least when it comes to the Russian Navy. Writing in the National Interest, a U.S. magazine focused on international affairs, academic Robert Farley noted: “The Russian Navy inherited a massive, modern fleet of surface ships and submarines. Most of these disappeared in short order, as Russia was incapable of maintaining such a flotilla. The remaining major units of the Russian Navy are very old, and in questionable states of repair.”

Most of the holdouts from the Soviet Navy are approaching the end of their useful lifespans, according to Farley, author of “The Battleship Book” and a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College. “The Russian national security state thrives on the announcement of big projects, but not so much on their fulfillment.”

There is a tremendous buildup of frustration among the young in Moscow and St. Petersburg — and further afield, too — at how difficult it has become to get visas to travel to the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Outward-looking and curious about the wider world, they are exactly the same as their peers in other Central European countries — aspirational, increasingly multilingual and determined to carve out their own paths without larger forces getting in the way.

Partly thanks to cycles of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and consular officials, most countries have fewer staff around to handle visa applications and so the wait for the application process to conclude just gets longer. And the rise of international suspicions and tensions has only added difficulties to the visa process, unless you are an oligarch or rich, of course.

On his departure, outgoing U.S. envoy Jon Huntsman publicly lamented the visa problems — while complaining, too, about Russian blocks on issuing visas for Westerners. Like his predecessors, Huntsman argues that people-to-people contacts will be crucial in breaking down suspicions.
 

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French actress Catherine Deneuve, 76, was admitted to hospital in Paris after suffering a “limited” stroke, French media reported.

“Catherine Deneuve has suffered a very limited and therefore reversible ischemic stroke. Happily, her motor control has not been affected. She will need a few days’ rest,” French news wire AFP and French daily Le Parisien reported, quoting from a Deneuve family statement.

A spokeswoman for Deneuve declined to comment.

Nicknamed the “Ice Maiden” because of her exquisite, fragile beauty and detached manner, Deneuve became France’s leading screen actress and a top international star in the 1960s.

She won fame for her portrayal of an umbrella seller’s daughter in Jacques Demy’s 1963 musical “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg” (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) for which she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1965, she triumphed as a frigid, schizophrenic woman in Polish director Roman Polanski’s harrowing “Repulsion” and in 1968, she was nominated for a BAFTA Best Actress award for her role in “Belle de Jour.” In 1993, she was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in “Indochine.”

Often described as the embodiment of French womanhood, Deneuve is a fixture at Paris fashion shows and is known for her biting wit.

Last year, she and 99 other French women denounced a backlash against men following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, saying the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment amounted to “puritanism.”

Deneuve remained active as an actress in recent years and was working on a film this month.

“Either you do cinema or you don’t,” she told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview in September.

“My mother will turn 108 in a few days. My sisters and I have her genes,” she added.
 

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President Donald Trump is blasting the media for not reporting the name of a person who has been identified in conservative circles as the whistleblower who spurred the impeachment inquiry. Yet Trump has carefully avoided using the name himself.

Exposing whistleblowers can be dicey, even for a president. For one thing, it could be a violation of federal law to identify the whistleblower. While there’s little chance Trump could face charges, revealing the name could give Democrats more impeachment fodder. It could also prompt a backlash among some Senate Republicans who have long defended whistleblowers.

And, despite wanting the name to be disclosed, Trump sees some benefits to keeping it secret. The anonymity makes it easier for Trump to undermine the credibility of the person behind the complaint as well as the complaint itself, according to three officials and Republicans close to the White House not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations. It also allows him to bash the media for supposedly protecting the whistleblower.

In recent weeks, a name has circulated in conservative media of a man said to be the whistleblower. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., on Wednesday tweeted a link to a story on the Breitbart website that used the name. He also included the name in his tweet.

U.S. whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials. Lawmakers in both parties have historically backed those protections. The Associated Press typically does not reveal the identity of whistleblowers.

The identity of the whistleblower is almost a moot point: Much of the unnamed person’s August complaint about Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been corroborated and expanded upon by officials’ on-the-record, congressional testimony and the reconstructed, partial transcript of the call released by the White House.

In a statement shortly after Trump Jr.’s tweet, the whistleblower’s attorneys warned that “Identifying any suspected name for the whistleblower will place that individual and their family at risk of serious harm.”

The statement by Andrew P. Bakaj and Mark S. Zaid said that “publication or promotion of a name shows the desperation to deflect from the substance of the whistleblower complaint. It will not relieve the President of the need to address the substantive allegations, all of which have been substantially proven to be true.”

A number of Trump allies have counseled the president not to unveil the whistleblower’s identity. So in recent days Trump has shifted to a new tactic, denouncing the media for allegedly protecting the whistleblower by refusing to identify the person, allowing him to charge that the media is in cahoots with Democrats and the “deep state” —  Trump opponents in the government.

The strategy is reminiscent of the one Trump used during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, during which he derided the so-called deep state investigators for allegedly plotting to bring down a duly elected president.

Trump, on Twitter and while talking to reporters, relentlessly painted then-FBI director James Comey, agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page as corrupt and conspiratorial. Though there’s no solid evidence that the Russia probe suffered from any improper bias at its origin, Page and Strzok, in a series of text messages, revealed their dislike of Trump, which the president pointed to as proof of a plot against him.

With help from some allies, including Sen. Rand Paul at a Kentucky rally on Monday, Trump has moved to create a similar dynamic with the whistleblower. Without providing evidence, Trump has painted the whistleblower as a liberal “Never Trumper” and held up the person’s anonymity — essential for protection — as some sort of nefarious proof of a conspiracy with Democrats.

Much like his scattershot efforts to muddle the narrative of the Mueller probe, often by questioning the integrity and process of the investigation itself rather than the facts, Trump has been looking to plant the seed of doubt about the Ukraine matter with both his base and the GOP senators who could decide his fate in an impeachment trial, according to the officials and Republicans.

But if he identified the supposed whistleblower, Trump could risk antagonizing some of those same senators, who believe whistleblowers are important for rooting out corruption. Advocates for whistleblowers warn that stripping anonymity from the person who made the Ukraine complaint would make people across the government more reluctant to speak up about wrongdoing.

In the context of an investigation, someone who names or retaliates against a whistleblower could be prosecuted for obstructing an investigation or harassing a witness, said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project.

But whistleblowers in the intelligence community, like the one who reported the Ukraine call, lack many of the protections provided to their counterparts elsewhere in the government. “There are some rights on paper, but in reality they are extremely weak,” Devine said.

In other parts of the government, whistleblowers can take claims they have been retaliated against to independent administrative agencies and, potentially, federal courts. In the intelligence agencies, complaints are handled internally.

“The way you do that is by going back to the agency that retaliated against you to ask them to change their minds,” Devine said. There is a right of appeal to the inspector general, whose work can be reviewed a panel of auditors he appoints, he said.

Stephen Kohn, chairman of the board of the National Whistleblower Center, said it’s troubling that prospects for protecting the whistleblower really depend on Trump.

“The only guarantee here is to hope the president does his job” and prevents retaliation against him in the first place, Kohn said.
 

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