This Week's Highlights:

• Russia said it will continue bringing up the issue of easing sanctions on North Korea, Interfax reported after a two-day summit between the U.S. and North Korean leaders collapsed this week amid disagreement over sanctions relief and conflicting accounts of Pyongyang’s demands. Prior to the summit Dutch officials say they confiscated about 90,000 bottles of Russian vodka thought to be headed for North Korea in violation of international sanctions, according to Reuters and AFP.
• The head of U.S. Strategic Command, while confident he can defend America in any foreseeable situation for the next 10 years, worries about defending against Russia after that, according to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army estimates the Russian and Chinese armies’ capabilities will peak in about a decade, giving the U.S. time to prepare, Reuters reported.
• U.S. Cyber Command cut off internet access to the Internet Research Agency, the notorious Russian “troll farm,” on Election Day in November 2018 and for a few days afterward, according to The Washington Post. The Kremlin said it was unable to confirm the report, but said that U.S. territory was constantly being used to launch cyberattacks against Russia, Reuters reported.
• A group of U.S. lawmakers have proposed sanctions legislation targeting Russia that would require the head of U.S. intelligence to report to Congress on President Vladimir Putin's personal net worth and assets, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said the Western sanctions should be refocused to target powerful oligarchs with close links to Putin, according to the Financial Times.
• Russia displaced North Korea as the one country that the most U.S. respondents (32 percent) see as America’s “greatest enemy,” according to a Gallup poll reported by The Moscow Times. Even so, the number of American tourists visiting Russia inched up by 1.5 percent in 2018, totaling 227,000, the newspaper said.
• The UK’s latest immigration statistics show that the number of Russians granted Tier 1 investment visas, like the one originally handed to Roman Abramovich, fell from 46 in 2017 to 29 last year, the lowest number since they were introduced in 2008, according to the FT.

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to meet again with U.S. President Donald Trump to continue nuclear negotiations after a two-day summit between the leaders collapsed Feb. 28 amid disagreement over sanctions relief and conflicting accounts of Pyongyang’s demands. (Fortune, 03.01.19)
  • Russia will continue to bring up the issue of easing sanctions on North Korea, a Russian Foreign Ministry source told Interfax March 1. (Interfax, 03.01.19)
  • Prior to the summit on Feb. 27, Trump tweeted that he believed Russia, as well as China, Japan and South Korea would be "very helpful" in securing a nuclear deal with Pyongyang. (The Washington Post, 02.27.19)
  • The U.S. asked Russia for advice before the U.S. and North Korean leaders were to meet in Vietnam, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. (Reuters, 02.25.19)
• A Russian tanker violated international trade sanctions by transferring fuel to a North Korean vessel at sea at least four times between October 2017 and May 2018, two crew members who witnessed the transfers said. (Reuters, 02.26.19)
• Dutch officials say they confiscated about 90,000 bottles of Russian vodka thought to be headed for North Korea in violation of international sanctions. (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• No significant developments.

New Cold War/saber rattling:

• U.S. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, warned that while he is confident he can defend the United States in any foreseeable situation for the next 10 years, he worries about the prospect of defending against Russia after that. "I get concerned, 10 years and beyond, that with torpedoes, with cruise missiles, with hypersonics, that they could go a completely other direction that we would have a difficulty," Hyten said. (The Washington Post, 02.27.19)
• Russian state television has listed U.S. military facilities that Moscow would target in the event of a nuclear strike, and said that a hypersonic missile Russia is developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes. The targets included the Pentagon and the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. (Reuters, 02.25.19)
• A choir in St. Petersburg has sparked controversy with a performance of a Soviet-era satirical song about a nuclear submarine attack on the United States. (Reuters, 02.26.19)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

• Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said he’s working to persuade Turkey to drop plans to buy the Russian missile defense system S-400, saying that would imperil prospects to sell the NATO ally the next-generation F-35 jet it’s helping to build. (Bloomberg, 03.01.19)

Nuclear arms control:

• U.S. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said he would like to see the New START treaty grow to encompass all nuclear weapons, instead of limiting a select few. (The Washington Post, 02.27.19)
• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said NATO must be prepared if Russia ignores calls to return to compliance with the INF Treaty. (RFE/RL, 03.01.19)

Counter-terrorism:

• Russia’s Federal Security Service thwarted an Islamic State plot to bomb a train in central Moscow, a shopping mall in a Moscow suburb and GRU military intelligence servicemen being transported from and to GRU headquarters, Kommersant reported. ISIS preacher and Tajik national Tojiddin Nazarov is believed to be behind the Moscow plot. (The Moscow Times, 02.26.19)
• A Russian court has sentenced five alleged Islamic State members this week over a plot to attack the French Embassy in Moscow in 2017. (The Moscow Times, 03.01.19)

Conflict in Syria:

• U.S. President Donald Trump has said that “100 percent” of the territory held by ISIS in Syria has been recaptured, claiming a military victory as he returned from a failed attempt to secure a denuclearizing deal with North Korea. (Financial Times, 02.18.19)
  • Russia and Syria issued a joint statement on Feb. 27 calling on U.S. forces to leave Syria and to allow people inside a refugee camp in the country’s southeast to be evacuated by Russian and Syrian forces. (Reuters, 02.27.19)
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Feb. 27 after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that getting the Iranians and all foreign fighters out of Syria is also one of Russia's stated goals. A diplomatic source added that Putin did not place limitations on Israel's actions in Syria. (Haaretz, 02.27.19)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the discussions on establishing a safe zone in northern Syria along the Turkish border were underway as he sees the possibility of the deployment of Russian military police. (Daily Sabah, 02.24.19)
• Large parts of Syria are safe, Russian officials say, and there is no reason for Syrian asylum seekers to remain in Russia. (Reuters, 02.28.19)
• The creation of the Syrian Constitutional Committee will end in the near future, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said. (TASS, 02.26.19)

Cyber security:

• U.S. Cyber Command cut off Internet access to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm,” on election day in November 2018 and for a few days afterward. The Kremlin on Feb. 27 said that U.S. territory was constantly being used to launch cyberattacks against Russia, but said it was unable to confirm a U.S. media report that the U.S. military had disrupted the Internet Research Agency’s internet access. (RFE/RL, 02.26.19, Reuters, 02.27.19)
• On Feb. 26, in a trial behind closed doors, a Moscow military court formally sentenced Federal Security Service Col. Sergeu Mikhailov to 22 years in prison, having convicted him of state treason for passing classified information to Western intelligence agencies. Ruslan Stoyanov, a researcher who used to be a law-enforcement investigator and later worked with the Kaspersky Lab, was sentenced to 14 years. (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)
• The lawyers for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian suspected of bitcoin fraud and wanted by three countries, said Feb. 28 that the man's health is deteriorating due to a hunger strike, and criticized the Greek courts for detaining him for more than the maximum 18 months allowed. (AP, 02.28.19)

Elections interference:

• During his Congressional testimony former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen:
  • Asserted that Trump knew in advance that WikiLeaks planned in July 2016 to release a batch of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton. Cohen testified that he overheard a phone call from Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone in which Stone allegedly informed Trump he had spoken by telephone with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and learned that the anti-secrecy group would be publishing a "massive dump" of Clinton emails within days. (The Washington Post, 02.28.19)
    • WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter that Assange "never had a telephone call with Roger Stone." Likewise, in a text message, Stone said, "Mr. Cohen's statement is not true." (The Washington Post, 02.28.19)
  • Said that Trump did not tell him to lie to Congress about a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow that Cohen pursued into the heart of the campaign. (The Washington Post, 02.28.19)
    • The Kremlin said on Feb. 27 that an email it had received from an adviser to Trump in January 2016 about a Moscow real estate project had made no mention of Trump's personal interest in the project. (Reuters, 02.27.19)
  • Said he is continuing to cooperate with prosecutors in hopes of reducing his three-year prison sentence. (Wall Street Journal, 02.27.19)
  • Vowed to bring additional corroborating materials when he returns for additional testimony on March 6. (CBS news, 02.28.19)
• "He lied a lot, but it was very interesting, because he didn't lie about one thing," U.S. President Donald Trump said of Michael Cohen’s testimony. "He said no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, 'I wonder why he didn't lie about that, too, like he did about everything else.'" Prior to the testimony Trump accused Cohen of "lying to reduce his prison time." (RFE/RL, 02.27.19, The Washington Post, 02.28.19)
• Special counsel Robert Mueller's office has told a U.S. judge that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort "repeatedly and brazenly" broke the law and does not deserve any leniency at his sentencing. (RFE/RL, 02.24.19)
• Lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have asked a federal judge for leniency ahead of Manafort's sentencing on witness-tampering and unregistered-lobbying charges. (RFE/RL, 02.26.19)
• The Manhattan district attorney's office is preparing state criminal charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to ensure he will still face prison time even if the president pardons him for his federal crimes. (New York Times, 02.23.19)
• Three senior EU diplomats said the bloc expected Russia-based organizations to attempt to try to influence the vote in 27 member states for new members of the European Parliament by hacking into institutions and spreading fake news. (Financial Times, 02.28.19)

Energy exports:

• No significant developments.

Bilateral economic ties:

• No significant developments.

Other bilateral issues:

• The Kremlin on Feb. 28 dismissed talk of potential U.S. sanctions targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin's wealth and called draft sanctions legislation an example of anti-Russian sentiment that should not be taken seriously. A group of U.S. lawmakers have proposed sanctions legislation targeting Russia that, among other things, would require the director of U.S. National Intelligence to report to Congress about Putin's personal net worth and assets. (Reuters, 02.28.19)
• Russia has lost an estimated 50 billion rubles ($760 million) in potential gun and ammunition sales since international sanctions sealed off the U.S. market in 2014, the state-owned Rostec corporation has said. (The Moscow Times, 03.01.19)
• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Western sanctions against Moscow missed the target and were not working, and that the U.S. and U.K. had no real interest in tackling “dirty money.” Navalny labelled existing economic curbs “chaotic” and “incomprehensible” and said attempts to rein in Russia should refocus to target properly the powerful oligarchs with close links to Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Financial Times, 02.27.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the decision to prosecute U.S. fund manager Michael Calvey on fraud charges. “I understand your concerns about investment image and I understand all your arguments about some contradictions [in the case] . . . but I have some reports from relevant security services saying, and proving, that they had a reason to act how they acted,” said Putin, according to one person. If convicted, Calvey could face as much as 10 years in prison. A Russian court on Feb. 28 ruled that Calvey should remain in custody pending trial, rejecting his appeal to be released on bail or moved to house arrest. (Reuters, 02.28.19, Bloomberg, 02.25.19, Financial Times, 02.26.19)
• U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has delayed the sentencing of Maria Butina after prosecutors cited Butina's ongoing cooperation with unspecified investigations. (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)
• According to a new Gallup poll, 52 percent of Americans see Russia as a “critical threat” to U.S. interests, and Russia’s unfavorability ratings reached a new high of 73 percent. At 32 percent, Russia displaced North Korea as the country that the most respondents called America’s “greatest enemy.” In last year’s poll, only 19 percent of respondents called Russia America’s greatest foe, compared to 51 percent who said the same about North Korea. (The Moscow Times, 02.28.19)
• City lawyers in Washington, D.C., have moved to delay turning over autopsy documents related to the death of former Russian Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, following a judge's order to release the files. (RFE/RL, 02.22.19)
• U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman and the ambassadors of several European countries were among the diplomats marking the anniversary of Boris Nemtsov’s killing on Feb. 27. (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Russia welcomed 4.2 million tourists overall in 2018. The numbers pointed to an increase of 10 percent. China accounted for the largest number of visitors—1.26 million—a 14.5 percent increase from 2017. Germany and South Korea also increased their numbers by 10.5 percent and 45 percent each, contributing the second and third-most visitors at 451,400 and 342,300 tourists respectively. Russia also saw 227,000 American visitors last year, up by 1.5 percent, and 164,000 Israelis—an increase of 10.8 percent. (The Moscow Times, 02.27.19)
• Over two-thirds of Russians, 68 percent, believe bribery and corruption-related arrests of top officials are indicators of the overall decay of the government, the Levada Center pollster said Feb. 25. (The Moscow Times, 02.25.19)
• Companies that can be tied to oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin have won at least 5,393 Russian-government contracts since 2011 worth more than 209 billion rubles ($3.2 billion), according to an investigation by Current Time and the Municipal Scanner anticorruption website. (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)
• Russia has been ranked the world’s 95th healthiest country in a new index released by Bloomberg, behind most other nations in Eastern Europe. (The Moscow Times, 02.26.19)
• Thousands of people took to the streets in around 20 cities across Russia on Feb. 24 to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. (The Moscow Times, 02.25.19)
• Renowned Russian media executive and political technologist Igor Malashenko has died in Spain at the age of 64, Kommersant reported on Feb. 25. (The Moscow Times, 02.25.19)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced plans to create one new division and four new regiments in western Russia in 2019. The south will be reinforced with a new division for coastal missile defense, two regiments and a missile brigade, Shoigu said. Another missile brigade and a mixed aviation division will be formed in Russia’s eastern military district, he said. (The Moscow Times, 02.27.19)
• The U.S. Army estimates the Russian army's military capabilities will peak in 2028, closely followed by the Chinese around 2030, giving the U.S. almost a decade to prepare for those threats, according to Secretary of the U.S. Army Mark Esper. (Reuters, 02.27.19)
• The Russian military has started upgrading nuclear weapons bunkers at Engels Air Base and the Saratov-63 central nuclear weapons storage facility in the Saratov province. (Federation of American Scientists, 02.25.19)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• An official of Russia's main criminal investigative body says the organization is looking into allegations that its officers tortured members of the banned Jehovah's Witnesses religious group. (RFE/RL, 02.23.19)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

• Pakistan’s foreign minister has said his country is willing to accept Russia’s offer to mediate between Pakistan and India, days after a military conflict erupted between the South Asian nuclear powers. India and Pakistan shot down each other's fighter jets on Feb. 27, a day after Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan for the first time since a war between the two countries in 1971. Russia’s foreign minister said Feb. 28 that Moscow was prepared to facilitate talks between the two sides. (The Moscow Times, 03.01.19)
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a phone call that he hopes for a quick settlement of a crisis between India and Pakistan. (Reuters, 02.28.19)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on March 1 that Russia was helping Venezuela with supplies of wheat. He made the comment at a joint news conference with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who was visiting Moscow. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ordered state oil company PDVSA's office in Lisbon to be relocated to Moscow, Rodriguez said, a move she said was designed to help safeguard her country's assets. (Reuters, 03.01.19) See more in China section below.
  • "The United States is preparing a military invasion of an independent state," Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, said of Venezuela. (The Moscow Times, 02.26.19)
• Russian state media published 138 contradictory accounts of the nerve agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal last year, according to a new report by King’s College, London. (Financial Times, 02.28.19)
• The U.K.’s latest immigration statistics show the number of Russians granted Tier 1 investment visas, like the one originally handed to Roman Abramovich, fell from 46 in 2017 to 29 last year, the lowest number since they were introduced in 2008. Overall, Russian companies used the London markets to raise equity capital three times in 2018 in share issues worth just over $500 million. That contrasted with 10 deals in the U.K. worth $4.1 billion in 2017, the Dealogic data revealed. (Financial Times, 03.01.19)
• Russia has established high-speed internet service on a chain of Pacific islands off its far eastern coast, state-run telecoms operator Rostelecom said on Feb. 26, despite a decades-old dispute with Japan over the territory. (Reuters, 02.26.19)
• Yelizaveta Peskova, the 21-year-old daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, serves as a trainee with Aymeric Chauprade, a French member of the European Parliament, who has publicly supported Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Chauprade has hit back at criticism of his decision to hire Peskova. (RFE/RL, 02.25.19, Financial Times, 02.26.19)
• Authorities in Sweden have arrested a suspected Russian agent. The individual, whose name has not been disclosed, was passing information to Russia since 2017, the Swedish Security Service says. He or she was working in a high-technology sector "on tasks known by our Service to be the type of intelligence sought after by foreign powers," the agency said. (NPR, 02.28.19)

China:

• Russia and China on Feb. 28 vetoed a U.S. resolution in the U.N. Security Council on addressing the crisis in Venezuela, but a counterproposal from Moscow did not win enough votes either. (France 24, 03.01.19)
• On Feb. 27, the foreign ministers of Russia, India, and China met for the 16th ministerial meeting of the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral in Zhejiang, China. The RIC joint statement noted that the three ministers “strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.” (The Diplomat, 02.28.19)

Ukraine:

• Some 13,000 people have been killed, a quarter of them civilians, and as many as 30,000 wounded in the war in eastern Ukraine since it broke out in April 2014, the U.N. says. (RFE/RL, 02.26.19)
• Recent polls suggest Ukrainian TV personality Volodymyr Zelensky has surged to the front of the field ahead of the March 31 first round of elections, mustering 20 to 25 percent support. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has about 17 to 19 percent support, while populist former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who comfortably led polls last year, has slipped to third with about 14 to 15 percent. An April 21 runoff is expected. (Financial Times, 02.25.19)
• The presidential campaign of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has registered numerous suspicious donations, repeating a pattern that journalists uncovered in her Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party's accounts in 2016. (RFE/RL, 03.01.19)
• Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has accused the leadership of the Verkhovna Rada of intentionally impeding an impeachment process against Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Tymoshenko announced her party's move to impeach the president after media outlet Bihus.Info alleged that Ihor Hladkovskyy, the son of close Poroshenko ally Oleh Hladkovskyy, who is deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, organized a ring to smuggle spare military-equipment parts from Russia in 2015. (RFE/RL, 02.26.19, RFE/RL, 02.28.19)
• Ukraine's Constitutional Court has annulled legislation aimed at fighting against illegal enrichment among officials, in a move that was denounced by a Ukrainian law enforcement agency fighting against corruption as a "step back." (RFE/RL, 02.28.19)
• Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that the EU’s share of Ukrainian exports is almost 43 percent, while Russia’s is less than 8 percent. (Ukranews, 02.25.19)
• According to a SOCIS Center for Social and Marketing Research survey released on Feb. 22, 62 percent of respondents said the military conflict in eastern Ukraine was the biggest problem, while low wages and pension received 56.8 percent of votes and increases in utility fees received 53.3 percent. (Interfax, 02.22.19)
• The former chief of staff for Ukraine’s armed forces has been detained on charges of high treason. Prosecutor-General Yury Lutsenko wrote on Facebook that Gen. Volodymyr Zamana was taken into custody on Feb. 25. (RFE/RL, 02.25.19)
• Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has held a meeting with U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker aboard the USS Donald Cook which has arrived at the Port of Odessa. The U.S. insists that Russia immediately release the Ukrainian sailors detained in the Kerch Strait on Nov. 25, 2018, Volker said. (Interfax, 02.26.19)
• The U.S. has reaffirmed that it will maintain sanctions on Russia until it returns control of Crimea to Ukraine, nearly five years after Moscow annexed the peninsula. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia's occupation of the peninsula in 2014 has fueled "an escalation of Russian aggression." (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)
• Sergei Kiselyov, the nephew of top Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, was sentenced by a German court for planning to take part in military activities in eastern Ukraine, Russian media reported Feb. 28. (The Moscow Times, 02.28.19)
• Russia's North Caucasus Regional Military Court sentenced Russian officer Dmitry Dolgopolov to 10 years in prison and Anna Sukhonosova to nine years after convicting the couple of selling classified materials to Ukraine's Security Service. (RFE/RL, 02.28.19)
• Ukraine suffered the world’s largest increase in the number of measles cases in 2018, some of them the result of the so-called "anti-vax" movement, the U.N. children’s agency says. (RFE/RL, 03.01.19)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• An election in Moldova has produced a hung parliament, with the vote split between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces at a time when the ex-Soviet republic’s relations with the EU have soured. Moldova’s Central Election Commission announced the that the pro-Russian Socialist Party won 31.15 percent of votes, the ACUM opposition bloc won 26.84 percent, 23.62 percent was taken by the Democratic Party of Moldova and the Shor party received 8.32 percent. (Reuters, 02.25.19, Jam News, 02..27.19)
  • The U.S. says it welcomes the assessment by international monitors that Moldova’s Feb. 24 parliamentary elections were “competitive and generally” fair, but it adds that its shares concerns about a variety of alleged violations.  (RFE/RL, 02.28.19)
  • A fraudulent Facebook campaign in Moldova used the tactics of Russia’s notorious “troll farm”—the Internet Research Agency—to promote Prime Minister Pavel Filip’s ruling Democratic Party that, ironically, is at odds with the Kremlin. (RFE/RL, 02.27.19)
• Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has appointed Asqar Mamin as the Central Asian nation's new prime minister. Mamin has served as deputy prime minister since 2016. (RFE/RL, 02.25.19)
• BTA Bank, the financial institution that was once Kazakhstan’s largest bank and is now at the center of a multinational legal fight, has confirmed it hired U.S. President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen to help recover assets that were allegedly laundered in the United States. (RFE/RL, 02.28.19)
• Ulugbek Babakulov, a prominent journalist who has been charged by Kyrgyz authorities with inciting ethnic hatred, says he has received political asylum in France. (RFE/RL, 02.26.19)
• Armenia is marking the 11th anniversary of a bloody crackdown on protesters who were then challenging the official result of the country’s presidential election that year. (RFE/RL, 03.01.19)
• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko says Russia has no intention of "swallowing" Belarus but added that further integration between the two countries is a "must." (RFE/RL, 03.01.19)
• Anastasia Vashukevich, Belarusian escort who claimed to have evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, says the Russian Federal Security Service "strongly advised" her not to return to her country after months in jail in Thailand. (RFE/RL, 02.25.19)

IV. Quoteworthy

• “We are working to build ‘coalitions of caution’ in the nuclear business by calling attention to the dangers of nuclear cooperation with Russia and China,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ashley Ford  said. (U.S. State Department, 02.26.19)