Vladimir Putin’s skiing joke may hark back to the Soviet era – but so did a lot of his speech

Warnings of nuclear war fuelled by the Western war-mongers, praise for Russian entrepreneurs and troops serving in Ukraine, a drive to encourage women to have more babies – and health advice to stop drinking and start skiing: it was all there in Vladimir Putin’s annual state of the nation address, which was beamed into Russian households on Thursday morning.

Even those who weren’t at home will not have had an opportunity to miss it: the national address was projected onto large buildings and cinemas opened their doors for free to ensure everyone had access to the two hour speech.

While the speech held few surprises, with plenty of criticism of Western allies and rhetoric which booted morale around the invasion of Ukraine, around half of it was dedicated to more mundane domestic policies such as investment in culture and education and changes to taxation.

He warned that the West was responsible for creating a potential nuclear conflict which could lead to the “destruction of civilisation” and, in an ominous, but not uncharacteristic message, said any countries considering lending their troops to support Ukraine on the war would face “tragic” consequences.

He also praised Russian entrepreneurs who had stepped in to run businesses which replaced western brands which pulled out of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, such as Starbucks and McDonalds.

When it came to the invasion, Mr Putin unusually moved away from his conventional language of a “special operation” to describe it as a “war”.

“We did not start this war in Donbas,” he insisted, going on to bring out the old trope of his aim to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

One thing he did not speak about, unsurprisingly, was the death of Alexei Navalny, the opposition politician who died while serving time in a penal colony in Siberia – four years after surviving a poisoning attempt. Mr Navalny’s funeral is due to take place in Moscow on Friday.

In a wider policy sweep, he also tackled Russia’s health problems, including alcohol.

“Everyone remembers the joke: stop drinking and start skiing,” he said, referencing a Soviet-era motto.

I’m not quite sure what the joke is, but it’s probably not bad advice for a nation which, according to the US-based Jamestown Foundation think tank, has increased its alcohol consumption to 2.3 billion litres since the start of the conflict with Ukraine.

However, his skiing joke – which hopefully works better in Russian – was not the only Soviet element to his speech.

A new initiative, Family, will encourage women to have more babies to populate Mother Russia, in an echo of a similar Stalin-era policy, while Mr Putin’s nuclear threats trigger not-too-distant memories of the Cold War era.

There is no doubt Mr Putin will win next month’s elections, he will make sure of it.

But whether returning Russia to Soviet policies will be popular with the country’s citizens, remains to be seen.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Vadim Wolfson, a Russian national and current U.S. legal permanent resident, was arrested earlier Thursday in Austin by local federal task force officers, according to court records.

Documents state Wolfson is the founder of Bank Otkritie, formerly one of the largest privately-held banks in Russia, before he moved to the U.S. around 2018.

The arrest came from a federal warrant issued by the Southern District of New York. According to court documents, Wolfson and others have been indicted on federal charges related to violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and money laundering.

Court documents list two co-defendants, Andrey Kostin, a Russian national who resides in Russia, and a U.S. national residing in New Jersey.

Attorney information for Wolfson wasn’t listed as of Thursday evening. KXAN will update this story when that information becomes available.

Records state the defendants all participated in a scheme using shell companies to own and control assets worth “tens of millions of dollars” to and for the benefit of Kostin, a Russian oligarch who, since 2002, has been the president and chairman of VTB Bank, one of the largest Russian state-owned banking groups.

Among those assets were a luxury home in Aspen, Colorado, which was primarily used by Wolfson, and two luxury superyachts valued at over $135 million, according to the Department of Justice.

In 2018, Kostin was sanctioned and designated a Specially Designated National and put on the Blocked Persons list (“SDN List”) by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”).

“Unless otherwise authorized or exempt, transactions conducted by U.S. persons, including U.S. financial institutions, or occurring in the United States are prohibited if they involve transferring, paying, exporting, withdrawing, or otherwise dealing in the property or interests in property of an entity or individual listed on the SDN List,” documents state.

According to court records, Kostin was made aware that the U.S. was likely going to impose new sanctions that would target Russian oligarchs as a result of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

A news report cited in the court documents state Kostin was aware there was “a high risk his name would be added to a new U.S. list of people close to Vladimir Putin, but that he was unfazed by the prospect.”

The indictment states Wolfson moved to New York around 2018 where he resided at the time but does not specifically reference why Wolfson was in Austin.

KXAN found two property records in Austin listing Wolfson as the owner, a nearly 4.5-acre ranch in southwest Austin purchased by Wolfson in 2020, and a home in west Austin’s affluent Tarrytown neighborhood purchased by Wolfson in 2022.

The two properties are valued at nearly $10 million, according to property records.

According to the DOJ, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said:

“As alleged, sanctioned oligarch Andrey Kostin and his co-defendants flouted U.S. sanctions to support his exceptionally lavish lifestyle.  Through complex schemes involving shell companies and illicit transactions, Kostin and his associates allegedly laundered funds and illegally made transactions with U.S. currency for the maintenance and enhancement of Kostin’s superyachts and luxury Aspen home, blatantly disregarding U.S. law.  This investigation highlights the collaborative efforts of this Office and our law enforcement partners around the globe to uphold critical sanctions put in place to support our national security goals and hold accountable those who seek to undermine them.“

The Israel Defense Forces will begin probing operational failures in the lead-up to the Hamas terror group’s October 7 massacre, after Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi decided Monday to not wait until after fighting ends to look into what went wrong, The Times of Israel has learned.

The probes, set to begin in the next few days, are aimed at drawing operational conclusions for the military, and will not look into the policies of the political leadership, avoiding a fight with government leaders who have insisted that investigations wait until after the end of Israel’s war against Hamas.

Commanders of units seen as having a role in failing to notice Hamas preparations or adequately prepare for Hamas’s October 7 onslaught will investigate what went wrong and how such blunders can be avoided in the future.

Included are the Operations Directorate, Southern Command, Gaza Division, and Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 8200, which deals with signals intelligence.

Some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on October 7, carrying out a murderous rampage of unprecedented intensity and breadth. The IDF struggled to mount a response, with bases closest to the border overrun and the chain of command seemingly broken amid the chaos.

The onslaught claimed the lives of some 1,200 people in Israel, with another 253 people kidnapped and much of the area devastated. Most victims were civilians.

In response, Israel launched a military campaign aimed at destroying Hamas and winning the freedom of hostages, over 100 of whom remain in captivity.

The investigations are internal and are not related to planned external probes of the army’s conduct in the lead-up to October 7, which are currently on hold. Plans for the independent review were met with protests from government leaders, who apparently feared they could be criticized.

In late January, Halevi said the external investigation would only be launched once the internal probes were completed.

The probes decided on Monday are expected to last several months, and will be carried out concurrent with ongoing fighting in the Gaza Strip. Any major developments in the war are expected to slow the pace of the probes.

State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman also has plans to investigate the army’s failures as well as the conduct of the government, although Halevi has requested that this also be put on hold for now.

In a letter to Englman, Halevi warned that “the audit will divert the attention of the commanders from the fighting, will damage operational investigation ability, and will not allow drawing necessary lessons to achieve the goals of the war.”

Along with announcing the probes, Halevi also ordered that appointments for senior commanders resume after they had been on pause since October 7, according to information received by The Times of Israel.

In the coming weeks, the chief of staff plans to promote officers to the ranks of brigadier generals and colonels and post them as division commanders, brigade commanders, and senior department heads.

At a further date, discussions will be held for the appointments of lieutenant colonels and majors.

The IDF will not be appointing new commanders to roles considered sensitive and related to the probes.

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It’s a crime wave that has raised fears across the city: robbers on mopeds snatching people’s phones from their hands and speeding off.

In one especially brazen attack, moped-riding bandits dragged a 62-year-old woman down a Brooklyn street in December.

After the phones are stolen, the victims’ bank accounts are drained of cash, with fraudulent transactions in both the US and South America, and the phones themselves are sent to Colombia to be wiped, reprogrammed and sold.

Now The Post can disclose that the pattern of robberies is being linked by law enforcement to a brutal Venezuelan gang that is sending its members to New York as part of the migrant wave — and using its sprawling criminal empire to launder the proceeds of the crimes.

Until recent weeks, police had been concerned about rises in thefts and robberies in the city — such as a spate of pickpocketing on the subway system and around the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree — being linked to low-level, unorganized criminals who were among the estimated 170,000 migrants who have arrived in the city since the start of 2023.

But sources tell The Post that the brutal Venezuelan “Tren de Aragua” gang has moved into New York by having its members cross the southern border and claim asylum, and is likely behind many of the moped robberies.

It is the only new gang so far being tracked among the new migrant arrivals in the city, sources say.

The NYPD so far has not discussed the gang publicly — but at a briefing last week, senior officers described a pattern of moped robberies which The Post is told have the hallmarks of Tren de Aragua.

Separately, sources told The Post last Saturday there were concerns that a gang that assaulted two police officers in Times Square could be linked to Tren de Aragua. It was unclear whether a 15-year-old Venezuelan arrested Friday over the Times Square shooting of a tourist has ties to the gang.

Last month, a suspect believed to be connected to Tren de Aragua was arrested after the brutal murder of a retired Venezuelan police officer, who was lured to his death in Miami by a group of prostitutes.

And in Chicago, the Cook County Sheriff’s Department intelligence division has been revealed by NBC5 Chicago to be tracking its presence in the city.

South American crime lords

Tren de Aragua, meaning Aragua Train, started in 2012 among trade union members in the Aragua province of Venezuela who turned a planned railroad into an opportunity for grift, and has exploded since into a violent gang involved in robberies, drug dealing and human trafficking across South America.

The Venezuelan government officially sees it as a criminal enterprise and sent in 11,000 soldiers on September 23 last year to take back a prison under the gang’s control in Tocorón, in the country’s interior.

But, The Post is told, its members have also been used as enforcers for the Cartel of the Suns drug-trafficking network, which the US Department of Justice alleges is run by Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro from his presidential palace in Caracas.

They have established presences in Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile under leader Niño Guerrero (“Warrior Kid”), whose real name is Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores and who escaped the prison raid safely along with around 80 other senior leaders.

Their violent practices have shocked even the most hardened in South America, particularly their willingness to kill women.

Ammon Blair, a former US Border Patrol agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, said, “They go into local economies where there are Venezuelans and take over the criminal underground using excessive force.

“They’ll start shooting prostitutes controlled by rival gangs and perform the executions live on social media in order to establish their presence.”

In Colombia in January, a series of brutal murders saw people lured to hotel rooms by Tren de Arauga members, tortured and killed, with their ordeals recorded for other gang members. One young man was tied hand and foot, choked with a cable and beaten with a hammer before being shot.

The gang’s leader in Colombia, José Manuel Vera, calls himself “Satan,” and was arrested after trying to extort businesses in a series of towns, with bloodthirsty demands sent in WhatsApp voice notes.

When the owners did not pay up, their employees were kidnapped, tortured and dismembered, their body parts bound in tarps and dumped outside the businesses.

In Lima, Peru, last February, a transgender prostitute was shot point-blank 31 times and the murder put on social media — a warning that Tren de Aragua now ran city’s the sex trade. It was the start of a bloodbath: Twenty-four Lima prostitutes were murdered in 2023, apparently by the gang.

In Chile, dismembered victims’ bones have been found in cement at building sites, and the country’s prosecutor held crisis talks with his Colombian counterpart about the gang’s threat to law and order.

Exploiting the border

Gang members began making their way from Venezuela to the southern US border in 2017, Blair told The Post.

That year, there were nearly 2,800 “encounters” with Venezuelan migrants at the border, according to US Customs and Border Protection statistics.

But from October 2022 to September 2023, more than 334,000 Venezuelans crossed the border — second only to 735,000 Mexicans — with Tren de Aragua playing a key part in trafficking many from Venezuela.

“When they crossed the border into Colombia, they began to control everyone’s passage, charging fees to other Venezuelans to make the crossing,” said Robert Almonte, a security consultant and former US marshal in El Paso.

Border Patrol agents apprehended 41 Tren de Aragua members crossing the border between October 2022 and September 2023, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

The only signs that they belong to the ruthless group are tattoos featuring rifles and skulls, Almonte said — although they have started telling new members not to get tattoos in order to evade police.

They also favor tattoos of silhouetted basketball players and basketball jerseys emblazoned with Michael Jordan’s and LeBron James’ number, 23 — a reference to the date of the prison raid.

Alamonte said the group is so brazen that a Texas state anti-gang task force recently documented them charging fellow Venezuelans to use federal toilet facilities at the border.

Recruiting in NYC’s shelters

Tren de Aragua members are among the arrivals in New York, but also use the surge of new migrants at shelters in the city to recruit criminals.

The NYPD’s chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, revealed last week how cops had busted one set of moped bandits — and although he did not say they were from Tren de Aragua, sources told The Post that the pattern is exactly how the Venezuelan gang has been operating in South American cities.

Kenny said last Monday 62 robberies in the city since November 2023, 34 of them in Manhattan, had been linked to the single group of at least 14 people, who used two-man moped crews to snatch victims’ phones and, because the majority of victims were women, purses.

Most of the robbers were living in the migrant shelters, and had received orders via WhatsApp from a mastermind whom Kenny identified as Victor Parra, a 30-year-old Venezuelan migrant who arrived last year.

“Parra will send out specific orders for what type of phone he is looking for,” Kenny said.

“Once the messages are received, the crime wave begins, with the scooter operators making $100 a day and the actual phone snatcher making between $300 to $600 per phone that is stolen.”

Sources told The Post that the pattern matched how Tren de Aragua operates in South America, with gang members recruiting among young men — in New York’s case, in migrant shelters — and using stolen scooters to move around the city.

Because Tren de Aragua is involved in human trafficking, gang recruiters may also have phone numbers for many of the migrants who come to New York, allowing them to blast mass WhatsApp messages to scores or hundreds of people at a time.

Turning phones into ‘gold’

Kenny said the stolen phones had been taken to alleged mastermind Parra’s home — a NYCHA apartment in the Parkside Houses in the Bronx — where a “hacker” drained them of cash. A raid early last Monday uncovered 22 stolen phones and victims’ IDs.

But the actual robbers play a crucial part. The driver maneuvers the moped and the grabber latches onto a phone, wrenching it from the victim — who, crucially, is using it at the time.

Phone in hand, the grabber, riding on the back of the bike, then stops the phone from locking.

“He may keep tapping it,” Jonathan S. Weissman, cybersecurity professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, told The Post. “Or else he can set the phone to ‘never’ on auto-lock. That way, the thieves keep it alive without needing to tap the screen.”

Once the phones are delivered to the safe house, the hackers get to work, hunting for bank accounts, payment apps and credit cards. 

According to experts, they can change codes, making it difficult for victims to stop the speedy ransacking of their accounts. Having stolen IDs from purses also helps them hack.

“Most of the security codes can be reset via SMS,” Jayson E. Street, chief adversarial officer for Secure Yetti, told The Post. “You communicate to the apps that you forgot your passcodes. They can then be reset by putting in the verification codes that are sent to the phone.”

The hacked phones can be exceptionally valuable. “The apps are used to make illegal transactions and fraudulent purchases in the United States and South America,” said the NYPD’s Kenny.

With money drained or the accounts frozen by the victim, the phone is still valuable: It is shipped to Colombia, Kenny said.

Sources told The Post that Tren de Aragua has a network carrying out the work, with phones wiped by its operatives in Bogotá, then sold across South America.

Said Weissman, “It’s the equivalent of melting down stolen gold.”

‘Ghost’ criminals

At the NYPD’s press conference, Kenny warned that the robbery gangs were “ghosts”: “No criminal history, no photos, no cellphone, no social media. Sometimes we’re even unclear on a name or a date of birth.”

Of the 14 identified as being in the robbery gang, cops so far have arrested seven, and Varra remains on the run.

NYPD sources said migrants have exploited the ID NYC scheme by getting different IDs at the Roosevelt and Floyd Bennett Field shelters.

Statistics show robberies up 9% citywide in 2024, from 1,164 to 1,278, compared to the same period in 2023, and up 14% on the same period in 2022.

Grand larcenies — theft of more than $1,000, which would include mobile phones that were drained of cash — were also up 1.6%, to 3,726, for the four weeks ending February 4, compared to 3,666 for the same four weeks in 2023.

But Tren de Aragua’s biggest ghost is its leader, Niño Guerrero. An Interpol “red notice,” requesting his arrest, warns that the mastermind’s whereabouts are unknown.

Among the countries he could be in: the United States.

An Israeli police investigation into the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival near the Gaza border on 7 October revealed that an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees, Haaretz reported on 18 November. 

According to a police source, an investigation into the incident showed that an Israeli combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at Hamas fighters and other Palestinians who crossed through the border fence from Gaza into Israel, but also fired on some of the Israelis attending the music festival. According to the police, 364 people were killed there.

The Israeli military and rescue services previously claimed that 260 Israelis were killed at the festival, all by Hamas and Palestinians in a deliberate massacre. But this is the first acknowledgement that Israeli forces killed some of their own.

Previous reports in Israeli media revealed that Israeli forces killed Israeli civilians in Be’eri, a settlement also near the Gaza border. In that case, Hamas fighters were holding Israelis captive in homes. When the Israeli military arrived, it opened fire, including by firing tank shells, killing both Israeli captives and Hamas fighters.

Three of those killed in Be’eri by Israeli tank fire were 12-year-old Liel Hezroni, her brother Yanai, and their aunt Ayla. Israeli broadcaster Kan reported that Liel’s relatives held a farewell ceremony for her, rather than a burial ceremony, because her body could not be recovered from the house that collapsed on her and other Hamas captives after an Israeli tank fired two shells into it. 

A similar instance occurred in Sderot, where Hamas fighters had taken over the local police station. Both the Hamas fighters and prisoners were killed when the Israeli army fired tank shells at the police station, killing everyone. Israeli forces then bulldozed the station.

It is therefore unclear how many of the Israelis who died on 7 October were killed by Hamas, whose fighters were seeking to take as many Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, captive back to Gaza as possible, and how many were killed by Israeli forces refusing to negotiate for the captives’ release.

Israel initially claimed Hamas and Palestinians killed 1,400 Israelis on 7 October, including soldiers, police, and civilians, but later revised the count to 1,200. Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev acknowledged that 200 of the alleged victims were Hamas fighters or Palestinians whose bodies were burned so badly that Israeli authorities could not initially identify them and assumed them to be Israelis.

In an interview with MSNBC on 17 November, he stated, “We originally said, in the atrocious Hamas attack upon our people on October 7th, we had the number at 1,400 casualties and now we’ve revised that down to 1,200 because we understood that we’d overestimated, we made a mistake. There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end apparently they were Hamas terrorists.”

Regarding the Nova festival, Haaretz reported as well that, “There is a growing assessment in the security establishment that the terrorists who carried out the massacre on October 7 did not know in advance about the Nova festival held near Kibbutz Re’im, and decided to come to the place after discovering that a mass event was taking place there.” The Hamas fighters had initially intended to attack nearby settlements in what is known as the Gaza envelope.

According to Haaretz, senior security officials estimate that Hamas found out about the existence of the party using drones, and directed its fighters to the location using their communication system. In a video from a body camera of one Hamas fighter, “he is heard asking a captured Israeli for directions to reach the bad guys, even though he was in a different area.” One of the findings that strengthens the assessment, according to the police and other security officials, is that the first Hamas fighters arrived at the Nova festival from the direction of road 232 and not from the direction of the Gaza border fence.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two well-connected political consultants provided false information about lobbying work on behalf of a wealthy Persian Gulf country during the Trump administration, according to Justice Department court records unsealed Tuesday.

Charging documents filed in federal court in Washington allege that Barry P. Bennett, an adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, spearheaded a covert and lucrative lobbying campaign aimed at advancing the interests of a foreign country, including by denigrating a rival nation.

The country for whom the work was done is not named in the documents but it matches the description of Qatar, which in 2017 paid Bennett’s company $2.1 million for lobbying work, and was identified in a 2020 Justice Department subpoena that was earlier obtained by The Associated Press and that sought records related to Bennett’s foreign lobbying.

Federal prosecutors filed two criminal counts against Bennett in a charging document known as an information, which is typically filed only with a defendant’s consent and generally signals that the parties have reached a resolution. Prosecutors said the case will be dismissed after he complies with the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement, including the payment of a $100,000 fine.

The Justice Department also reached a similar agreement with Douglas Watts, a New Jersey political consultant who prosecutors say worked alongside Bennett and failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The law, enacted in 1938 to unmask Nazi propaganda in the United States, requires people to disclose to the Justice Department when they advocate, lobby or perform public relations work in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government or political entity.

A lawyer for Bennett did not immediately return messages sent to his law firm. Justin Dillon, a lawyer for Watts, declined to comment Tuesday evening. An email to the Qatari embassy was not immediately returned.

According to the Justice Department, Bennett signed a contract in 2017 for his company, Avenue Strategies, to perform lobbying work on behalf of the Qatari embassy. He also registered with the Justice Department that year to lobby for the embassy.

But as part of that strategy, prosecutors said he also covertly operated another company called Yemen Crisis Watch that operated a public relations campaign to denigrate one of Qatar’s unnamed rivals — both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were engaged in military operations in Yemen that critics say contributed to a humanitarian crisis — and improve Qatar’s standing with the U.S. government.

That effort included lobbying Congress and Trump, as well as a social media campaign, publishing opinion articles in newspapers and producing a television documentary, according to prosecutors. Yemen Crisis Watch urged the public to contact their lawmakers and urge them to “cease supporting” the intervention in Yemen by Qatar’s unnamed rival, prosecutors said.

Robert Schuller, a prominent televangelist, and former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer both helped Yemen Crisis Watch’s efforts, according to earlier reporting from the Wall Street Journal and the Topeka Capital-Journal. Neither man has been charged with any wrongdoing and messages sent to them were not immediately returned.

Prosecutors say Bennett’s consulting company did not disclose in its FARA filings the creation of Yemen Crisis Watch, and that Watts made false statements during interviews with the FBI about his knowledge of the company’s formation and its activities.

The case is among severalprobes by federal law enforcement officials related to Qatar’s aggressive influence campaign during the Trump administration, when it was the target of a blockade by Saudi Arabia and other neighbors.

___

Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia.