US President Donald Trump expects Russia to ‘return Crimea' – White House

US President Donald Trump has been tough on Russia and expects

Moscow to “return” the Crimea peninsula to Ukraine, the White House spokesman told reporters.

Addressing the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn – hounded by the media over his contacts with Russian diplomats prior to Trump’s inauguration – Spicer pointed out that Russia “seized” Crimea under the Obama administration and that the Trump-appointed ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has “strongly denounced the Russian occupation.”

Trump has made it clear that he expects Russia to “de-escalate the situation” in Ukraine and “return Crimea,” Spicer said at the White House briefing on Tuesday.

“Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine,” Haley said at the UN Security Council meeting on February 2.

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Russia says it will respond to any "hostile steps" that the US may take, amid allegations of 2016 election hacking

Spokesman Peskov says President Putin intends to formulate Russia’s response

Russian President Vladimir Putin

MOSCOW—The Kremlin slammed new U.S. sanctions against Russia as “a display of the unpredictability and…aggressive foreign policy” of the Obama administration and promised to respond by causing “considerable discomfort in the same areas,” Interfax news agency reported.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the White House had two aims: “To ruin once and for all Russian-American relations, which were already at rock bottom and, apparently, to strike a blow against the foreign-policy plans of the future administration and the new U.S. president.”

Official - Obama administration expels 35 Russian diplomats, closes two compounds

The United States expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland in response to a campaign of harassment against American diplomats in Moscow, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
The move against the diplomats from the Russian embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco is part of a series of actions announced on Thursday to punish Russia for a campaign of intimidation of American diplomats in Moscow and interference in the U.S. election.

Strike Assad Now: The Letter Urging a U.S. Rethink on Syria

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria

Fifty-one State Department officials are urging the Obama administration to conduct airstrikes against the Assad regime.

More than 50 U.S. diplomats have written a letter criticizing the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, and urging airstrikes against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in order to prevent his violations of a cease-fire in the country’s civil war, The New York Times is reporting.

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US Barack Obama 'set to release' secret 28 pages of 9/11 report, There is speculation that Saudi officials may likely support the attacks

The US government appears set to release at least part of a 28-page classified chapter from the 9/11 report that may point the finger of Saudi collusion into the attacks that struck New York and Washington.

The former head of a bi-partisan committee that investigated the attacks that left more than 3,000 people dead and published its findings, said he believed the Obama administration would make a decision on the issue by June.

The unreleased documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol building in Washington DC, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into “specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States”.

Mr Graham, a former Democratic senator, said a government official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained US relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally.