RadioFreeLiberal.com

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Monday passed greetings from U.S. President Donald Trump to the visiting Palestinian leader, who responded that he doesn’t want to cooperate with Washington following its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Speaking at the start of their meeting in the Kremlin, Putin told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he was just off the phone with Trump.

“Naturally, we spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli settlement,” he said. “I would like to convey to you his best wishes.”

Abbas responded that the Palestinians don’t want to cooperate with the United States as a sponsor of the peace process, but welcome multilateral cooperation.

Trump honored a campaign promise in December by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and vowing to relocate the U.S. Embassy there.

Several Russians who had been hired as paramilitary contractors were among more than 100 men killed in US airstrikes in northern Syria last week, according to their friends and families.

The men were working for a private Russian company called Wagner, which has sent hundreds of private contractors to Syria to help both the Russian military and pro-regime forces, according to people who knew them................
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..........Most of the casualties, according to local sources, appear to have been members of a pro-regime Christian militia from the town of al Suqaylabiyah. Earlier this week, there was a mass funeral for about 30 members of the militia -- which often describes itself as the "ISIS hunters" -- in the town.

Two sons of a prominent tribal leader were also killed, according to social-media posts from Syria.

Wagner, which is under US sanctions for supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine, has several hundred contractors in Syria, according to analysts. In December, Nikolay Tikhonivch from Tomsk was killed "in the area of the Hama-Idlib highway," according to a social-media post from the "Rus" patriotic group to which he belonged.............