September 16:
Russia continues to skirt the blame for the 2014 Malaysia Airlines tragedy in new and inventive ways. According to The Daily Beast, the Chief of the Russian military's Missile and Artillery Directorate, Lt. Gen. Nikolai Parshin, is publicly blaming Ukraine for the July 2014 shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Eastern Ukraine, alleging that the missile that hit the plane was a Soviet asset that had been shipped to Ukraine in the 1980s and never returned to Russia after the end of the Cold War. Parshin's claim is the latest in a laundry list of staunch Russian denials of responsibility - denials that have persisted despite a four-year investigation which concluded that a Russian military unit had transported the missile across the border and into rebel-held territory, where it was used by Russian-supported separatists to bring down the civilian airliner.
September 17:
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis sees another battleground for Russian information operations in the upcoming referendum in Macedonia over a possible national name change. On September 30th, Macedonians will vote in a referendum on whether to change the country's name to the Republic of North Macedonia – a move that would resolve a decades-long spat with Greece, which has a northern region also called Macedonia and disputes the use of the same name by its northern neighbor. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the U.S. defense secretary arrived in Skopje to support the referendum, calling it "the most important vote" in the nation's history, but warned that Moscow will use its money and influence to try to block its passage. Russia's opposition stems from the fact that a resolution to the diplomatic conflict between Athens and Skopje would remove an obstacle to Macedonia's candidacy for NATO membership. Mattis confirmed that the United States stands ready to expand its cybersecurity cooperation with the Balkan nation, and urged its voters to remember the benefits their country would reap from membership in the alliance.
Kyiv has formally codified its ongoing hostilities with Russia. Radio Svoboda reports that Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, under the direction of President Petro Poroshenko, has officially abrogated its Treaty of Friendship with Russia. That agreement, signed by Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Boris Yeltsin back in 1997, has remained in force up until now despite Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its ongoing support of separatist forces in Ukraine's east.
The Kremlin, for its part, has responded critically to the news. "Even in conditions of this deep crisis," Foreign Ministry spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, "it would be foolish to take any steps that would cause additional damage to the peoples of the two countries."