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Geopolitics

Syria And Mali: With Kerry In Paris, Eyes On UN, US And French Next Moves

L’EXPRESS, FRANCE 24 (France), BLOOMBERG, REUTERS

Worldcrunch

PARIS – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met his French counterpart on Wednesday for talks about aid to the Syrian opposition and the situation in Mali, where the United Nations has just recommended a force of UN 11,200 peacekeeping troops.

Kerry held breakfast talks in Paris with France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on international efforts “to bring an end to the Assad regime’s brutal campaign against the Syrian people” and “to restore democracy in Mali,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

Discussions in Paris were held just hours after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended in a report to the Security Council that the AFISMA African force currently in Mali should be converted into a U.N. peacekeeping operation consisting of 11,200 troops and 1,440 police, France 24 reports.

The 15-member Security Council is due to discuss Ban Ki-moon’s recommendations on Wednesday, which could lead to a vote to approve the peacekeeping force as early as mid-April.

"There would be a fundamental requirement for a parallel force to operate in Mali," Ban also advised in the report, which French weekly news magazine L’Express understands as a way of inviting French troops to extend their stay in Mali to battle radical Islamists and Tuareg separatists who threaten stability in the region.

Kerry and Fabius also conferred on the situation in Syria, a day after Syrian rebels asked Kerry for NATO missile batteries in Turkey to be used to protect civilians in northern Syria from rocket attacks by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Reuters reports that Kofi Annan, the former UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, said he thought it was too late for military intervention, and that arming Assad"s foes would not end the two-year-old crisis.

"I don't see a military intervention in Syria. We left it too late. I'm not sure it would not do more harm," Annan told the Graduate Institute in Geneva on Tuesday night.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

That Man In Mariupol: Is Putin Using A Body Double To Avoid Public Appearances?

Putin really is meeting with Xi in Moscow — we know that. But there are credible experts saying that the person who showed up in Mariupol the day before was someone else — the latest report that the Russian president uses a doppelganger for meetings and appearances.

screen grab of Putin in a dark down jacket

During the visit to Mariupol, the Presidential office only released screen grabs of a video

Russian President Press Office/TASS via ZUMA
Anna Akage

Have no doubt, the Vladimir Putin we’re seeing alongside Xi Jinping this week is the real Vladimir Putin. But it’s a question that is being asked after a range of credible experts have accused the Russian president of sending a body double for a high-profile visit this past weekend in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

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Reports and conspiracy theories have circulated in the past about the Russian leader using a stand-in because of health or security issues. But the reaction to the Kremlin leader's trip to Mariupol is the first time that multiple credible sources — including those who’ve spent time with him in the past — have cast doubt on the identity of the man who showed up in the southeastern Ukrainian city that Russia took over last spring after a months-long siege.

Russian opposition politician Gennady Gudkov is among those who confidently claim that a Putin look-alike, or rather one of his look-alikes, was in the Ukrainian city.

"Now that there is a war going on, I don't rule out the possibility that someone strongly resembling or disguised as Putin is playing his role," Gudkov said.

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