Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused forces in the United States of trying to undermine the success of his first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, but said the two leaders had begun to improve U.S.-Russia ties anyway.

Orange County GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher met in Russia in 2015 with a woman later charged by federal officials for allegedly acting as an unregistered agent of the Kremlin in a covert endeavor to shape American politics. News of the 2015 meeting — confirmed Tuesday by Rohrabacher’s office — came the same day he told Politico that Monday’s indictment of 29-year-old Maria Butina was “bogus” and “stupid,” saying he believes the allegations are part of a larger plot to undermine President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.

The reporter who asked President Trump whether Russia is still seeking to meddle in U.S. elections asserted on Wednesday that the president was answering her directly when he said that it was not. "Yes, he was looking directly at me when he spoke. Yes, I believe he heard me clearly. He answered two of my questions," Cecilia Vega, a White House correspondent for ABC News, wrote on Twitter, posting a transcript of the exchange.

President Donald Trump blew it for the U.S. and its allies, but there’s little chance he’ll clean up the mess he made. Sure, he’s taking criticism, even from some loyalists, for cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, choosing not to hold Putin accountable for Russia’s attacks in its backyard and in the West, and generally telling NATO countries to go defend themselves. No U.S. president ever returned home from a foreign trip having so aggressively departed from the advice of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and even his own advisers.

A little more than a year ago, I posted and pinned the following predictive tweet: “Get ready. A year from right now we'll be up to our asses in Russian fake news, malware, hacks, mayhem aimed at the midterms. Pinning this.” Granted, it wasn’t a difficult forecast knowing what we knew at the time.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Tuesday supports three U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Republican-led committee’s finding suggests the panel continues to conduct a bipartisan inquiry into the issue amid political rancor between Republicans and Democrats on allegations that Moscow interfered in the election.

A top-secret Government report has uncovered a decade-long attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to compromise Australia’s major political parties. 9NEWS has confirmed the report says the CCP’s operations are aimed at all levels of government and designed to gain access and influence over policy making. Malcolm Turnbull commissioned the joint investigation in August 2016, combining the resources of domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

A new Russian influence operation has surfaced that mirrors some of the activity of an internet firm that the FBI says was deeply involved in efforts to sway the 2016 U.S. elections, a cybersecurity firm says. A website called usareally.com appeared on the internet May 17 and called on Americans to rally in front of the White House June 14 to celebrate President Donald Trump’s birthday, which is also Flag Day.

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.

After an attack on a former spy, the State Department pondered placing that label on Putin’s government. Instead, the Trump administration continued a longtime U.S. policy of treating Russia as a partner in fighting terrorism even as evidence of its misbehavior mounts.

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen worked on a deal to try and build a Trump Tower in Moscow for months longer than he had told Congress, Yahoo News reported Wednesday. The site reported that Cohen told lawmakers that he had stopped working on the project in January 2016 when he decided the “proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.”

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released thousands of Russian Facebook ads on Thursday, offering the public its first in-depth look at the troubling messages used to heighten tensions among Americans during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The release of the ads, which Facebook says were purchased by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency to sway public sentiment, comes as the giant social network races to tighten...

A Russian oligarch funneled money to Michael Cohen, gaining kompromat. And Trump’s GOP allies are doing everything they can to keep their secrets.

The U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet will be sent to the North Atlantic Ocean again as the Pentagon plots ways to combat Russia’s revanchist tendencies.With a resurgent Russia, the U.S. announced Friday that it will re-establish a fleet of its Navy that it abolished nearly seven years ago as a cost-cutting measure. The U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet will be sent to the North Atlantic Ocean again, as the Pentagon plots ways to combat Russia’s revanchist tendencies. According to the Pentagon, the Second Fleet will now have operational and administrative control over ships, aircraft and landing forces on the East Coast and the northern Atlantic Ocean.

CIA officers working overseas used to expect to be followed after hours by adversarial spies hoping to find their sources. But now, foreign spies often don't need to bother because technology can do it for them, said Dawn Meyerriecks, deputy director of the CIA's science and technology division. Digital surveillance, including closed-circuit television and wireless infrastructure, in about 30 countries is so good that physical tracking is no longer necessary, Meyerriecks told the audience at an intelligence conference in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday.

President Donald Trump's policy toward Russia has puzzled world leaders and amused officials in Moscow, according to the former ambassador to the states that succeeded the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the former ambassador-at-large for the ex-USSR states, told The New York Times on Tuesday that "Trump seems to think that if he accepts what his advisers recommend on even days of the month and rejects their recommendations on odd days, the result will be a strategy."

The United States has warned that former Russian double agents who were swapped to the West for Russian spies could face danger in the wake of the poisoning of an ex-agent in Britain. Britain blames Russia for the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England last month, triggering mutual diplomatic expulsions. Skripal is one of four Russians convicted of betraying Moscow for the West who were exchanged for 10 Russian agents in 2010.

Nato is expelling seven Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack in the UK. The international security organisation's chief said the move would send a message to Russia that there are "costs and consequences" for its behaviour. Twenty-six countries have expelled Russian envoys in the past two days, in solidarity with the UK. They all believe Russia was behind the poisoning of two people in Salisbury.

The author of the famous Trump dossier provided a secret report to the FBI asserting that RT founder Mikhail Lesin was bludgeoned to death by thugs hired by an oligarch close to Putin. Three other sources independently told the FBI the same basic story, contradicting the government’s finding that Lesin’s death was accidental.

The suspect was in contact with Russian intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover at the Russian embassy in Warsaw, according to TVP. The man was detained by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) last Friday in an operation coordinated with the security services of other European Union countries, TVP reported.