In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria broadcast on Sunday, Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed growing frustration with the inconclusive first two months of relations between Moscow and the Trump administration, which started off with hope for reconciliation and have instead devolved into a perpetuation of the Obama (and Hillary Clinton) imposed status quo. The election of President Trump, who had spoken approvingly of Putin and called for improved US-Russia relations, had raised hopes in the Kremlin. But Peskov - just like Syria leader Bashar al-Assad yesterday - said there are no signs of progress yet.

"Unfortunately, we don't have a proper understanding of when this dialogue can begin," Peskov told Fareed Zakaria (Peskov's take on the Trump administration begins 14:20 in the video below). "We certainly would expect our contacts to be more frequent, more in depth. We had quite a significant pause in our bilateral relations." Trump's early campaign statements had initially led to speculation that the US would drop sanctions imposed on Russia for its interference in Ukraine, however that approach appears to have been indefinitely delayed following recurring allegations of proximity between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Furthermore, quoted by CBS Peskov said that "Russia will never initiate putting this issue on the agenda."

Don't be fooled by the watercolors; he's still responsible for the death of a million Iraqis.

So, he's back. George W. Bush leaves his Dallas attic and his paintbrushes to visit the television studios. He has a book to flog—Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief's Tribute to America's Warriors.

Since he left the White House, Bush has taken refuge in his canvases, on which he has painted the faces of about 100 of the veterans he sent to war. "I was thinking of their stories, their troubles, their joys," he told Sandra Sobieraj Westfall of People magazine in one of the many fluff pieces that have come out on his book tour.

On Ellen DeGeneres' television show, Bush spoke with evident sentimentality about his close relationship with Michelle Obama. "She likes my sense of humor," said the ex-president. Pictures of Obama hugging Bush are not uncommon on social media. It is as if her hug is a sign of his rehabilitation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Western countries on Sunday of delivering arms to terrorists in the Middle East, with his accusations following recent bans on Turkish ministers by the Netherlands and Germany.

On Saturday, the Dutch authorities barred the Turkish foreign minister from landing, ahead of his planned Turkish expat rally at the embassy prior to the referendum on the constitutional changes. On the same day, the Turkish family and social affairs minister was denied entry to the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam and then deported to Germany. Both the Dutch and German authorities have called off the family minister's campaign meetings.

"The West arms all terrorists in the Middle East. Although the West still denies this fact, Ankara has documentary evidence of arms deliveries. There also are photos on which terrorists are wearing uniforms of these countries," Erdogan said, as quoted by the Anadolu news agency.

The incident with the ministers prompted Turkish protests near the Rotterdam consulate. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim threatened "harsh" retaliation measures, while Erdogan had promised to retaliate for the incident with the foreign minister.

Ankara has been seeking support from Turkish expats for a constitutional change that would increase the president's powers. The Turkish referendum on the constitutional amendment is scheduled for April 16.

The idea of United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to block China's access to its artificial islets in the South China Sea cannot be implemented and will never come to life, according to Russian Ambassador to China Andrei Denisov.

Before assuming office, Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January that China's island-building program in the South China Sea should be stopped.

"We're going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops. And second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed," he told the senators.

Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dabbled in a bit of recreational LARPing during a press briefing in Moscow on Friday.

During the briefing, a reporter noted Washington's decision to "deploy Marine Corps artillery in Syria, which is a clear departure from the previous administration's vow that there will be no boots on the ground," and then asked for Moscow's reaction.

Zakharova assumed the role of a Washington "policy maker" and shot back:

What previous administration? What are you talking about? It didn't have a consistent Syrian strategy in entire eight years: one day we bomb it, the next day we don't, one day we pull out of Syria, the next day we go in, one day we overthrow the government, the next day we establish cooperation with it. Such fluctuations occurred on a monthly basis. One branch of government did not understand what the other branch was doing. The position which had to be implemented on the international arena as a consolidated US approach (the international community was supposed to understand this policy, because the issue is about the actions on the international arena), simply was not there. First, there was one concept, then it changed. In the last six months before the elections, we witnessed agony of Washington's Syrian policy. On the one hand, there was increased activity in the foreign policy area, and, on the other hand, there was activity which was absolutely not supported by the on-the-ground actions of the US military. Do you remember the gap between the position of certain forces in the State Department and the US military?

Then there came an even more mysterious event: they just went ahead and dropped all Syrian politics without seeing it to its logical end. Then they focused on Aleppo, but not on resolving this situation, but solely on building up hysteria and an information campaign geared exclusively to the elections. What can we talk about if we analyse the previous administration's approach?

I suggest that we leave all that to historians and political scientists and refrain from discussing this seriously, because we can remember perfectly these endless changes and under-the-carpet fighting between US departments. It was just a political battle. Unfortunately, this political battle of the elites clearly continues. Anything goes in this fight.

As our readers will recall, Zakharova recently made headlines after she politely asked a CNN reporter to stop being awful.

She's tenacious.

Moscow hopes that anti-Russian "hysteria" in Washington will come to an end, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the CNN broadcaster in an interview aired on Sunday.

Earlier in March, Senator Richard Blumenthal said that appointing a special prosecutor for the probe into alleged Russian interference in the US election and ties to the President Donald Trump campaign was critical for the integrity of the Justice Department.

According to a recent CNN/ORC poll, 65 percent of the respondents (82 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans) support the idea of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate these issues.

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, or national parliament, is drifting further away from reality, a deputy parliament speaker said on Sunday.

"In the recent time, Rada's plenary sessions, its work have been very sad. The parliament is drifting further away in its activities from the reality we live in," Oksana Syroyed said in an interview with 112.Ukraina television channel.

Syroyev, who represents the Samopomoshch (Self-assistance) faction, described the parliament's agenda as "hollow."

"I doubt that Ukrainians feel the results of Rada voting in any way. There are too many hollow speeches and conversations," she said, adding that the two years of Rada's work have yielded "zero comprehensive decisions concerning security and defense."

Announcements of foiled terrorist plots make for lurid reading.

Schemes to carry out a Presidents Day jihadist attack on a train station in Kansas City. Bomb a Sept. 11 memorial event. Blow up a 1,000-pound bomb at Fort Riley. Detonate a weapon of mass destruction at a Wichita airport — the failed plans all show imagination.

But how much of it was real?

Often not much, according to a review of several recent terrorism cases investigated by the FBI in Kansas and Missouri. The most sensational plots invoking the name of the Islamic State or al-Qaida here were largely the invention of FBI agents carrying out elaborate sting operations on individuals identified through social media as being potentially dangerous.

In fact, in terrorism investigations in Wichita, at Fort Riley and last week in Kansas City, the alleged terrorists reportedly were unknowingly following the directions of undercover FBI agents who supplied fake bombs and came up with key elements of the plans.

"What I get concerned about is where the plot is being hatched by the FBI," said Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and former FBI agent. "There has been a clear effort to manufacture plots."

Tehran kicked off the mass production of a main battle tank called Karrar at a ceremony attended by Iran's defense minister. The tank appears to have a design similar to Russia's T-90MS.

Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan praised Iran's new tank at the Sunday event, the Iranian media reported.

Steve Bannon is accustomed to start many of his talks to activists and Tea Party gatherings in the following way: "At 11 o'clock on 18 September 2008, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke told the U.S. President that they had already stove-piped $500 billions of liquidity into the financial system during the previous 24 hours - but needed a further one Trillion dollars, that same day.

"The pair said that if they did not get it immediately, the U.S. financial system would implode within 72 hours; the world's financial system, within three weeks; and that social unrest and political chaos could ensue within the month." (In the end, Bannon notes, it was more like $5 trillion that was required, though no one really knows how much, as there has been no accounting for all these trillions).

"We (the U.S.) have", he continues, "in the wake of the bailouts that ensued, liabilities of $200 trillions, but net assets - including everything - of some $50-60 trillion." (Recall that Bannon is himself a former Goldman Sachs banker).

"We are upside down; the industrial democracies today have a problem we have never had before; we are over-leveraged (we have to go through a massive de-leveraging); and we have built a welfare state which is completely and totally unsupportable.

"And why this is a crisis ... the problem ... is that the numbers have become so esoteric that even the guys on Wall Street, at Goldman Sachs, the guys I work with, and the Treasury guys ... It's so tough to get this together ... Trillion dollar deficits ... etcetera."