Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

What was the Russian goal? The Kremlin was determined to take advantage of the polarization within US society and provoke Americans to question the legitimacy of their democracy. The goal was to relativize everything, question what were really facts, and, as RT and its sister network Sputnik repeatedly argued, show that the United States was no better than Russia.

Some Russians suggest that Putin made the decision to authorize Russian hackers to weaponize the hacked e-mails by giving them to WikiLeaks in response to the publication of the Panama Papers. In April 2016, a multinational group of reporters involved in the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published a bombshell report detailing how governments and oligarchs all over the world were using offshore Panama companies for both legal and illegal purposes, including fraud, tax avoidance, and evasion of international sanctions. Russian journalists had identified multibillion-dollar accounts owned by Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and childhood friend of Putin. The articles argued that he had been put in charge of Putin’s money. Roldugin denied he was acting for Putin and said that the $2 billion in the accounts had been donated by others for the purchase of musical instruments for young Russians. But Putin was furious. He summoned a meeting of his Security Council, and they reportedly discussed how to retaliate. That was when, it is thought, they decided to leak the hacked DNC e-mails to WikiLeaks. 29

The first indication of the Russian hacking came in July 2016 with an alert by Dutch intelligence agencies to Washington based on work done by their hackers, who had accidentally penetrated a Russian network from which hackers launched attacks on the DNC. 30But the full realization of the new reality came in August, when the CIA handed Obama an envelope of information derived from sources inside the Russian government that detailed Putin’s direct involvement in the cyber campaign to discredit and disrupt the US presidential election. Only a small number of people have seen this information, and it took until January 2017 for a declassified report about Russian interference to be published. 31

Obama administration officials were taken by surprise, and it took some time in the autumn of 2016 to put together all the pieces of this complex web of Russian interference. They were, in hindsight, unprepared to deal with a multifaceted cyber and social media campaign of this scale. 32Obama was in an awkward position. He did not want to appear to be partisan at a time when the consensus was that Hillary Clinton would win, so the administration delayed sharing this information with the public. When officials sought to present a bipartisan response to the interference, they were rebuffed. The Republicans refused to admit to anything that would give the impression that Trump’s public appeal was not legitimate. Finally, on October 7, 2016, the administration formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing e-mails from the DNC, other institutions, and prominent individuals, leaving unanswered the question of retaliation. However, the report was in turn overshadowed by the release of a recording of Donald Trump, on which he could be heard making disparaging remarks about women, and by WikiLeaks’s publication, an hour later, of thousands of e-mails belonging to Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta.

At the fall G-20 meeting in China, Obama himself had an opportunity to raise the issue with Putin. He bluntly told Putin to “cut it out.” 33On the night of November 8, Donald Trump—to many people’s shock—won the election by sweeping the electoral college, losing the popular vote to Clinton by three million. In his last press conference, Obama sought to play down the Russian interference, using language designed to irritate Putin. Obama’s problem, one senior official later recounted, was that “he wanted Russia to go away.” 34

But Russia, of course, will not go away. Obama’s final act against Russia was the December 29 sanctions legislation. There were also rumors of a cyber response to Russian actions. By the time Obama left office, many Democrats believed that Trump had won the election because of Russian interference. Trump has only occasionally and grudgingly acknowledged that Russians may have interfered in the election because he believes this would detract from the legitimacy of his election victory.

Despite Trump’s desire to brush aside the issue of Russian interference, it has dogged him since day one of his presidency and has hamstrung him as he tried to reach out to Putin. The most inflammatory issue is the suggestion of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russians. “Russiagate” is about what Russia did in 2014–2016. But it is also about US domestic politics and reflects the deep political divisions within US society. This issue first came to the public’s attention in October 2016, when Mother Jones published an article claiming that the FBI was investigating claims made in a series of reports written by a former MI6 official. Christopher Steele had been hired by a US firm to look into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. He had concluded that the evidence showed the “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting, and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.” It maintained that Trump “and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” It claimed that Russian intelligence had “compromised” Trump during his visits to Moscow and could “blackmail him.” 35

Steele had not been in Russia since his posting there as an intelligence official in the early 1990s, but he had a network of contacts there to whom he subcontracted his research. The original research into Trump’s Russia ties had been done on behalf of Republicans seeking to defeat Trump during the primary season. When Trump became the candidate, however, Democrats took over the project and the research continued. Altogether, Steele produced sixteen separate reports on Trump-Russia ties, which became collectively known as the “Steele dossier.”

After BuzzFeed published the dossier, it was immediately attacked by Republicans and has been a subject of controversy since then. It is very difficult to verify the contents of the dossier, but some former intelligence officers argue that many of its claims ring true. 36Certainly the material about Russia’s manipulation of social media to help Trump was confirmed in the Mueller indictment. Steele himself has said he believes that 70 to 90 percent of the material is accurate. 37Leaving aside the more salacious material about Trump’s activities while he was in Moscow for the Miss Universe contest, the dossier details how the Russians had been cultivating Trump and his associates for some years and had shared derogatory information about Hillary Clinton with them. Material about different Trump associates meeting with Russian officials and businessmen has been corroborated. The dossier remains at the center of a bitterly partisan battle inside the US Congress and between the Trump administration and the FBI, with whom Steele shared his material.

No sooner had Trump entered the White House than investigations into Russia’s actions in 2016 began. There are two kinds of investigations: one into Russian interference in the election and the other into possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI, is leading a criminal inquiry for the Department of Justice, the most high-profile investigation. He is examining Russia’s actions in 2016 as well as those of the Trump campaign. He has a mandate to pursue any links or coordination between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government, including any efforts to obstruct such inquiries. At the same time, both the US Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees, as well as the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism are investigating Russian interference. While Mueller can prosecute individuals for committing federal crimes, congressional inquiries cannot produce criminal prosecutions, unless witnesses lie under oath. In terms of the law, the issue is not collusion—which is difficult to define—but whether people conspired with Russia to break a criminal statute or whether they broke the law themselves.