The author | Liu Jia
Edited | Qi Fei
Recently, the British "Guardian" claimed to have obtained an internal confidential document from the Russian Kremlin, which showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized Russian intelligence agents to carry out actions at a closed meeting of a federal security conference in January 2016 to support the "mentally unstable" Trump to win the 2016 US presidential election. At that time, the former US president was still leading the Republican primary, and Russia's top management assessed that Trump was the most promising candidate for president.
Trump and Putin
The Guardian said they showed the leaked document to the independent expert, who confirmed its authenticity, on the basis that the overall tone, thrust and details of the document were in line with the Kremlin's national security thinking. In addition, Western intelligence agencies have been aware of the document for several months and have studied it in detail.
But Moscow denied having contributed to Trump's victory, and Putin's press secretary, Paiskov, responded on July 15 that it was all a fabricated "pulp fiction." Peskov said: "This is completely fictional. Strictly speaking, it is complete nonsense. ”
The confidential document numbered "No 32-04\vd", if true, indicates that Putin and senior officials around him have a deep understanding of the domestic political ecology of the United States before the 2016 election – for example, the document lists the weaknesses of the United States, including "the deepening political gap between left and right" and "growing anti-establishment sentiment under then-President Barack Obama", and tries to use intelligence means such as information warfare to turn the situation into russia's national interests.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="55" > Russian security high-level secret talk: responding to hostilities in Washington</h1>
On January 22, 2016, Putin convened his permanent members of the Federal Security Council for a meeting on the second floor of the Kremlin Senate. According to a press release on the Kremlin's official website, the theme of the meeting mainly covered economic issues and events in Moldova, but the Russian president and the top leaders of intelligence agencies were almost all on the scene.
Putin meets with members of the Federal Security Council in the Kremlin on January 22, 2016.
Official photos of the meeting show Putin sitting at the very front of the conference table, above him the flag of the Russian Federation and a golden double-headed eagle. Also present at the meeting were Medvedev, then Prime Minister and now Vice-President of the Federal Security Council, Foreign Minister Lavrov, Minister of Defense Shoigu, who was in charge of the military intelligence agency GRU, Mikhail Vladkov, then head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and Nikolai Patrushev, former director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Federal Security Council.
The Guardian said the confidential documents they obtained showed that the real purpose of the gathering of senior Russian state security officials that day was to discuss a confidential proposal formulated by the Russian president's think tank to deal with U.S. sanctions against Russia. The author of the proposal is believed to be Vladimir Symonenko, a senior official in charge of the Kryptonian think tank department, which provides Putin with analytical materials and reports, some of which are based on foreign intelligence.
On January 14, 2016, Simonenko distributed a three-page executive outline containing his team's conclusions and recommendations. Two days later, Putin instructed then-Foreign Policy Director Alexander Manzosin to convene a private briefing at the Federal Security Conference. It was stated that the aim was to further study the three pages of the above-mentioned document. Manzosin was given five days to make final arrangements.
Exactly what Putin and his intelligence officials said at the Jan. 22 internal meeting is unknown, but the president appears to have signed a plan to counter hostilities from Washington.
The Guardian quoted another leaked document as reporting that Putin issued a decree after the meeting to set up a new secret inter-departmental committee with the task of achieving the objectives set out in the "special part" of the "No 32-04\vd" document.
The "special section" of the classified document lists several proposed initiatives to deepen division and social unrest in the United States.
The new committee members include Shoigu, Vladkov and boltnikov, the current director of the FSB. Shoigu was appointed Chairman of the Committee. The decree requires that the Commission take practical measures against the United States as soon as possible. This action is based on national security matters and is carried out in accordance with the Russian Federal Law No. 390-FZ of 2010, which allows the Federal Security Council the power to formulate policies on national security.
Under the decree, each intelligence agency was given a role, for example the SVR was told to gather more information to support the committee's activities, the FSB was assigned counterintelligence work, and Shoigu was responsible for coordinating the work of the various departments. In addition, he needs to gather the necessary information and systematize it, "ready to take action on the target information environment" – the order refers to attacking sensitive US cyber targets identified by SVR, the Guardian believes.
Putin signed the decree on January 22, and Russian intelligence agencies have only had more than a week to come up with concrete ideas and submit them by February 1.
A few months later, there was the well-known U.S. Democratic National Committee mail leak, which was also the "mail gate 2.0" that involved the then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. At the time, Hillary Clinton's campaign suggested that russia was behind all this, and then-Republican presidential candidate Trump said he wanted the "Russian hackers" to disclose more internal Democratic emails.
According to the New York Times in July 2016, the U.S. Intelligence Agency said at the time that it was very certain that the Russian government was involved in the Democratic email leak, but it was not clear whether the incident was a routine cyber espionage campaign or part of an effort to sway the U.S. election.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > document succinctly portrays Trump's personality</h1>
The "No 32-04\vd" document mentions that from a Russian perspective, Trump is the "most promising" (perspektivny) candidate because he is "impulsive, mentally unstable, paranoid, and has an inferiority complex", and the document here suggests referring to the appendix about "certain events" in Trump's early years in Moscow.
The Guardian published excerpts from classified Kremlin documents showing that Trump was "mentally unstable" and exposed some personality flaws during his private visits to Russia in his early years
However, as the Guardian did not receive the appendix to the document, it is uncertain what the "certain incidents" were. But the newspaper speculated that Moscow might have "black material" on Trump.
Before joining politics, Trump sought business opportunities in Russia on several occasions, dating back to 1987. That year, coordinated by Soviet diplomats, Trump embarked on a low-key but unusual first trip to the Soviet Union under the watchful eye of the KGB. The Soviets want Trump to build two luxury hotels there.
In his new book, American Kompromat, published in January 2021, American Journalist Craig Unger revealed that Russia's interest in Trump began in 1977 when he married Czech model Ivana Zernikova (Ivanka's biological mother) and was monitored by Czech and Soviet intelligence, including the couple's 1987 visit to Moscow.
As early as 1996, Trump applied for his trademark registration in Russia, and his children and assistants appeared in Moscow several times to meet with developers and government officials to seek cooperation. In 2013, Trump also went to Moscow to participate in the Hosting of the Miss Universe event and took the opportunity to discuss the real estate development business. He boasted in a 2014 interview: "I know Russians better than anyone." ”
In 2013, Trump was at an after-party after hosting a beauty pageant in Moscow.
Instead of talking about Trump's past and personality, the leaked documents concluded that Moscow would benefit greatly from a Republican victory — Trump's election "will certainly lead to instability in the U.S. socio-political system" and an explosion of hidden discontent that would weaken the U.S. president. As a result, Putin can secretly lead bilateral talks between the United States and Russia, deconstruct the White House's negotiating position, and take bold diplomatic measures on behalf of russia.
This will help bring about the "theoretical political scene" favored by Russia and help ensure the achievement of Russia's strategic goals. "It is very necessary to use all possible forces to propel him (Trump) to the presidency of the United States." The document concludes.
The name of Trump's campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton, was not directly mentioned, but the document suggests that the Russian government use media resources to weaken the influence of major U.S. politicians. There are several paragraphs about how Russia has inserted a "media virus" into American public life to enable it to sustain itself and replicate itself. This will change public consciousness, especially among certain groups, as mentioned in the document.
The document also deals with non-Trump-themed content, such as assessments and recommendations on Russia's internal situation. It said U.S. sanctions imposed after the Crimean crisis in 2014 had heightened tensions within Russia and that the Kremlin should seek other ways to attract foreign investment into Russia.
The document also recommends that Russia refocus trade and hydrocarbon exports to china, and that Moscow's focus should be on influencing the United States and its allies to abandon or soften sanctions altogether.
The document, written in bureaucratic language, offers a glimpse into the hidden world behind The Russian government's decisions. The Guardian quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the details of the above documents are reminiscent of the style of Russian intelligence work, and the concise portrayal of Trump's personality is characteristic of the Kremlin intelligence agency, which emphasizes the use of real and complex psychology to build personal files.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="53" > Trump responded: "No one is tougher than me against Russia!" ”</h1>
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence agencies and author of "The Red Web," said the leaked material "reflects reality." "This is in line with the procedures of the (Russian) security services and the Federal Security Conference ... Decision-making is always made, and advisers provide information to the president and the chain of command. ”
"The Kremlin micromanages most of these operations, and since at least 2015, Putin has made it clear to his intelligence agencies that nothing can be independent of him," Saidatov said. There is no room for independent action. He also quoted his sources as saying that after a federal security meeting in April 2016, Putin decided to release stolen Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails.
In 2016, Trump won the primary in Florida
A few days before the Democratic National Convention that year, nearly 20,000 emails from the DNC were disclosed by WikiLeaks, involving smears against Hillary Clinton's party rival Bernie Sanders and Republican presidential candidate Trump, as well as financial problems in the Democratic Party, which directly led to the resignation of many senior DNC executives, including Chairman Debbie Schultz.
It can be said that "Emailgate 2.0" directly affected the approval ratings of the two main candidates in the 2016 US presidential election, and changed the election situation to some extent. A CNN poll released on July 25 of the same year showed that 44 percent of Americans supported Trump as the next president and 39 percent supported Hillary Clinton, the best trump achievement since September 2015.
On November 9, 2016, when news of Trump's election as US president reached the lower house of the Russian parliament (State Duma), Russian lawmakers who were meeting at the time warmly applauded and celebrated. Putin sent a congratulatory message to the president-elect on the same day, expressing the hope that through joint efforts to get "Russian-US relations out of a state of crisis" and believing that the two countries can carry out "constructive dialogue". He also became the first foreign leader to pay tribute to Mr. Trump.
Although Russian politics believes that repairing relations is not simple, at least Trump's election is a positive signal for Russia. United Russia MP Milonov said at the time that some of Trump's statements during the campaign on Russia and Russia-U.S. relations were "positive." State Duma President Vorokin also said Trump's election meant that the United States and Russia could engage in "constructive dialogue."
Ironically, however, after Trump entered the White House, Russia remained an "evil empire" in the eyes of the elites of both parties in the United States. In an environment of widening bipartisan divides — a rare consensus, as Russia predicts — the United States sees Russia as one of the greatest threats to national security and its policy toward Russia has not undergone major adjustments as a result of Trump's rise to power.
Contrary to the expectations of leaking documents, the Trump administration has made a series of tough measures against Russia due to the domestic situation. In 2017, the US Congress overwhelmingly revised the new sanctions bill against Russia to punish Russia's "interference" in the 2016 US election. Moscow said the move amounted to an "all-out trade war" and dashed Russia's hopes of improving relations with the Trump administration.
Just two days before Trump left office, the White House introduced formal sanctions, a Russian pipeline laying ship became the target of sanctions, and the progress bar of the Russian-German gas pipeline "Nord Stream 2" project was once again slowed down. The project was halted in 2019 by threats of sanctions from the United States and did not resume until December 2020. When the new president, Joe Biden, took office, the U.S. government actually softened its stance on the Nord Stream 2 project.
For the Guardian report, Trump initially did not respond to a request for comment. Subsequently, his spokesman, Liz Harrington, issued a statement on his behalf.
On July 7, 2017, Putin and Trump met for the first time in Hamburg, Germany.
"It's disgusting. It's fake news, it's all Russia, Russia, Russia, it's all fake news. It's just that radical left-wing lunatics are doing their best to belittle everyone on the right. "It's pure fiction, and no one is tougher on Russia than I am, including on the (Nord Stream-2) pipeline and sanctions." At the same time, we get along well with Russia. Russia respects us, China respects us, Iran respects us, and North Korea respects us. ”
"The world used to be a safer place than there are mentally unstable leaders today." At the end of the statement, Trump put the Russian side on his own hat and installed it on the current US leader.
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