Putin and Trump’s Connections: Onstage and Behind the Scenes
Part 1: The Russian Trace
Foreign Policy Brief #151 | By: Yelena Korshunov | August 05, 2024
Featured Photo: www.americanprogress.org
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Suspected backstage political connections and long-term mutual curtsies of former US president Donald Trump and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin have been in the center of intelligence investigation and public attention from the time of the US presidential elections in 2016.
Suspected Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
In 2017 The New York Times revealed the Trump team’s connections with the Russians, along with attempts to sway the F.B.I. director, James Comey. (SWAY COMEY TO DO WHAT; PLEASE EXPLAIN. Later, in May 2018, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who joined Trump’s legal team, told Fox News that president Donald Trump fired James Comey because the former FBI director wouldn’t offer public assurances that Trump wasn’t a target of an investigation. “He fired him and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy,’” declaired Giuliani.
According to the New York Times, Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential elections and Vladimir Putin’s desire to establish control over eastern Ukraine could be linked. This assumption was based on FBI director Robert Mueller’s documents from the “Russia investigation” conducted by the intelligence committee of the US Senate and on dozens of interviews and other materials.
The central figure of this case is Paul Manafort, the head of Donald Trump’s election campaign, who worked for many years in Ukraine with former Ukrainian pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych, and his colleague in Ukrainian projects Konstantin Kilimnik, whom American investigators consider an agent of Russia’s intelligence (Klimnik denies this). In August 2016, Kilimnik presented to Paul Manafort the so-called “Mariupol Plan” developed to create an autonomous republic in eastern Ukraine. The plan had to be headed by Viktor Yanukovych, former pro-Russian Ukrainian president who fled to Russia in 2014.) These territories would be under the control of Putin while formally remaining a part of Ukraine.
According to The New York Times, this plan essentially coincides with what Putin is trying to achieve in Ukraine by annexing Ukrainian territory captured during the war. Russian interference in the US presidential election is believed to have been aimed at damaging Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The implementation of the “Mariupol Plan” would have been impossible without the participation of the United States and would be a pay for the Russia’s interference in the US election supporting Trump in his presidential race. The New York Times writes that all this was the conclusion of the prosecutors who discovered the existence of the plan. The article notes that Trump’s victory in elections was necessary for the implementation of the “Mariupol Plan”, since Hillary Clinton as the US president would not have agreed to Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty.
In November 2023 CBS News declared that materials from a binder containing highly sensitive intelligence related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election went missing at the end of the Trump administration and have not yet been recovered. It’s not clear whether the disappeared information was an official document or a compendium of things put together by former president Trump’s allies in the administration.
Vladimir Putin about Donald Trump, “We had such a personal relationship.”
In June 2019, Putin and Trump held a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka. The day before, in an interview with the Financial Times, Vladimir Putin praised Donald Trump, describing him as a “talented person” having “a very keen sense of what the voter expects from him.”
Later, In February 2024, at the interview with Tucker Carlson in Moscow, Putin emphasized that “Trump and I had such a personal relationship.”
On July 4, 2024, Reuters reported from Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan where Putin arrived) that the Russian president expressed his belief that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was sincere about wanting to end the war in Ukraine. “The fact that Mr. Trump, as a presidential candidate, declares that he is ready and wants to stop the war in Ukraine, we take this completely seriously,” Putin said. “I am not, of course, familiar with possible proposals for how he plans to do this. This is the key question. But I have no doubt that he means it sincerely, and we support it (the idea of ending the war).” The Washington Post reported in April that Trump had privately spoken about the option of allowing Putin to keep Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and the Donbas area – which Russian forces partially control – in return for peace. However, Trump’s campaign didn’t confirm it officially.
What makes Russia’s president so loyal and supportive toward former US president Donald Trump — who is currently betting on securing his second term in office? What supports this warm attitude in the background of Russia’s official hate of the US and the entire Western world? Part 2 of this brief may bring us closer to the answer.
Engagement Resources
- Russian Interference in 2016 U.S. Elections, https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/russian-interference-in-2016-u-s-elections
- Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl
- Putin Says He Thinks Trump is Sincere About Ending Ukraine War, https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-says-preference-biden-remains-unchanged-despite-debate-2024-07-04/
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