The Kremlin’s Papers/Documents Reveled- Putin-Trump-USA-Russia

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The Documents revile more-
A great informative read;

The person to ‘weaken’ America:
what the Kremlin papers said about Trump.

In January 2016, America was coming to terms with what had previously seemed incredible. Barring an unforeseen event, Donald J Trump was on course to become the Republican party’s presidential candidate. Some welcomed this giddy prospect, while others in the Republican establishment recoiled in horror.

Trump’s astonishing and confounding rise had not gone unnoticed in Russia. Unbeknown to the US public, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was in touch with the office of the Kremlin press secretary. Cohen had begged for help in building a luxury hotel in Moscow – a decades-long Trump dream.

Meanwhile, Trump had said flattering things about Vladimir Putin, a person talked about by some leading US politicians as a cold-eyed KGB killer. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia,” Trump would muse.

That he was the Kremlin’s preferred candidate is not in doubt. What has been a source of endless conjecture is the lengths Russia was prepared to go to to help Trump win.

The Guardian has spent months seeking to verify the
authenticity of papers that may provide an answer to this question.

Our investigation has revealed that western intelligence agencies have known about the papers – and have been examining them – for some time.

Independent experts approached by the Guardian have also confirmed they are consistent with the Kremlin’s thinking and chain of command.

Their fascination in material that appears to have come from within the heart of the Kremlin is easy
to understand.

The papers suggest that as Trump surged ahead, a group of analysts inside the Russian administration were putting the final touches on a secret paper.

____The title of the document was bland enough:
“Report on strengthening the state and stabilising the
position of Russia under conditions of external economic constraint.”

The document describes how Putin’s expert department was urging a multi-layered plan to interfere in the race for the White House.
The goal: to “destabilise” America.

One candidate above all might help bring this about, the experts confidently believed –
the “mentally unstable”, impulsive”
and “unbalanced” Trump.

This plan was presented as being entirely defensive. The Obama administration had inflicted damage on the Russian economy by imposing sanctions. Living standards were falling, regional elites were unhappy and the sugar rush from Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea had worn off, the report said. Potential domestic political dangers lay ahead.

The sensible course from Moscow’s perspective, it said, was to enact measures that would “pressure” America to ease off – by dropping anti-Russian sanctions, or softening them.

The paper seems to have set off a flurry of activity in the Kremlin.

The documents indicate that on 14 January Vladimir Symonenko, the expert department chief, shared a three-page summary.

“At the moment the Russian Federation finds itself in a predicament. American measures continue to be felt in all areas of public life,” it starts.
Next, Putin ordered the head of his foreign policy directorate, Alexander Manzhosin, to arrange an urgent meeting of the national security council, Russia’s top decision-making body.
At some point over the next few days Putin appears to have read the document himself.

By 22 January, other security council members had had a chance to digest its contents. The early part dealt with Russia’s economy. The secret American measures were contained in a special section beginning on page 14.

The report seemed to confirm what Trump would later deny:
that Putin’s spy agencies had gathered compromising material on him, possibly stretching back to Soviet KGB times.

Trump’s personal flaws were so extensive –
also featuring an “inferiority complex” –
that he was the perfect person to feed divisions
and to weaken America’s negotiating position.

The unflattering assessment of Trump’s personality was based on evidence, the paper said, derived from observation of his behaviour during trips to Russia.

The report appears to confirm Trump was being watched, though no dates or locations are given.“Considering certain events that took place during his stay on Russian Federation territory (Appendix 5 – personal characteristics Donald J Trump, paragraph 5), it is urgently necessary to use all means to promote his election to the post of President of the United States,” it says.

The allegation that the Russians had kompromat on Trump would haunt his four years in the White House. True or false, his flattering treatment
of Putin was one riddle of his chaotic presidency.

The papers seen by the Guardian suggest that after the security council meeting Putin set up a special inter-departmental commission headed by his close ally Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister.

Shoigu was in overall command of the operation to influence the 2016 US election. GRU military intelligence, SVR foreign intelligence and the FSB were all told to prepare immediate practical steps to help accomplish the report’s preferred scenario –
a Trump victory.

This certainly came at a time of internal spy agency tensions.

The SVR’s then chief, Mikhail Fradkov, was regarded as a weak figure. In 2010, the FBI arrested 10 of Fradkov’s undercover sleeper agents in America.
The scandal badly damaged his authority.

The GRU and FSB harboured scarcely concealed ambitions to take over the SVR’s functions abroad. Meanwhile, the GRU’s director, Igor Sergun, died
two weeks before the meeting, apparently while undercover in the Middle East.

By spring 2016, the commission chiefs appear to have overcome their institutional rivalry to work harmoniously together. A team of GRU cyber-hackers moved into an anonymous glass tower in north-west Moscow. They worked closely with GRU colleagues based in a downtown building.

The first phishing email was sent on 19 March
to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

More followed. As the report correctly envisaged, these stolen and dumped emails became a “media virus” – infecting and weakening the Democratic campaign, and reaching millions of American voters via Facebook and Twitter.

By autumn, President Obama was convinced Putin had personally approved the hacking operation, which Clinton believes cost her the presidency. In October 2016, Obama remonstrated with his Russian counterpart in a phone call, telling Putin his election meddling was “an act of war”.

The 2019 report by special counsel Robert Mueller called the Kremlin’s operation “sweeping and systematic”. In 2020, the bipartisan Senate intelligence committee said it was “aggressive and multi-faceted”.

The committee detailed multiple interactions between individuals linked to the Russian government and Trump’s inner circle. The GRU spy Konstantin Kilimnik held clandestine meetings with Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Manafort supplied Kilimnik with private polling and other data. The pair communicated using encrypted messages and shared email drafts.

And what of the report’s claim that Putin would be able to exploit Trump’s weaknesses in “clandestine fashion” during bilateral discussions?

Something along these lines took place during their notorious 2018 summit in Helsinki.
Asked at a joint press conference to condemn Kremlin hacking and dumping, Trump endorsed Putin’s assertion that Moscow had not interfered –
a claim at odds with the findings of all 14 US intelligence agencies.

After a backlash at home, and amid speculation the Russians were somehow blackmailing the president, Trump said he misspoke.

Putin has repeatedly denied claims he interferes
in US politics. Western governments don’t believe him. According to US intelligence officials, Moscow sought to influence the 2020 election by spreading “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” against Joe Biden.
Last year, Russian state hackers penetrated numerous federal US institutions, in a massive cyber-attack.

For the moment, Putin’s regime looks impregnable, despite mass street protests in January following the arrest and jailing of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, poisoned in 2020 in a special FSB operation.
As unrest grows, further leaks seem possible.
The lesson comes from history.
When the USSR collapsed 30 years ago, KGB files were opened and long-buried secrets fell out.

Trump did not initially respond to a request for comment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/the-person-to-weaken-america-what-the-kremlin-papers-said-about-trump

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Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

7-15-2021

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Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House.

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016,
the papers suggest, with the Russian president,
his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them
“social turmoil” in the US and a weakening
of the American president’s negotiating position.

Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.

By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race.
A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force”
to ensure a Trump victory.

Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them.

The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.

The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine. Incidental details come across as accurate. The overall tone and thrust is said to be consistent with Kremlin security thinking.

Vladimir Putin holds a meeting with permanent members of the security council on 22 January 2016 at the Kremlin.
The Kremlin responded dismissively. Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the idea that Russian leaders had met and agreed to support Trump in at the meeting in early 2016 was “a great pulp fiction” when contacted by the Guardian on Thursday morning.

The report – “No 32-04 \ vd” – is classified as secret. It says Trump is the “most promising candidate” from the Kremlin’s point of view. The word in Russian is perspektivny.

There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.

There is also apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on the future president, collected – the document says – from Trump’s earlier “non-official visits to Russian Federation territory”.

The paper refers to “certain events” that happened during Trump’s trips to Moscow. Security council members are invited to find details in appendix five,
at paragraph five, the document states. It is unclear what the appendix contains.

“It is acutely necessary to use all possible force to facilitate his [Trump’s] election to the post of US president,” the paper says.

This extract from a secret Kremlin document gives details of the Russian operation to help an impulsive and ‘mentally unstable’ Donald Trump to become US president
This extract from a secret Kremlin document gives details of the Russian operation to help an impulsive and ‘mentally unstable’ Donald Trump to become US president
This would help bring about Russia’s favoured “theoretical political scenario”.
A Trump win “will definitely lead to the destabilisation of the US’s sociopolitical system” and see hidden discontent burst into the open, it predicts.

The Kremlin summit
There is no doubt that the meeting in January 2016 took place – and that it was convened inside the Kremlin.

An official photo of the occasion shows Putin at the head of the table, seated beneath a Russian Federation flag and a two-headed golden eagle. Russia’s then prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, attended, together with the veteran foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Also present were Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister in charge of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency; Mikhail Fradkov, the then chief of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service; and Alexander Bortnikov, the boss of the FSB spy agency.Nikolai Patrushev, the FSB’s former director, attended too
as security council secretary.

According to a press release, the discussion covered the economy and Moldova.

The document seen by the Guardian suggests the security council’s real, covert purpose was to discuss the confidential proposals drawn up by the president’s analytical service in response to US sanctions against Moscow.

Donald Trump addresses a press conference following his victory in the Florida state primary in West Palm Beach, Florida, in March 2016
Donald Trump after winning the Florida state primary in West Palm Beach, Florida, in March 2016.

A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use ‘all possible force’ to ensure a Trump presidential victory.

The author appears to be Vladimir Symonenko,
the senior official in charge of the Kremlin’s expert department – which provides Putin with analytical material and reports, some of them based on foreign intelligence.

The papers indicate that on 14 January 2016 Symonenko circulated a three-page executive summary of his team’s conclusions and recommendations.

In a signed order two days later, Putin instructed the then chief of his foreign policy directorate, Alexander Manzhosin, to convene a closed briefing of the national security council.

Its purpose was to further study the document, the order says. Manzhosin was given a deadline of five days to make arrangements.

What was said inside the second-floor Kremlin senate building room is unknown. But the president and his intelligence officials appear to have signed off on a multi-agency plan to interfere in US democracy, framed in terms of justified self-defence.

Various measures are cited that the Kremlin might adopt in response to what it sees as hostile acts from Washington. The paper lays out several American weaknesses.
These include a “deepening political gulf between left and right”, the US’s “media-information” space, and an anti-establishment mood under President Barack Obama.

The ‘special part’ of a secret Kremlin document setting out measures to cause turmoil and division in America
The ‘special part’ of a secret Kremlin document setting out measures to cause turmoil and division in America
The paper does not name Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 rival. It does suggest employing media resources to undermine leading US political figures.

There are paragraphs on how Russia might insert “media viruses” into American public life, which could become self-sustaining and self-replicating. These would alter mass consciousness, especially in certain groups, it says.

After the meeting, according to a separate leaked document, Putin issued a decree setting up a new and secret interdepartmental commission. Its urgent task was to realise the goals set out in the “special part” of document No 32-04 \ vd.

Members of the new working body were stated to include Shoigu, Fradkov and Bortnikov. Shoigu was named commission chair. The decree – ukaz in Russian – said the group should take practical steps against the US as soon as possible.
These were justified on national security grounds and in accordance with a 2010 federal law, 390-FZ, which allows the council to formulate state policy on security matters.

According to the document, each spy agency was given a role. The defence minister was instructed to coordinate the work of subdivisions and services. Shoigu was also responsible for collecting and systematising necessary information and for “preparing measures to act on the information environment of the object” – a command, it seems, to hack sensitive American cyber-targets identified by the SVR.

Vladimir Putin in 2016. The Russian president has repeatedly denied accusations of interfering in western democracy Photograph: Sputnik/Reuters
The SVR was told to gather additional information to support the commission’s activities.
The FSB was assigned counter-intelligence. Putin approved the apparent document, dated 22 January 2016, which his chancellery stamped.

The measures were effective immediately on Putin’s signature, the decree says.
The spy chiefs were given just over a week to come back with concrete ideas, to be submitted by 1 February.

Written in bureaucratic language, the papers appear to offer an unprecedented glimpse into the usually hidden world of Russian government decision-making.

Putin has repeatedly denied accusations of interfering in western democracy. The documents seem to contradict this claim. They suggest the president, his spy officers and senior ministers were all intimately involved in one of the most important and audacious espionage operations of the 21st century:
a plot to help put the “mentally unstable” Trump in the White House.

The papers appear to set out a route map for what actually happened in 2016.

A matter of weeks after the security council meeting, GRU hackers raided the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and subsequently released thousands of private emails in an attempt to hurt Clinton’s election campaign.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the party’s convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in July 2016
Hillary Clinton at the Democratic party’s convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in July 2016. GRU hackers released thousands of private emails in an attempt to hurt Clinton’s election campaign.

The report seen by the Guardian features details redolent of Russian intelligence work, diplomatic sources say.
The thumbnail sketch of Trump’s personality is characteristic of Kremlin spy agency analysis, which places great emphasis on building up a profile of individuals using both real and cod psychology.

Moscow would gain most from a Republican victory, the paper states. This could lead to a “social explosion” that would in turn weaken the US president, it says.

There were international benefits from a Trump win, it stresses. Putin would be able in clandestine fashion to dominate any US-Russia bilateral talks, to deconstruct the White House’s negotiating position, and to pursue bold foreign policy initiatives on Russia’s behalf, it says.

Other parts of the multi-page report deal with non-Trump themes.
It says sanctions imposed by the US after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea have contributed to domestic tensions. The Kremlin should seek alternative ways of attracting liquidity into the Russian economy, it concludes.

The document recommends the reorientation of trade and hydrocarbon exports towards China. Moscow’s focus should be to influence the US and its satellite countries, it says, so they drop sanctions altogether or soften them.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s spy agencies and author of The Red Web, said the leaked material “reflects reality”. “It’s consistent with the procedures of the security services and the security council,” he said.
“Decisions are always made like that, with advisers providing information to the president and a chain of command.”

He added: “The Kremlin micromanages most of these operations. Putin has made it clear to his spies since at least 2015 that nothing can be done independently from him.
There is no room for independent action.” Putin decided to release stolen DNC emails following a security council meeting in April 2016, Soldatov said, citing his own sources.

Sir Andrew Wood, the UK’s former ambassador in Moscow and an associate fellow at the Chatham House thinktank, described the documents as
“spell-binding”.
“They reflect the sort of discussion and recommendations you would expect. There is a complete misunderstanding of the US and China. They are written for a person [Putin] who can’t believe he got anything wrong.”

“There is no sense Russia might have made a mistake by invading Ukraine. The report is fully in line with the sort of thing I would expect in 2016, and even more so now.
There is a good deal of paranoia. They believe the US is responsible for everything. This view is deeply dug into the soul of Russia’s leaders.”

Trump did not initially respond to a request for comment.

Later, Liz Harrington, his spokesperson, issued a statement on his behalf.

“This is disgusting. It’s fake news, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA was fake news.
It’s just the Radical Left crazies doing whatever they can to demean everybody on the right.

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