The NYT did a long story that ties together the Russian invasion of Ukraine with Russia's attempt to influence the 2016 election. The key figure was Paul Manafort who worked with Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik. It's a long piece and but am posting parts. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine Russia’s meddling in Trump-era politics was more directly connected to the current war than previously understood. Known loosely as the Mariupol plan, after the strategically vital port city, it called for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead. The new republic’s leader would be none other than Yanukovych. The trade-off: “peace” for a broken and subservient Ukraine. The scheme cut against decades of American policy promoting a free and united Ukraine, and a President Clinton would no doubt maintain, or perhaps even harden, that stance. But Trump was already suggesting that he would upend the diplomatic status quo; if elected, Kilimnik believed, Trump could help make the Mariupol plan a reality. First, though, he would have to win, an unlikely proposition at best. Which brought the men to the second prong of their agenda that evening — internal campaign polling data tracing a path through battleground states to victory. Manafort’s sharing of that information — the “eyes only” code guiding Trump’s strategy — would have been unremarkable if not for one important piece of Kilimnik’s biography: He was not simply a colleague; he was, U.S. officials would later assert, a Russian agent. Their business concluded, the men left by separate routes to avoid detection, though they continued to text deep into the night, according to federal investigators. In the weeks that followed, operatives in Moscow and St. Petersburg would intensify their hacking and disinformation campaign to damage Clinton and help turn the election toward Trump, which would form the core of the scandal known as Russiagate. The Mariupol plan would become a footnote, all but forgotten. But what the plan offered on paper is essentially what Putin — on the dangerous defensive after a raft of strategic miscalculations and mounting battlefield losses — is now trying to seize through sham referendums and illegal annexation. And Mariupol is shorthand for the horrors of his war, an occupied city in ruins after months of siege, its hulking steelworks spectral and silenced, countless citizens buried in mass graves. Putin’s assault on Ukraine and his attack on American democracy have until now been treated largely as two distinct story lines. Across the intervening years, Russia’s election meddling has been viewed essentially as a closed chapter in America’s political history — a perilous moment in which a foreign leader sought to set the United States against itself by exploiting and exacerbating its political divides. Yet those two narratives came together that summer night at the Grand Havana Room. And the lesson of that meeting is that Putin’s American adventure might be best understood as advance payment for a geopolitical grail closer to home: a vassal Ukrainian state. Thrumming beneath the whole election saga was another story — about Ukraine’s efforts to establish a modern democracy and, as a result, its position as a hot zone of the new Cold War between Russia and the West, autocracy and democracy. To a remarkable degree, the long struggle for Ukraine was a bass note to the upheavals and scandals of the Trump years, from the earliest days of the 2016 campaign and then the presidential transition, through Trump’s first impeachment and into the final days of the 2020 election. Even now, some influential voices in American politics, mostly but not entirely on the right, are suggesting that Ukraine make concessions of sovereignty similar to those contained in Kilimnik’s plan, which the nation’s leaders categorically reject. More at link
Why? We know the Trump team’s Kremlin ties, we know Trump’s views on autocrats like Putin, and we know Trump is an isolationist. He was the perfect candidate and president for Russia to expand without much resistance.
I've been asking the Federalist to give me an Op-Ed since according to some posters private businesses should respect free speech and not publishing something on your platform is the same as censorship so I'm in the same boat as you. Since neither of us have been given that opportunity can you share with us here a synopsis of your counter argument?
the idea that Russia was the architect of Trump's successful campaign strategy is laughable, as is the idea that Paul Manafort passed it along. you could go back and do some research of contemporaneous accounts, and you'd be surprised by who came up with it, and convinced Trump it was the right path. hint: it wasn't Manafort.
So you're saying that the NYT is wrong that Manafort didn't actually meet with Kiliminik and share polling data. In turn the Russians didn't ratchet up both a hacking campaign and a disinformation campaign to influence the US election? Further the NYT didn't say that Russia was the architect of Trump's campaign strategy. That they worked with members of the Trump campaign and helped that strategy.
Prediction: basso will respond to these queries, and all others related to this story, with a series of disingenuous diversions and by pretending (maybe?) to not understand fairly basic language to avoid engaging with inconvenient facts.
the Russians definitely created a disinformation campaign, and the Obama administration knew about it, and did nothing to stop it because they wanted Russia's help on the Iran nuclear deal. and I don't care about Manafort; I know the premise of the story is incorrect, because we already know the genesis of Trumps campaign strategy. the article is russiagate wish-casting.
Source for that? Obama said that he 'didn't want to put his thumb on the scale' in that he didn't want his DOJ to appear that they were acting in a way that appeared to help Clinton. Also the scope of the Russian disinformation campaign wasn't well understood at that time. Again the story isn't about the genesis of Trump's campaign strategy. It is about that the Russians saw an opportunity to benefit from the election per their position in Ukraine. They knew that Manafort had been involved in Ukrainian politics, was desperate to be relevant (and make money) in US elections and ingratiated himself with the Trump campaign. Through Kliminik the Russians had a connection with Manafort to the Trump campaign. As the article notes all of this is supported in the Mueller investigation and the prosecutions of Manafort. You personally don't care about Manafort but that doesn't change that he was a key contact point between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Is that horseshiite?
Manafort was a key contact between Manafort and Russia. had nothing to do with Trump winning. and the responsibility for Russian meddling is Obama's.
So Russia pushing out disinformation in favor of Trump is just a coincidence? Once the full scoop of Russia’s actions were known, why didn’t Trump respond more forcefully? Because he benefitted and didn’t want to admit that Russia helped his campaign. (not to be confused with solely responsible)
Blah, blah, blah. Bunch of nerdy **** about Putin's mindset. Everything bad that's happened ever to Russia is Europe's fault. Boring stuff. Not ADD friendly at all. Compromise with Putin has been sneered at in the past because for Putin, "the West" is the Devil, and when the Devil offers you a compromise, it has to be a poisoned apple designed to give the Devil the upper hand.
