by foreign editors
The Russian President is said to have offered Trump the support of the Moscow hackers in his 2016 election campaign, which he actually won, in return for his approval of the “special military operation”.
An “agreement” or at least an intertwining of business interests between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin: on the one hand, the precautionary intervention of Russian hackers on behalf of the former in the 2016 presidential campaign; on the other hand, no less the invasion of Ukraine. A New York Times investigation appears to be bridging the dots between Manhattan and Moscow.
It is July 28, 2016. Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination: she will run for the White House. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s lobbyist and campaign adviser, is about to meet the Russian who heads his consulting firm’s Kiev office. Konstantin Kilimnik, as the Russian is known, will tell him about a plan: the “Mariupol Plan”. Which already contains everything: the invasion of Ukraine; the creation of an autonomous republic in the east of the country; the presidency of this republic was assigned to former Ukrainian President Vyktor Yanukovych, who was deposed by the revolts. For the New York Times, Trump’s role in this pact was that of a “guarantor”: had the Kremlin guaranteed him victory, the “Mariupol Plan” would have worked smoothly.
Then not everything went smoothly: Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, for example, would have complicated the plans according to reconstructions by the New York Times; also the conviction of Paul Manafort for fraudulent bankruptcy. But Putin carried out the planned invasion anyway, even without any other friends in the White House.
Jim Rutenberg traces the genesis of the plan for The New York Times, citing documents from 2005. The oldest from that year is a memo to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, which is quoted in a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Already there, Manafort suggested “sympathizing” with Yanukovych and supporting his elections “for the sake of Putin.” Yanikovich then won the Ukrainian elections before being ousted from the streets in 2014. Then it goes on, and Trump is president: he supports NATO only lukewarmly, he considers the possibility of recognizing Russia’s Crimea. Eventually they stopped military aid in Kyiv. Movements read ex post appear to be the balance of guilt in the New York Times investigation.
November 3, 2022 (change November 3, 2022 | 11:58)
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