Peter1469
06-07-2017, 03:37 PM
Russian probe seen through Moscow’s lens (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/06/07/the_russia_investigation_as_seen_through_moscows_l ens_134117.html)
An interesting article from a serious reporter, David Ignatius.
Read the entire article at the link.
Soldatov thinks the Putin factor is crucial in understanding issues in the hacking investigation. Putin has a personal dislike for Hillary Clinton, and Russian intelligence had been gathering information about her since late summer 2015. But what may have pushed the Russian operation into a higher gear was the April 2016 publication of the so-called "Panama Papers," which revealed secret bank accounts of some of Putin's close friends and associates.
"It was a personal attack," says Soldatov. "You cannot write about Putin's family or personal friends." He speculates that the Russian leader "wanted to do something about it, to teach a lesson."
Putin denounced the Panama Papers as a deliberate effort by America to embarrass him. "Officials and state agencies in the United States are behind all this," he charged in April 2016. "They are used to holding a monopoly on the international stage, and do not want to have to make way for anyone else. ... Attempts are made to weaken us from within, make us more acquiescent and make us toe their line."
State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied at the time that the U.S. was "in any way involved in the actual leak of these documents." But he confirmed that the U.S. Agency for International Development had supported the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the media organizations involved in researching the Panama files. To the Russians, that was proof enough.
The truth of what happened in the 2016 campaign will take many months to unravel, and there's a cloud of misinformation, fueled by Putin, Donald Trump and insatiable media coverage. Soldatov notes, for instance, that the famous dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele included "unverifiable" details and some "confusion" about facts. But Soldatov wrote in January for The Guardian that it's also "a good reflection of how things are run in the Kremlin -- the mess at the level of decision-making and increasingly the outsourcing of operations."
An interesting article from a serious reporter, David Ignatius.
Read the entire article at the link.
Soldatov thinks the Putin factor is crucial in understanding issues in the hacking investigation. Putin has a personal dislike for Hillary Clinton, and Russian intelligence had been gathering information about her since late summer 2015. But what may have pushed the Russian operation into a higher gear was the April 2016 publication of the so-called "Panama Papers," which revealed secret bank accounts of some of Putin's close friends and associates.
"It was a personal attack," says Soldatov. "You cannot write about Putin's family or personal friends." He speculates that the Russian leader "wanted to do something about it, to teach a lesson."
Putin denounced the Panama Papers as a deliberate effort by America to embarrass him. "Officials and state agencies in the United States are behind all this," he charged in April 2016. "They are used to holding a monopoly on the international stage, and do not want to have to make way for anyone else. ... Attempts are made to weaken us from within, make us more acquiescent and make us toe their line."
State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied at the time that the U.S. was "in any way involved in the actual leak of these documents." But he confirmed that the U.S. Agency for International Development had supported the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the media organizations involved in researching the Panama files. To the Russians, that was proof enough.
The truth of what happened in the 2016 campaign will take many months to unravel, and there's a cloud of misinformation, fueled by Putin, Donald Trump and insatiable media coverage. Soldatov notes, for instance, that the famous dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele included "unverifiable" details and some "confusion" about facts. But Soldatov wrote in January for The Guardian that it's also "a good reflection of how things are run in the Kremlin -- the mess at the level of decision-making and increasingly the outsourcing of operations."