Part I and Part II began with my attempt to bring people up to speed on #trumprussia. Many do not follow the story that has been unfolding, or perhaps do not have the tools needed. I thought if I could bring some basic facts regarding the various players involved, along with a timeline of important events, it would be helpful for those who are not political junkies or who just do not have time for all of the intrigue.
I started out strong but am afraid the task was beyond what I imagined. The players kept changing, with more added each day. The revelations in just the past few weeks have been mind-blowing and it is becoming evident that the entire tangled web of corruption and deceit is on a scale of epic proportions. It may take a decade to fully investigate all of it.
I continue to come across people who don’t see any problem with our president having a cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin. When I ask why they feel this way, I get a vague response about “getting along”. It occurred to me that perhaps before I delve too far into all of the players in the current drama, some might benefit from some Russian background history. I have tried to put together some recent historical information about Russia, beginning in the 1990’s before Putin took power. It’s by no means complete, and just highlights some of the events that might inspire people to dig a little further. The timeline here paints a picture of why we should not assume that Russia wants to be our “friend” and why any relationship with Putin must be entered into facing forward, with our eyes wide open. Just skimming through this history of recent events makes that clear.
1990’s
After breakup of Soviet Union. Boris Yeltzin tried to maintain a more open state, one in which scientists could share ideas, with an independent press, and more communication with the west. This period of glasnost, the policy or practice of more open consultative government and wider dissemination of information, began with Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985. Putin was a KGB agent stationed in East Berlin at that time and had not actually experienced these changes in Russian society until after the breakup of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall. That event had an enormous effect on him. (edited for clarity)
Russian economy and society struggled. There were 800,000 recognized KGB agents still in Russia who spent 10 years reorganizing into the new FSB. Along the way, they absorbed other facets of power including other government agencies, criminal networks, Russian oligarchs, and others already in the political hierarchy.
The FSB conspired to install Putin to power. To do so, required a common enemy to unite the people, and show Putin to be the strongman.
1999
That enemy turned out to be Chechnya. They needed a reason to invade that the people would believe and strongly support. Chechens would be the enemy.
Besides a propaganda blitz, there was a bombing of Moscow Apartment buildings which killed over 300 Russian citizens. The blame was placed on terrorist’s factions of Osama bin Laden, said to be trained by Chechen rebels. A bloody war with Chechnya ensued, although all signs seemed to indicate that the Moscow bombings were an inside job of the Russian FSB. The car used in the actual bombing had FSB license plates and was registered to the FSB. Efforts to call for a full investigation were turned down by the government. To this day, it has not been investigated. (EDIT: There is some debate about this and the actual reasons for the Chechen war, as detailed in the comments below. I would encourage those of you who want more information to investigate further.)
The war in Chechnya killed tens of thousands. Putin was praised. Yeltsin by this time, was in poor health and drinking heavily. He named Putin as his successor on New Year's Eve, 1999.
2000
With Putin in power they were now free to implement their full strategy. The goals were and continue to be, to regain control of Ukraine, the Baltics, and Georgia; fracture the European Union; and weaken the NATO agreement, a threat to that control. The NATO alliance was established to protect smaller European nations that could not defend themselves from larger, military powers. Control or at least influence of Turkey and Syria, have been of interest to Russia as well. The goal may be to rule the world, or just to ensure that no one else does, including China or the U.S. By weakening other world powers, Russia hopes to level the playing field. (Edited for clarity.)
The government took over all aspects of media including the RT network and news media outlets. Since Putin took power, over 30 journalists that were critical of the government, have been murdered.
2004
The next order of business was to install a pro-Kremlin candidate in the Ukraine. The choice was Viktor Yanukovych, then prime minister, and an ally of Vladimir Putin. Paul Manafort, a U.S. political consultant was unofficially hired to assist with the campaign.
The Ukrainian people were very pro-West. The favored choice for president, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned with dioxin during the campaign. When Yanukovych was declared the winner, massive protests broke out and a new election was held, which Yanukovich lost.
2006
In 2006, former KGB officer and whistle blower Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium. He was a former officer of the Russian FSB secret service who specialized in tackling organized crime – according to US diplomats, Litvinenko coined the phrase Mafia state.
Alexander Litvinenko
2010
Yanukovych ran for president again. Paul Manafort again acted as his campaign consultant. He worked to change the man’s image and style, gave him a more “western” look, and coached him to appear to be friendly to western interests. Manafort even set up a meeting with President Obama, to discuss those interests. The meeting was mostly a photo-op, used to convince the public that Yanukovych favored an alliance with the west. There is no doubt that Paul Manafort was instrumental in getting Yanukovych elected.
2012
Whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny died from a toxin while jogging in England, per NYT report. He was a Russian banker, who helped expose a money-laundering scheme that involved both the Mafia and the Russian state.
2014
In 2014, massive protests erupted over Yanukovych’s refusal to sign trade agreements with the EU, to instead pursue closer economic ties to Russia. As the protests grew in intensity, security forces opened fire on the protesters and an estimated 80 to 100 were killed. Supporters of Yanukovych abandoned him and he was forced into exile in Russia where he remains after charges of treason. After fleeing the country, it became apparent that the level of corruption was beyond what anyone could have imagined. Yanukovych built a palace where he enjoyed gold plated bathroom fixtures, a private zoo, a man-made lake, a hand-built replica of a Spanish ship the housed his own private restaurant, rooms full of priceless art, Faberge eggs, and much more, while the Ukrainian people struggled to feed their families. There had been an attempt to destroy files and paperwork before he fled to Russia, but much was recovered. His campaign headquarters contained two safes. Inside was a 400-page, hand-written ledger that detailed secret, untraceable and unreported cash payments over a period of 5 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10656023/In-pictures-Inside-the-palace-Yanukovych-didnt-want-Ukraine-to-see.html
Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula by force, after the ouster of Ukraine president Yanukovych. The motive for the hasty annexation may be in relation to the departure of Yanukovych, to prevent neighboring states from joining NATO, to begin to rebuild the Soviet Union and other possibilities (all of the above?) that can be explored here:
A growing body of evidence now suggests Russian-backed separatists fired the Buk SA-11 missile that shot down Malaysian flight MH17 in July, 2014. This was a commercial airliner carrying 298 passengers and crew. There were no survivors.
2015
Boris Nemtsov - once a Russian minister – now in opposition of Putin, was shot on the night of February 27th on a bridge near the Kremlin. The shooting was attributed to five Chechen rebels; however, it is suspected the killing was arranged by the Kremlin.
The liberal reformer had sharply criticized high-level corruption in President Putin's Russia and the Kremlin's role in the Ukraine conflict. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unaccountable-death-of-boris-nemtsov
May, 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza a Russian journalist, activist, and close friend of Boris Nemtsov, was suddenly taken ill and rushed to the hospital. He experienced organ failure and was in intensive care for several weeks. When he was examined abroad, doctors found high levels of heavy metals in his body. Kara-Murza suspected he'd been poisoned on political grounds.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/27/russian-opposition-activist-vladimir-kara-murza-in-hospital-after-falling-ill
November 5, 2015, Mikhail Lesin, 57, was found dead in a D.C. hotel. The cause of death was initially said to be a heart attack, but an autopsy confirmed he died from blunt force trauma to the head. There were also bruises on his neck, torso, arms, and legs. No official conclusion regarding the bruises or his death has ever been released. Lesin, 57, was most recently, an advertising and marketing exec who ran the media wing of Russian Natural-gas giant, Gazprom until he was suddenly forced out. He traveled frequently to the U.S. and had established three companies in California for the purchase of real estate. He purchased expensive multi-million dollar properties, seemingly well above his means. An activist, Vladimir Kara-Murza passed information about the real estate to members of Congress, in hopes of persuading them to impose sanctions against more Russian officials.
Dec 23, 2015, Cyber criminals from Russia, take out the power grid in western Ukraine.
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-hack-ukraines-power-grid/
2016-17 Noteworthy Recent Events and Stories to pay attention to on Russia
Paul Manafort was selected to run Donald Trump’s campaign after the firing of manager Cory Lewandowski. In July, the New York Times obtained copies of the ledger that was recovered from Yanukovych in 2014. Paul Manafort’s name appeared 22 times, with payments totaling 12.7 million dollars. He denies ever receiving these payments, yet less than a week later he resigned as Trump’s campaign manager. It was later revealed that he was being blackmailed by someone with access to those ledgers, which were subsequently released and published.
Less than 3 weeks after this occurred, a Russian oligarch by the name of Dmitry Firtash was arrested in Austria, at the request of the FBI. Firtash is a billionaire partner in a multi-billion-dollar natural gas business with Vladimir Putin, has very close ties to Yanukovych, and Paul Manafort. Firtash and Manafort planned to build a high-end, 900-million-dollar real estate project on New York’s Park Avenue. It didn’t happen after a law suit alleged that it was nothing more than a money-laundering operation for government kickbacks and ill-gotten gains from the Ukraine and Russia. Firtash was wanted on unrelated charges of massive bribery of government officials in India, to obtain titanium mining permits. Titanium is most valuable for the manufacture of aircraft. Boeing will use titanium to build Airforce 1, for example. The US has been trying to have him extradited for three years without success. (On February 21, 2017, Austria finally agreed to extradite Firtash, and Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser and newly appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions will now oversee the case.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/austria-approves-extradition-of-ukrainian-oligarch-tied-to-trump-campaign-aides/2017/02/21/13c71542-f83d-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html?utm_term=.e1fb0af4333d
October 2016, a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic was foiled. The Balkan nation is planning to join NATO this year and the European Union by 2020. A controversial figure, accused of enabling corruption and organized crime, has recently stepped down to ease the path to NATO and the EU. The assassination plot has been attributed to Russian backing of parties opposed to those plans.
Nov 8, 2016, an employee found dead in the Russian Consulate with head and facial wounds is identified as 63- year-old Sergei Krivov. He was employed as the Consular Duty Commander. Initially police reported the man had fallen dozens of feet from the roof of the consular building. Later it was reported that he had suffered a heart attack in the security office, and died. Follow-up on the event was made difficult in that the man’s home address as listed on the incident report, turned out to be a Smithsonian-owned office building for its neighboring Cooper Hewitt design museum. Despite being described as a Manhattan resident by the NYPD, Krivov cannot be found in any NY public records. The NYPD closed the file before the medical examiner had a cause of death determination, the body was released the next day, and requests for copies of the report were refused. Months later the ME stated the cause of death was due to internal bleeding from a tumor.
(SIDE NOTE: An online search of that name, leads to Sergei Krivov, activist of the Republican Party of Russia – People’s Freedom Party and the opposition movement “Solidarnost,”. He was arrested on October 18, 2012, on charges of “participating in mass riots” on May 6, 2012, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, and of using force against the police. Per investigators, while confronting the police after the “March of Millions” mass demonstration, Krivov grabbed a police officer’s truncheon, hit the officer, and pushed another one. Prosecutors demanded a sentence of six years in prison for Krivov. On February 24, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court sentenced him to four years at a general regime penal colony. He was released July, 2016. A Facebook page exists, spelled Sergey Krivov, with same photo, but cannot guarantee it is legit. There is also a strange Twitter account. If this is the same Krivov, there is no way he was an employee of the Russian Consulate. It was just the place he was murdered or dumped after being murdered.
This Sergei Krivov was a Russian Political prisoner until July, 2016.
http://www.speroforum.com/a/OUNMPDCBIX54/80238-Who-is-killing-Russias-diplomats#.WLjF7TvyvIU http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4275666/Examiner-contradicts-NYPD-probe-dead-Russia-diplomat.html
https://imrussia.org/en/projects/political-prisoners/679-russias-political-prisoners-sergei-krivov
https://therussianreader.com/2016/07/29/sergei-krivov-bolotnaya-square-convict-released/
https://www.facebook.com/sergey.krivov.3 https://twitter.com/KrikovS
http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-bolotnaya-prisoner-krivov-released/27860146.html
http://www.palmerreport.com/tag/sergei-krivov/
December, 2016, a code connected to Russian cyber-hackers has been found on an American electricity company's computer, in further evidence of "predatory" steps taken by Moscow against the US, officials said on Saturday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/31/russian-hackers-penetrated-vermont-electric-utility-report/
Dec 19, 2016, Andrey Karlov, Russian ambassador to Turkey, was shot several times while visiting an art exhibition opening in the Turkish capital Ankara on and died at the scene of his wounds. The attack on Andrey Karlov came after days of protests in Turkey over Russia's role in Syria.
,Andrey Karlov,Russian ambassador to Turkey.
Dec 19, 2016 Petr Polshikov, 56 – who was the chief adviser to the Latin American department at the ministry. died of a gunshot wound to his head in his Moscow apartment. Details are vague and appears to have been suicide, although two shell casings were found in the apartment, and the gun used was under the sink in the bathroom. The incident occurred just hours before Karlov was killed in Turkey.
12/26/16: Roman Skrylnikov, diplomat in the Russian Consulate in Kazakhstan found dead in his apartment https://t.co/Z5P6E3VaH8
December 26, 2016: Oleg Erovinkin, ex-KGB/FSB & assistant to Rosneft head Igor Sechin, found dead in the backseat of his car. Erovinkin is the alleged source of the information in the Christopher Steele dossier, that links Donald Trump to Russian election hacks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/mystery-death-ex-kgb-chief-linked-mi6-spys-dossier-donald-trump/
January 25, 2017, Russian Ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin passed away on Thursday morning due to heart failure, according to news reports. At the time of writing, no other details were available about whether or not the 67-year-old diplomat was unwell before his heart failure.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…
February 2, 2017, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was apparently poisoned for the second time in two years. A short time prior to his most recent illness, Kara-Murza had submitted a request for a Nemtsov march - a commemorative rally - to Moscow's municipal administration. Several times, Kara-Murza has advocated Western sanctions against Russian top politicians. This made him powerful enemies. He remained hospitalized in Moscow, with a diagnosis of “acute intoxication” until Feb 19, when he was released to obtain treatment abroad. He was back in the U.S, approximately 6 weeks after the event and still recovering. (edited with more current information)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/07/kremlin-critic-in-coma-was-poisoned-by-undefined-substance
February 20, 2017, Vitaly Churkin, Russian Ambassador to the UN, died in New York. What at first was reported as a heart attack, is now in question as the US state department has instructed New York City's chief medical examiner not to disclose the cause of death of Russia's ambassador to the United Nations.
https://t.co/23bD2lao6n
www.bbc.com/…
March 5, 2017, Alex Oronov was found dead, according to a Facebook post by Andrii Artemenko, an Ukrainian MP. Oronov was apparently quite successful in agribusiness. He had an interest in an ethanol business set up by Michael and Bryan Cohen in the Ukraine. Michael Cohen is Donald Trump's attorney. Bryan, in addition to being Michael's brother, is Oronov's son-in-law. With Artemenko and others, Oronov had organized a "peace plan," which was described by The New York Times as a back-channel opportunity for the Trump administration.
http://warmonitor.net/news/2017/03/05/eighth-russian-connected-to-trump-found-dead/
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/alex-oronov-organizer-russia-ukraine-blackmail-plan-sent-donald-trump-dropped-dead/1785/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ukranian-businesman-russia-and-donald-trump-dies-michael-cohen-michael-flynn-donald-trump-vladimir-a7612866.html
Russia and Ukraine face off in court March, 2017 as judges in The Hague began hearing a landmark case brought by Kiev over Moscow's annexation of Crimea and involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine.
www.telegraph.co.uk/...
www.bbc.com/...
March 22, 2017, a private Russian lawyer on an anti-corruption crusade reportedly fell from the fourth floor of his Moscow apartment. Nikolai Gorokhov, 53, was near death with "severe head injuries" and remains in a hospital's intensive care unit, according to his friend, investor Bill Browder. Gorokhov represented Sergei Magnitsky, a fellow Russian lawyer who exposed Russia's largest ever tax fraud -- and was later jailed and beaten to death in a Moscow detention center. Gorokhov continued his client's fight.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/23/was-a-magnitsky-lawyer-defenestrated-for-embarrassing-putin.html
March 23, 2017, a Russian politician who fled to Ukraine, Denis Voronenkov, 45, was gunned down outside a hotel in Kiev. Voronenkov and his wife both spoke out against Putin after they left Russia for Ukraine in October.
March 30, 2017, during Senate hearings regarding Russian interference, it is revealed that up to 15,000 Russian *disinformation* specialists spread fake news stories that may have influenced the 2016 U.S. election.
www.cnn.com/…
Pipelines from Russia, through Ukraine to Europe.
This map will give you some idea as to why Russia is so interested in the Ukraine and Crimea. The entire economy depends on the export of oil and natural gas. To sell to Europe, much of it is piped across the Ukraine which currently charges a stiff tariff to do so. The Ukrainian people would rather be affiliated with western nations and a desire to join NATO. In recent years. they were denied membership because the country was unstable after Yanukovych was ousted, and Angela Merkel of Germany argued that Russia would react negatively to such a move.
There is much more, of course, but this should provide a solid basis for people to understand that what we are dealing with is serious and complex. And this is just Russia. There may be evidence out there of corruption across the globe. Each new investigation finds more connections that all seem to lead back to Donald Trump. Check out this page from Bloomberg News: www.bloomberg.com/…
As the story continues to unfold, I may add additional chapters that help me to keep the story and all of it’s players in some semblance of an organized format. I will try to highlight names in bold to make it easier to reference when you cannot remember which person did what. Although the current administration may be long gone, it is possible this investigation could go on for a decade or more. That is a lot to try to remember and comprehend, so I hope this is helpful for those trying to follow along.
For those interested in following more timely updates to the Trump/Russia story, I would advise following some accounts on Twitter, such as reputable news sources both independent and mainstream. These are a few accounts I follow that seem to regularly provide up to-date research and information that you may not find immediately on main stream media outlets:
Adam Khan twitter.com/…
Sarah Kendzior twitter.com/…
Bloomberg Politics twitter.com/…
Bloomberg Business twitter.com/…
David Corn twitter.com/…
Scott Dworkin twitter.com/...
Eric Garland twitter.com/…
Eric Geller twitter.com/…
Rachel Maddow twitter.com/...
Brad Jaffy twitter.com/...
Manu Ranju twitter.com/…
Rick Wilson twitter.com/…