The Donut Holes in the Fake Ukraine Collusion Story

In the murder mystery Knives Out, Daniel Craig is devilishly entertaining as renowned detective Benoit Blanc as he describes "donut holes within donut holes" of overlooked evidence before connecting the facts about who murdered renowned novelist Harlan Thrombey. It's an excellent metaphor for Russia’s war on the West, of which the fake Ukraine collusion story is a part. As we delve deeper into donut holes within donut holes, we know more about Russia’s campaign of disinformation to discredit Ukraine and the West, even if sometimes the facts before us distract us from the underlying truth.

In a January 17 article in the Washington Post, Melinda Haring, Deputy Director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, took credit for calling out eight months earlier the fake Ukraine collusion story--pushed at the time by John Solomon, an opinion contributor at The Hill--that Yuriy Lutsenko, then Prosecutor General of Ukraine, "was opening a criminal investigation into an alleged attempt by a top Ukrainian law enforcement official to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election." That fake story, Haring writes, "set off the ridiculous “Ukraine collusion” narrative that Trump loyalists have been pushing for 10 months” (Solomon is now a Fox News commentator; meanwhile, his contributions in The Hill are being reviewed by The Hill for false and misleading content).

In response, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American activist, wrote in a post on Facebook that the Ukraine collusion story did not originate with the Lutsenko story in 2019 but with the Kremlin in 2016 in comments made by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharov, who accused Ukraine of interfering in the US election rather than Russia (probably to deflect from the discovery of the "black ledger" that detailed millions of dollars in payments to Paul Manafort).

What was unknown then was how the story would take off with Trump-associated conspiracy promoters, especially Rudolph Giuliani, who promoted the Ukraine collusion story to undermine the impeachment of Trump by drawing attention to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who serves on the board of a Ukrainian company. Haring writes that she was wrong at the time to believe that the Ukraine collusion story had originated in Kyiv with President Poroshenko. With what we know now, she writes, the fake story originated in Washington with Giuliani. Chalupa--who was accused in another fake story by Solomon of seeking dirt on Trump through the Ukrainian embassy in Washington--points her finger at the Kremlin but directs her ire at Trump, Giuliani, and Manafort. Yet, what is staring us in the face is that nothing originates in Washington.

The new focus on Giuliani, for example, is incomplete. It is true that Giuliani pushed the Ukraine collusion story, along with his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who channeled Russian money to Republican politicians and worked to discredit US Ambassador Yovanovich, as well as Republican point men, such as Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Linsey Graham (R-SC), who repeat the same disinformation. But we are staring at the mask, not the face, of disinformation.

Malign actors, such as Trump, Giuliani, Manafort, Solomon, Fox News, and Republican apologists for Russia, draw our attention to Washington but distract us from the reality that at heart this is a part of Russia’s war on the West. Haring and Chalupa are not wrong that actors in Washington have an outsized influence in promoting the fake Ukraine collusion story, but the facts in front of us should not distract us from what should be our focus. As Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) remarked in the Senate impeachment hearings last week, “the Ukraine conspiracy is brought to you by the Kremlin.” If we don't always know who is pushing the pen, we know it is the Kremlin that is writing the story.

Despite his malign influence, Trump is nothing in the Ukraine conspiracy but a whip wielded by Putin. The Kremlin created the fake story, promotes it through disinformation, and uses Putin’s leverage over Trump, through enticement or threat, to advance Russia’s interest.

Despite his Machiavellian contortions, Giuliani would be nothing without the backing from Ukrainian oligarch, Dimitri Firtash, for whom Giuliani’s associate, Lev Parnas, was working as a conduit for Russian money to Republican purses and as an agent to regain control of the Ukrainian gas transit business upon which Firtash first made his illicit money, which in turn leads to Russian organized crime and to Putin directly. New details about Firtash’s role continue to emerge in a steady drip from Parnas’ disclosures.

Similarly, Manafort is nothing without Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, and corrupt Ukrainian intermediaries that paid Manafort to promote Russia’s interest in Ukraine and undermine Ukraine in the US.

In spite of the day-to-day, moment-to-moment distraction of new facts, the focus needs to remain on the principal suspect in the story. The evidence shows that all donut holes point to Russia.

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Russia at war: From Russia with Blood (2)

Since I wrote Russia at War: A Review of From Russia with Blood, The Times of London has also published an article on the larger picture of Russia's war with the West under Putin.  The Times writes,

“Russia is at war with the West. It uses propaganda, economic coercion, military saber-rattling, extraterritorial killings and diplomatic pressure to systematically undermine the rules-based international order. It also wages “lawfare”, abusing international legal co-operation and law-enforcement institutions.

Since coming to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin has built an authoritarian kleptocracy in Russia. In this system, elections, and political institutions have been hollowed out, the judiciary is supine and several critical journalists and political opponents have been killed.

The system is based on predation and corruption....“

The West needs the resolve to recognize and respond to Russia’s asymmetric war.  As I wrote, measures already enacted and those under consideration are needed to blunt Russia’s aggression, but they are insufficient by themselves.  Russian aggression is wider-ranging in means. Knowing Putin’s game plan, the West cannot afford to fight a limited or solely defensive asymmetric war. The West needs a proportionate response that demonstrates that for every action there will be an equal and like response that disrupts Russia at war.

Russia at War: A Review of From Russia with Blood

http://euromaidanpress.com/2020/01/09/russia-at-war-a-review-of-from-russia-with-blood/

Heidi Blake’s, From Russia With Blood, about Russian state-sponsored attacks on and murders of individuals in Russia and abroad, including Russian defectors Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko and others, is a gripping read. But the real story is the larger picture that emerges from these murders confirming what is already widely believed. Russia is at war.

In Blake’s telling, the attacks on and murder of Russians and other nationals in Russia and in Western countries are linked not just to money laundering of Russian wealth but also to the work of the Russian security services to eliminate Putin’s opponents and to compromise individuals and Western institutions, to Russian cyberattacks and disinformation that undermine faith in Western institutions, to interference in other countries’ political processes, and to Putin’s criminality at the expense of the Russian people and his dream to overturn the global system and restore Russian power.

Blake’s is a gritty, street-level view of Russia at war. As early as the 1990s and for most of the first two decades of the 2000s, Britain, the US, and other countries turned a blind eye to evidence that Russia under Putin was conducting a campaign of murder against its citizens and Western enablers who had fallen out with the Kremlin over money or politics.

In Blake’s narrative, Britain and the US were impotent to respond as they failed to realize the full implications for Western security. The murders were not just personal, they were a means to a larger end.

A Russia consumed by criminality was emboldened by Western avidity for vast Russian wealth seeking a safe harbor in the West

Although not set out in Blake’s narrative, the West’s impotence is on full display among British and US politicians. An inquest into the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko did not take place until 2016 as Britain prioritized trade and investment with Russia. This last year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is accused of having delayed for political purposes a government report on Russian election interference until after his election. In the US, Trump and his circle, as well as leading Republicans–often funded by Russian sources through organizations such as the NRA or Trump associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman—frequently belittle the risk of Russian interference and, at times, legitimate and amplify Russia disinformation, such as that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election or that Ukraine was responsible for interfering not Russia, as detailed among other places in the Mueller Report and the ongoing impeachment drama.

Evident from Blake’s narrative is that a Russia consumed by criminality — foremost as practiced by Vladimir Putin — was emboldened by Western avidity for vast Russian wealth seeking a safe harbor in the West even as that wealth brought with it the subversion of Western banks, law firms, and anonymous corporations. Western avarice is epitomized by the murder of Britains described in Blake’s book, such as lawyers Stephen Curtis and Stephen Moss and the horrific death of fixer Scot Young.

Blake summarizes the scope and consequence of Putin’s war on the West, as follows,

“The Novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal on a rainy Sunday in Salisbury was the latest dramatic salvo in a series of increasingly warlike moves by the Kremlin (…“the attack on the Skripals had been conducted by two serving members of Russia’s military intelligence agency…”). Putin’s security state had helped propel Donald Trump to the White House through a concerted campaign of meddling in the 2016 US election. Its hacking labs, internet troll factories, and fake news farms had sown disunity, disruption, and disinformation in democracies across Europe, while its financing of extremist fringe groups had stirred up race hate and violence around the world. It had sponsored an attempted coup against the government of Montenegro as the country neared accession to NATO and unleashed ever more malignant cyberattacks on Western governments. And, for all the effort to make Russia part of the solution in Syria, it had backed the regime of Bashar al-Assad with increasingly ferocious military assaults on the Western-backed rebels as the dictator gassed hundreds of his own people with internationally outlawed chemical weapons. The leaders of the United States and Europe had covered their eyes to the Kremlin’s crimes for so long that the man inside had crept right up on them, and now Putin’s actions amounted to an asymmetric war on the West.”

What Blake writes is corroborated and expanded by other reporting and sources. For example, the involvement of the Russian government is detailed in the New York Times reporting on a secret Russian military unit specifically tasked with assassinations in Europe and in disinformation campaigns.

Blake’s is an unfinished story. Even now many in the West are captivated by the chance of windfall wealth from Russia and other countries based on providing a safe harbor for illicit money flows. The political leadership in Britain and in the US, as well as in the EU, are still too unaware of the scope and consequences of Russia’s asymmetric war on the West — of which money-laundering is only a small part. Some appear prepared to compromise on Western security for personal and party short-term gain.

Nevertheless, Putin’s war has provoked a response. Anti-money laundering legislation in Britain in 2017, as well as the proposed US Illicit Cash Act and proposed EU anti-money laundering legislation, if passed, could curtail the immediate threat from money laundering. And, more aggressive measures that address the source of corruption and anti-Western aggression, such as the so-called “Magnitsky Act,” passed in 2016 and 2017 by the US, Britain, Canada, as well as by the frontline neighboring states in Putin’s war, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, has already curtailed the activities of those who engage in money laundering and in human rights abuses. Further “Magnitsky” legislation is under consideration by the EU — which hosts numerous off-shore financial jurisdictions listed by the IMF, including Ireland, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta, Monaco and others–and by EU member states. Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia are considering similar legislation. Each of these last three countries has been the target of and lost territory in Russia’s asymmetric war.

Measures already enacted and those under consideration are needed to blunt Russia’s aggression, but they are insufficient by themselves.  Russian aggression is wider-ranging in means. Knowing Putin’s game plan, the West cannot afford to fight a limited or solely defensive asymmetric war.  The West needs a proportionate response that demonstrates that for every action there will be an equal and like response that disrupts Russia at war.

BuzzFeed News contributed to exposing Russia’s asymmetric war.  As Blake writes, Buzzfeed News “published a series of stories laying bare Russia’s campaign of assassination in the West. The series had mapped a web of fourteen suspected hits in the UK, including the deaths of Boris Berezovsky, his fellow exiles, and their British fixers, as well as the death of Mikhail Lesin in America.” Blake is Global Investigations Editor at Buzzfeed News.