This week President Trump’s frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine boiled over. But previous threats to impose sanctions haven’t led to action. Is their long love affair about to end – or will they soon kiss and make up and start signing trade deals?
With testimony from White House insiders, Trump associates and former US intelligence agents, Dispatches investigates in explosive detail the reality of the decades long relationship between US president Donald Trump, Moscow and Russian president Vladimir Putin, the continuing allegations that President Trump is a witting or unwitting asset for the Kremlin, the inside story of President Trump’s continuing fall out with his own intelligence agencies, the axing of US federal programs and officials perceived as hostile to Russia and the continuing consequences for the war in Ukraine.
Where did it begin? What drew them together? Who holds the power? And where might it lead? The insiders interviewed for the documentary talk in revelatory detail about the most consequential relationship in global politics today.
Interviewed by Dispatches, Lev Parnas, a one-time associate of Donald Trump, speaks in unprecedented detail about his three years in the president’s inner circle and Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Speaking about Ukraine, he says: “I think Trump wants peace. But with that said, it’s all about the money. And at the end of the day, there’s land, there are minerals, there’s wealth to be divided. It’s all about quid pro quo. Donald Trump’s whole life is about a quid pro quo.” Parnas says Trump’s actions have often aligned with Putin’s aims, “He’s not a puppet. He’s a student. What’s the difference if he’s being told by Putin to do it or he’s doing it for Putin? The result is, it’s being done.”
John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor during President Trump’s first administration, says: “Putin is delighted that Trump was re-elected… Many alumni of the U.S. intelligence community have said to me they think that Trump has been recruited by the Kremlin. I don’t think so. I think he is a useful idiot. I think Putin can get him in a place he wants to. He is manipulable and does the work the Russians want without ever knowing it.”
Still, Bolton believes Putin may eventually overreach: “Even a KGB guy can make mistakes. He can push the envelope too far, he can press his luck.”
Fiona Hill, who served as President Trump’s top advisor on Russia during his first term, echoes John Bolton: “Putin is still playing Trump. He’s trying to find ways of playing him. But at some point… Trump may eventually get frustrated.”
In her first television interview addressing these events, Susan Miller— a former CIA Counter-intelligence Chief who oversaw the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election—tells Dispatches: “In the CIA, we use the word [asset] to mean fully recruited—meaning he knows what he's doing, he knows what he is doing is wrong, and he is getting some kind of benefit out of it. If that's what we're talking about, I think [Donald Trump] could be. If I were still working at the CIA today, I would go back and take another look.”
The documentary reports that seven months into Trump’s second stint in the White House, many US government programmes focused on Russian threats have been axed, moves that, in some cases, align with Kremlin priorities.
Nathaniel Raymond is a war crimes investigator who headed a US funded programme at Yale university tracking Ukrainian children who’ve been kidnapped and taken to Russia. His work has provided evidence for a war crimes case against President Putin and his close associates. In his first wide-ranging interview he explains what happened once President Trump re-entered the White House.
“We were paused on January 25th. For days we had no clue whether the data had been preserved in the secure storage environment… When I heard that I was like well there's got to be another programme he's talking about, three years of our entire life's work of war crimes evidence, [was gone].”
“It was clear all down the chain that there was no appetite for accountability for Putin within the US Government. That has given Putin five months to destroy evidence, five months to relocate children, five months to change names, five months to conceal their patterns of movement.”
The US State Department has said the program was ended as a cost-saving measure.
In his first wide-ranging interview, Johnathan Buma, a former FBI agent and Russian counter-intelligence specialist, tells Dispatches that after Trump’s first term in office and the controversy surrounding his links to Russia, FBI bosses ordered Buma: “not to investigate any current or former associates of Trump…I was trying to protect American oligarchs, such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, who I saw, I can't say any details, but they were being targeted.”
He says since President Trump’s inauguration, a process that accelerated that has seen “extremely high profile, well qualified, and ethically grounded FBI agents leave in droves. We've had resignations, we've had forced retirements.” This has made it easier, he says, for “Russian intelligence operatives to get in very close to the most powerful people in this country.”
Buma turned whistleblower and then resigned in March this year. The day after, he was arrested and charged with disclosing confidential information: “I believe that my arrest was done to send a signal to all agents in the FBI. Don't be a whistleblower or else this is what's going to happen to you.”
The White House, the FBI and the embassies of the Russian Federation in Washington DC and London were offered the opportunity to comment on matters raised in the documentary but did not do so.
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