Russian Meddling, Trump-Putin Bromance Is About Clinton
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| Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow on Facebook |
Robert Mueller, who lead the probe into alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, charged three
advisers to President Donald Trump’s campaign in October 2017. The New York Times
described the development as 'the most explicit evidence to date that his [Trump]’s campaign was eager to coordinate with the Russian government to
damage his rival, Hillary Clinton.' It emerged that Russian intelligence
services used intermediaries to contact the Trump campaign’s former foreign
policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, to gain influence. In April 2016, the
Russians offered the campaign 'dirt' on Clinton in the form of thousands of
emails, the Times reported.
The charges against Papadopoulos and two others were slapped
nine months after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noted in
January 2017 that '[Russian President] Vladimir Putin ordered an influence the campaign' in 2016 to damage Clinton’s 'electability and potential presidency.' It added that Putin and Russia had 'developed a clear preference' for
Trump. Trump-Putin's' bromance' may have driven the Russian president as much as
his eagerness to get even with Clinton. There has been bad blood between Putin
and Clinton for years. Clinton rubbed Putin the wrong way on the 2008 campaign
trail. She referred to Putin’s past as a Soviet KGB intelligence agent and
remarked: 'By definition, he does not have a soul.’ Putin may have brushed
aside her remark saying that statesmen should not be 'guided by their hearts,
they should use their heads' but it has since been a slippery slope.
Clinton appeared to be relentless. She described Putin as a 'very arrogant
person to deal with'’ and called for the need to 'stand up to his bullying’.
In 2011, the Putin-Clinton relationship became frostier as
protests swept the Arab world and ousted entrenched dictators like Hosni
Mubarak from power. Slogans like 'Putin, get out of here' rend the air soon in
Russia as tens of thousands took to the streets in the biggest protest in
Moscow in two decades. As the protests escalated, Clinton rubbed it in shortly
after Putin had announced that he would run for president for the third time. 'The Russian people like people everywhere deserve the right to have their
voices heard and their votes counted.’ Clinton expressed 'serious concerns' about the conduct of the Russian parliamentary elections and growing
restrictions on the exercise of fundamental rights. Putin is believed to have
seen this as an attempt to topple him. He blamed Clinton for inciting the
protests against him; a grudge many linked to the hacking scandal that rocked her
2016 US presidential campaign. Over 1,900 e-mails were leaked after Russian
hackers allegedly hacked the email accounts of Clinton’s colleagues in the middle
of her tight race for the presidency with Trump.
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Clinton has blamed Putin for contributing to her defeat
through Russian hackers’ intrusions into her Democratic Party leaders’ emails.
Trump did little to allay fears over this and fuelled suspicions that
Putin holds some sway over him with his rash decisions. He fired FBI director James
B Comey while the agency was leading a probe into the collusion of Trump’s
campaign with Russia. Trump grudgingly fired national security adviser (NSA) Michael Flynn in February for misleading vice president Mike Pence about his
contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US. Flynn has refused to turn over
documents pertaining to the investigation of Russian interference in the
election while Trump had earlier allegedly asked Comey to end the investigation
against the former NSA.
It is not just about damaging Clinton’s chances, but fears
in the US about Putin’s attempts to restore his country’s status in the world
by destroying American democracy by allegedly rigging the election. Putin's
past as a KGB agent gives credence to these apprehensions. He was in the thick
of things when the Communist block crumbled with the fall of the
Berlin Wall in December 1989 as a precursor to the collapse of the Soviet Union
two years later. He watched helplessly when crowds filled the streets,
targeting communist symbols in Berlin. Putin somehow managed to rush to the
basement of the KGB office in Dresden (East Germany) as a mob threatened to
storm the building. He lit the furnace and burnt secret files before bluffing
his way out.
Putin returned to the USSR in 1990 to find the country had
transformed under Mikhail Gorbachev. McDonald’s had set shop and introduced Big
Mac and Coca-Cola. People had begun demanding independence and democracy.
Within a year, the Soviet Union collapsed with its red flag coming down at the
Kremlin in Moscow to mark the end of the Russian empire after 300 years. Putin,
according to CNN, felt a sense of humiliation over the collapse of the country
he deeply loved. For him, the breakup was the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of
the 20th century’’ that traumatized and changed him. He soon joined politics to
become the deputy mayor of St Petersburg with top jobs in Moscow as his goal.
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Putin’s rise in politics coincided with the mess Yeltsin had
created with rich becoming richer amid food scarcity for ordinary Russians. He
was the acting prime minister when Yeltsin announced his resignation as
president and handed over power to Putin on December 31, 1999. Putin took over
at the stroke of the 21st century, making his intentions clear. “We live in a
competitive world, and we are not among its leaders,’’ he declared as he
endeared himself to the masses by visiting soldiers on the front lines in
Chechnya. Rising oil prices helped him stabilize Russia; wages rose. Putin
dealt with western sanctions by initiating an austerity program and checked
inflation. His popularity soared with the 2014 invasion of Ukraine that
demonstrated Putin’s promise to remake Russia as a great power along with
Moscow’s intervention in Syria. According to CNN, there were no
billionaires in Russia when Putin moved to Moscow in 1996. Russia had 111
billionaires by 2014, according to Forbes. Putin's approval rating has been as
high as 86 percent prompting CNN to declare Putin the world’s most powerful
man, whom Trump called “really very much of a leader’’.
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Putin's avowed goal to remake Russia a great power again
stokes fears in the West, where many see Trump's election with the Russian
president's alleged help in that light. The doubts appeared to add up when
Trump's victory sparked celebrations in the Russian parliament – the Duma – on
television and bars. CNN showed a Russian man saying: “Trump's victory will be
a celebration for all humanity.’’ Another man declared they are “the champions
of the world’’. Putin appeared vindicated. “Nobody but us believed he was going
to win.’’ For Putin’s biographer, Masha Gessen, the Russian leader was happy to
take credit. “And that means that he won the US election, the man who is
simultaneously president of Russia and in charge of the United States,’’ she
told CNN. “I think Putin views Trump as an apprentice.’’
The mood in the West was in total contrast. Thousands of
people took to the streets to protest against US election results that
propelled Trump to power. They shouted "not my president’’ across the
country – from New York to San Francisco – fearing Trump’s victory would
encourage sexism, bigotry, Islamophobia and threaten civil rights. Over half a
million joined a women’s march in Washington when he took office in January.
Similar protest marches were held in neighbouring Canada, across the Atlantic
in London, Germany, France, Hungary, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and in far-off
Australia and New Zealand.
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor.
Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Kaylani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue.
Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam.'
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