Thread by @lukeharding1968

Exclusive: Leaked Putin papers appear to show #Russia’s plot to put a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump into the White House – my story with @julianborger in Washington and @dansabbagh in London theguardian.com/world/2021/jul…

The papers from inside the #Russian presidential administration suggest Vladimir #Putin ordered a wide-ranging spy agency operation after a closed meeting of his national security council on January 22, 2016

At the time Donald #Trump was the frontrunner in the Republication Party's nomination race. A classified report by Putin’s expert department – No 32-04\ vd – recommended #Moscow use “all possible force” to support Trump's bid to become US president

The document discusses the damage western sanctions have inflicted on the Russian economy. It concludes the #Kremlin can best destabilise the US by backing the “impulsive” and “mentally unstable” Trump, a person with conservative views and an “inferiority complex”

The @guardian understands western intelligence agencies have been aware of the documents for some months and have closely studied them. The papers appear to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within #Putin’s Kremlin

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov today dismissed the report as “a great pulp fiction”. Independent experts say the documents accurately reflect Kremlin security thinking and chain of command. The security council - or Sovbez in Russian - is analogous to the Politburo

The expert report appears to confirm the Kremlin possesses kompromat on Donald #Trump, secretly collected during his many visits to Moscow. It refers to “certain events” that happened during his stay "on Russian Federation territory". No dates or locations are given

The report says: “Considering certain events that took place during his stay on Russian Federation territory (Appendix 5 – personal characteristics Donald J #Trump, paragraph 5), it is urgently necessary to use all means to promote his election to the post of President of the US”

After the Jan 22, 2016 meeting Putin set up a special and secret inter-departmental commission, the documents suggest. Its members included defence minister Sergei Shoigu; then foreign intelligence chief Mikhail Fradkov; and FSB director Alexander Bortnikov

Shoigu – who supervises #GRU military intelligence – was appointed commission chair. The three spy agencies were told to report back by Feb 1, 2016, and to submit “practical" suggestions as to how the paper’s American special "measures" might be implemented

The GRU’s phishing campaign against the DNC and Hillary #Clinton began a few weeks later. It appears to reflect what the expert paper recommended: to insert “media viruses” into US "informational-media space", which would affect “mass consciousness”, esp. among certain groups

The paper’s secret pro-#Trump operation is framed in entirely defensive terms – as a rational response to economic sanctions from the US and “satellite countries”. Trump in the White House would weaken the US’s “negotiating position” & enable Putin to pursue foreign policy goals

This, more or less, is what happened during Trump and Putin’s notorious summit in #Helsinki in 2018, when Trump said he believed Putin’s assurances that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 US presidential vote. Trump declined to comment on today's @guardian report

@guardian .@AndreiSoldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services, said the leaked documents “reflect the reality” of top Kremlin decision-making, and noted Putin "micro-manages" most special operations. Sir Andrew Wood, former British ambassador in #Moscow, called them “spell-binding”