Hey @GOP: The reason Putin did not invade Ukraine while Trump was president was because he didn't have to. Trump was ready to hand Ukraine over to him on a silver platter, which would have saved Putin a lot of money and bloodshed. 1/
Why go to war when the US president will help achieve your goal without it? Remember that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intel agent, worked directly with Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager. Kilimnik handed him a Ukraine Peace Plan with plans to install a pro-Russia gov. 2/
The disinformation campaign to oust Ambassador Yovanovich from Kyiv, to push the nonsense that Burisma and Hunter Biden had gotten up to no good, the extortion attempt on Zelensky to feed that narrative and open an investigation against Biden or no weapons for Ukraine... 3/
ALL OF THIS is why Putin did not invade when Trump was president. Putin's investment in the GOP, in conservative politicians, organizations, media, etc. was paying off. And it still is paying off! Cut the shit and get on the right side of history. 4/
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As many of you know, I have designated myself The Yacht Watcher and have done some Twitter tours of the mega yachts of oligarchs and other billionaires in Barcelona's port.
A little background on MY SOLARIS. This wee little dinghy is 140m (461 ft) in length. That's actually pretty small as mega yachts go. For comparison, Abramovich's OTHER mega yacht [insert eye roll gif], ECLIPSE, is 162.5m (533 ft). 3/
I’m not an expert in Putin psychology, but I’m well versed in recent Russian influence operations, and none of those were/are done in a vacuum. My guess is those successes are playing into his calculus and he truly believes the West is so polarized and corrupt, he will win 1/
He has made Russia a major factor in European energy security. He has bought (coerced?) a lot of goodwill from many European and US politicians and media influencers. In fact, many of our own politicians and “media” companies learned tactics from watching Russia 2/
So far, we’ve seen incredible unity from the West. Will it hold once this thing kicks into high gear? Will Johnson really be able to withstand the blowback once London (already reeling from Brexit) loses money and business due to sanctions? 3/
New from @zachsdorfman
Russia has been providing indirect support to right-wing groups in the US. Those of us who follow this long suspected it. I also have a hunch we will eventually uncover more direct connections. See next tweet 1/ news.yahoo.com/us-intelligenc…
.@john_sipher, @AshaRangappa_, and I wrote about this way back before the 2020 election, with some specific examples of Russia providing material support to right-wing groups in Europe. Why wouldn't they attempt the same thing in the US? 2/ justsecurity.org/69024/why-the-…
For anyone who has followed my tours of Barcelona’s port, here’s an interesting article about the city trying to attract even more billionaires and their yachts. nytimes.com/2022/01/10/bus…
Super fun when we combine this with @navalny's calls to stop allowing Russia's billionaires to use the West as their playground. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…
I took this panorama shot of the Bcn port today. Off the top of my head, I spot four Russian superyachts. 1. Solaris (Abramovich) 2. Galactica Super Nova (Vagit Alekperov) 3. Aurora (Andrey Molchanov) 4. Sea Rhapsody (Andrey Kostin)
It sure looks like something similar happened in Italy with the Lombardy-Russia Cultural Association, which claimed to support cultural&other exchanges between Italy & Russia. It was run by Gianluca Savoini, a consigliere to Matteo Salvini, head of the political party La Lega16/
Savoini is currently under investigation by Italian prosecutors after he was caught on tape allegedly negotiating an oil deal with Russians that would provide kickbacks to La Lega, just in time for EU parliamentary elections back in 2018. 17/ buzzfeednews.com/article/albert…
What are some other cultural, academic, or business exchanges we’ve seen involving Russia? Well, this young lass comes to mind: Mariia Butina, who was convicted in 2018 of being a foreign agent and spent 18 months in prison in Virginia. 18/