Let's talk about Krasnov
It's time to take a serious look at the evidence of Trump's relationship with Russia
We all know the story of the Steele Dossier - a collection of raw intelligence reports about Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia which was leaked online in the early days of 2017. It set off a flurry of speculation, investigation and counter-claims. At the end of this process, the institutional media in the United States appeared to have reached a consensus, that it was a “a notorious dossier of unproven assertions and rumors” (New York Times), “a series of investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources” (CNN), and it was “a garbage document” (Bob Woodward).
At this point I should remind readers that I am a friend and former colleague of Christopher Steele and you can decide for yourselves if that’s a reason not to credit what I write.
Continuons!
Chris, by his own admission, has pointed out that intelligence is rarely 100% correct and has put a figure of 70%-90% accuracy on the content of the dossier. Much of the focus inevitably fell on the the so-called ‘pee-pee tape’ - the allegation that Trump had prostitutes perform golden showers on the bed in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Hotel where he was staying and where, previously, the Obamas had spent a night. It’s tiresome but not surprising that the majority of the focus was on Trump’s depraved sexual proclivities, but the much more important bald facts in the dossier are ones that are worth examining, regardless of what happened at the Ritz-Carlton. These are:
That Donald Trump had a longstanding business relationship with Russian money
That Russia chose to interfere in the US election on Trump’s side
That Vladimir Putin made this choice to interfere on Trump’s side
And that Trump knew about it and was happy for it to happen
Every single one of these allegations has since been proven by sources completely unrelated to the Steele Dossier. If you choose to dismiss Steele, you can demonstrate all of the other things are true from unrelated sources. For example: the Guardian reporter and Russia expert Luke Harding wrote at length about Trump’s first visit to Moscow, at the height of the Cold War, a trip organised by the KGB. Steele assessed (in 2016) that Russia’s cultivation of Trump went back “at least five years”. Harding demonstrated it went back at least thirty years. Let us not forget that Trump’s first wife was Ivana Zelníčková, a Czech citizen whose country at that time was one of the Soviet Union’s closest and most effective intelligence allies.
The Role of Russian Money
As everybody knows, in the 1980s Trump’s businesses were over-leveraged, constantly in the deepest of debts and skirting with (or falling into) bankruptcy. He was rescued in the early 1990s by Deutsche Bank after American lenders would no longer touch him. At that time (and to this day) Deutsche Bank had a very close relationship with Russian money. Deutsche Bank’s Moscow branch helped Russian oligarchs move at least $10 billion out of Russia using a process called "mirror trading". In 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined $630 million by US and UK regulators for its role in this scheme. Deutsche Bank has long-standing financial ties to Russian oligarchs and major Russian businesses, including:
VTB Bank (a Kremlin-linked bank under sanctions).
Alfa Bank (owned by Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman & German Khan).
Gazprom & Rosneft (state-controlled energy giants).
In Trump’s case there are numerous points of evidence that he relied on Russian financing to keep his businesses going. This is not from the fringes of the internet, but from mainstream, highly credible outlets. Take for example this Reuters report from 2017 “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings”. Or look up the history of Bayrock, which was established to funnel Russian money into New York real estate and which was deeply intertwined with the Trump Organisation. Or recall that Eric Trump stated in 2014: “we have all the funding we need coming out of Russia”. Eric was speaking specifically to rebut allegations that the Trump Organisation was struggling to gain financing. Again, none of this is drawn from Steele’s dossier, but corroborates the central claim of Trump’s business relationship with Russia.
Why is Little Marco so Nervous?
At the car crash White House meeting on 28 February at which Trump and Vice-President JD Vance unleashed what looked like a pre-planned ambush on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, many people noticed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting in stony silence and looking as if he had swallowed a bag full of of lemons. Perhaps this was because he was recalling his own contribution to the subject of Trump’s connections to Russia. When it comes to this issue, the best and most comprehensive source is the “REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE ON RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTION”. This highly detailed work compiled with the full resources of the US Senate can be regarded as a definitive, if not final account of these events. It was initiated under a Democrat-led Senate Intelligence Committee but had bipartisan support from the Republicans on the committee, including Rubio, from the beginning. By the time of the final release of the later volumes, Rubio was chairing the committee and publicly defended its conclusions. What were they?
It confirmed Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. For example, the hacking of Clinton’s emails, which became a major part of the story of the campaign, was orchestrated by the Russians to help Trump.
It confirmed that this had been ordered by Vladimir Putin himself (note the overlap with Steele’s findings)
It found extensive contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials, though it did not conclude there was a criminal conspiracy.
Rubio, as chairman, endorsed the report’s findings, saying the Russian government posed a serious intelligence threat.
The Kompromat Files
It also, in passages rarely examined in detail by the media, covers Trump’s sexual activities whilst travelling to Moscow. For example, during his 1996 visit to examine possible real estate ventures, Trump had “a brief relationship with a Russian woman” he met in Moscow. Trump himself told the press at the time “He recalled with pleasure the excellent company with which he spent time in Moscow”.1
Even at the time, his behaviour stuck out as odd, and was described as such by those that were there: “Trump had a meeting in the Moscow mayor's office and he showed up with two beautiful young women on his arm, and people thought that was kind of strange.”2
On the most memorable allegations from the Steele Dossier, regarding the activities at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel during Trump’s 2013 visit, the report has the following to say:
[A] former executive at Marriott International, of which Ritz Carlton is a part, said that shortly after the 2013 Miss Universe contest he overheard two other Marriott executives at a small corporate gathering discussing a recording from one of the elevator security cameras at the Ritz Carlton Moscow. One of the Marriot executives who was involved in the conversation-previously a manager of the Ritz Carlton Moscow-had clearly seen the video, which allegedly showed Trump in an elevator involved with several women who the discussant implied to be "hostesses." The executive who had seen the video had asked the other, more senior, executive what to do with the recording. The former executive said the two discussants then left to continue the conversation in a more private location, and he did not hear anything further.
…
Michael Cohen has testified that he became aware of allegations about a tape of compromising information in late 2013 or early 2014, shortly after the Miss Universe 2013 pageant and significantly prior to the 2016 election cycle. The alleged tape related to Trump and prostitutes. Cohen has testified that he discussed the allegations with Trump, who asked Cohen to find out where the allegations were coming from. Trump told Cohen that the allegations were not true. Cohen has said that in 2014 or 2015 he asked a friend, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, to see if Rtskhiladze could find out if the tape was real.
Cohen estimated that, over the course of several years, six different people contacted him regarding the alleged tape. Cohen stated that one individual threatened to release the alleged information if the individual was not paid a large sum of money. Cohen indicated that he would have been willing to pay the individual to suppress the information if it could be verified, but Cohen was never shown any evidence. Cohen has also said that individuals in the media contacted him regarding a tape of Trump.3
It is worth sharing the text message exchange between Cohen and Rtskhiladze, a Georgian-American businessman with deep connections in Moscow, from the time, which is in the Report:
Rtskhiladze later claimed the tapes were fake. This report also provides detailed evidence that the hotel in question was under the control of the FSB and that it would be perfectly possible for cameras and other recording equipment to be placed in the rooms of high-profile guests.4
Let’s just re-state that none of the sources here are the ones that Steele relied on for his report. So there may be an element of corroboration, of multiple sources pointing to the same underlying facts. This doesn’t prove that Trump acted out with prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton in 2013, but what we have is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to that. Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. This was a context in which, by his own proud admission, Trump liked to pursue sexually exploitative behaviours. In 1997 he boasted, regarding the contest: “I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed. No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner.” In 2005 he stated: “You know, I’m the owner of the Miss Universe pageant, so I get away with things.” This comes in the wider context of his being an adjudicated rapist with a string of sexual assault claims. There is little reason to doubt that he would have behaved differently in Moscow to how he behaved in other contexts, as the evidence from his 1996 visit (not relating to Miss Universe) demonstrates.
We can all speculate around the sequence of events and pressures following Access Hollywood that might have left Trump in Russia - and Putin’s - debt. Not a monetary debt of the sort that he could easily extricate himself from, but a political debt that was the difference between the success and failure of his entire presidential campaign.
The Access Hollywood Moment and a Faustian Pact
The other important point is about the impact of this on Trump’s own loyalties: people have often argued that “you can’t blackmail Trump - he has no shame.” On the face of it, this seems reasonable, but you have to consider this in the context of the “Access Hollywood” tape and the crisis in his election campaign in 2016. On 7 October that year, an old interview between Trump and Billy Bush, a black sheep of the eponymous presidential family emerged, in which Trump boasted: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” If such a thing were to emerge in 2025 one can imagine the Republican Party lining up to justify their leader, explaining that grabbing the pussy is an American tradition. Trump’s White House spokeswoman would tell the ‘woke’ media that women actually like it. But things were different in 2016: Trump’s own party were unhappy that he was the candidate and there was genuine, publicly expressed disgust at the recording. Even Trump’s monosyllabic wife Melania responded that “[t]he words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me”. In response to the revelations, the world was greeted with one of the rarest things, a Trump apology:
I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them.
Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.
It is impossible to imagine him making such a statement in 2025, but October 2016 was a very different time. What the text exchange between Cohen and Rtskhiladze shows us is that there was believed to be a real risk of a tape emerging of Trump cavorting with prostitutes in Moscow in October, just at the lowest point of his 2016 campaign. This is not about whether you can blackmail Trump, but about whether - at a certain point in time - the release of a tape could have killed off his political career. Even if such a tape did not exist, the threat of its existence would be something that the Trump campaign had reason to fear. We can all imagine a sequence of events and pressures from that moment that might have left Trump feeling himself in Russia - and Putin’s - debt. Not a monetary debt of the sort that he could easily extricate himself from, but a political debt that was the difference between the success and failure of his entire presidential campaign.
A Genius Move
The degree to which Trump has a soft spot for Vladimir Putin is widely and repeatedly evidenced. Many people have assumed, I think fairly, that it’s largely a cultural phenomenon: Trump admires dictators and he admires great wealth. Putin is a dictator who may be the richest man in the world. He runs Russia as a criminal self-enrichment network and it is clear that Trump would like to run America in a similar way. There is also a cultural element which appeals to many of Trump’s people - Putin is a homophobe, social-conservative and self-proclaimed Christian nationalist. I doubt Trump himself cares much about any of this, but it helps with his supporters. To me, it seems unlikely that these facts alone explain Trump’s continued choice to be supportive of Russia in general and Putin in particular. During the 28 February meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump described himself and Putin as fellow victims of a global conspiracy against the two of them, stating: “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt.” Trump feels a personal loyalty to Putin which is not merely explicable by a general liking for his style.
Krasnov
Earlier this month, Alnur Mussayev, a retired Kazakh intelligence official who had been in the Soviet-era KGB claimed that Trump had been recruited by the agency in the 1980s and given the codename Krasnov. (It is a fairly common name in Russia which means ‘red’ - is this an allusion to Trump’s orange skin?) I don’t give too much credence to these claims - why would only one person have come forward with this information up to this point? Why did it only emerge now? Given that Ukraine had every incentive to release this during the Biden years and there is considerable Ukrainian infiltration of Russia’s intelligence services, it seems unlikely that the only person in the know is an ageing Kazakh. In 2021, Yuri Shvets, a former KGB officer, claimed that Trump had been “under cultivation” by the KGB since 1987 (the date of his first Russia visit). Shvets is a far more serious source than Mussayev and many other things he has provided information on have proved correct, such as the events surrounding the assassination in London of former KGB intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko.
It’s important to understand that what Shvets has said is not the same as saying that Trump was a “recruited” asset: the allegation is not that he had consciously agreed to work for the Russians, taking instructions and so forth, but that he was regarded as “extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.” This assessment appears entirely accurate and reflects the way he is handled by friend and foe alike (look at Starmer and Macron’s recent meetings). This sort of ‘asset’ is generally described as an “agent of influence”: someone who can be manipulated into helping Russia by a combination of ego, vanity and naked self-interest.
Conclusion
We know that Trump has been of interest to the KGB since 1987. We know that he behaved in a potentially compromising manner on subsequent visits to Moscow. We know that the specific threat of a ‘tape’ being released around the time of the crisis in his 2016 campaign was a major concern within his camp, and that Russian-aligned allies of Trump, such as Rtskhiladze were trying to help quash these rumours. This doesn’t prove the allegation that Trump is a Russian agent of influence or the claims in the Steele Dossier. But it seems a reasonable analytical conclusion that Trump has a political debt to the Russians which could prove problematic for him if fully ventilated. Steele’s Dossier is therefore an important and useful source in understanding this story. Trump’s potential kompromat combines with his cultural-political alignment with kleptocracy and dictatorship that makes him a Russian agent of influence. This was played out in ghastly detail in the 28 February meeting in the White House. In considering our response to America’s abandonment of the West, we need to be realistic about its leadership. I hope this post helps us to do that.
Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian Interference, Volume 5, p.651 https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf
Ibid, p.654
Ibid pp. 657-659
Ibid p. 662