Putin ‘uniquely positioned’ to exploit a Trump US election win

Vladimir Putin is ‘uniquely positioned’ to exploit a Donald Trump win in the US presidential race, according to the main contributor to the infamous Russia dossier.  

Igor Danchenko said that the document and other investigations making claims about Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin remain relevant as Americans go to the polls. 

He also told Metro how he has overcome ‘depression and overall disillusionment’ after being acquitted on all charges of lying to the FBI at his trial two years ago. 

Mr Danchenko, a Russian emigre now living in Arlington, Virginia, spoke as Trump and Kamala Harris go to the wire in the closely contested race for the seat in the White House. 

Assessing the nominees, the Russia-Eurasia analyst told Metro that ‘unprincipled’ Trump may see Ukraine, which is heavily dependent on US arms, as not worth saving.  

‘Trump appears willing to use Ukraine as a bargaining chip in relations with Russia, but he may also be ready to give up Ukraine altogether, judging by his social media posts and rhetoric during the campaign,’ he said.

‘Trump has no principles, he is unpredictable and unstable. He often puts his interests and PR above the interests of the country and its citizens.

‘Harris, on the opposite, is more soft-handed, careful, consistent and sees a bigger picture with American national and public interest at its centre.’ 

Mr Danchenko, 46, was thrust into the spotlight after it emerged that he had been the primary subsource for the so-called Steele dossier, which made a series of unverified claims, including that Russia has ‘kompromat’ of a sexual nature on Trump.  

The collection of memos, compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele, was published by Buzzfeed 10 days before Trump took office in January 2017.  

Mr Danchenko then became a confidential FBI informant before his identity was made public without his consent in a chain of events which led to him being put on trial for making false statements to the agency.  

It emerged that Steele’s private investigation firm, Orbis, had been subcontracted by Washington DC-based research company Fusion GPS, which in turn was paid by Hilary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to look into Trump.  

Mr Danchenko has stood by the vast majority of the material in the dossier with the caveats that he had no idea the information he gathered would be compiled into one document and released into the public realm without any nuance.

Mr Trump’s attorney general appointed special counsel John Durham in 2019 to examine the FBI’s investigation into the purported links between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign four years earlier. 

The then president and his supporters claimed that Mr Durham’s prosecutions of Mr Danchenko and others would unmask a ‘witch hunt’ against the business tycoon.

The intelligence gatherer has had to face up to being put on trial by the country he was working for and being branded a traitor in Russia after being outed as Steele’s main source 

‘Acquittal was supposed to be a victory, but it was not — everyone abandoned me, so I had to overcome depression and overall disillusionment in the system’, Mr Danchenko said, adding: ‘I chose not to politicise my work — it is not political at my intelligence work level.’ 

Mr Danchenko, now a freelance consultant specialising in Russia and Eurasia, warned that Moscow is exploiting the politicised fault lines relating to Trump’s relationship with Russia. 

‘I do think Russia remains uniquely positioned to leverage its influence on Trump,’ he said. 

‘Perception of such intelligence in America today differs along party lines. 

‘To some Democrats, the Steele dossier was a glimpse into that world while to others it was provided by The Senate Committee on Intelligence report on the Trump campaign and Russia, or the Mueller report.  

‘To Trump voters, that was politically leveraged by Trump’s own special counsel John Durham and his report.

‘Russia understands this duality of perception and exploits it.  

‘As for Trump himself, he appears to agree with Putin’s views on Ukraine. It is more than Putin’s power of persuasion. And Ukraine is a top foreign policy priority for Russia.’ 

The former FBI informant believes the agency is better prepared now to detect and counter Russian influence operations compared with the election won by Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016.

‘I worked alongside the FBI throughout the Trump presidency,’ he said.  

‘I believe the FBI has advanced in their detecting, understanding and minimising foreign influence in elections. At the same time, it is always a catch-up game, and there are new threats to mitigate.

‘Still, I don’t expect major counter-intelligence and foreign influence issues like in the previous two cycles to haunt us, perhaps with an exception of some Ukraine-related issues going forward.

‘Still, they are marginal for the actual election because America is more introvert, although not isolationist, as many would like to see it.’ 

The dossier was described as the ‘Russiagate hoax’ and a ‘fabrication’ by Joe Rogan and Elon Musk in the former’s YouTube podcast released on Monday.

But Mr Danchenko’s reliability as a confidential informant was attested to by FBI witnesses at the trial, where he was acquitted on all counts in a major blow for Mr Durham’s investigation.

The analyst believes that the Steele dossier and other materials relating to Trump’s purported Russia links remain pertinent to America’s foreign policy. 

‘The US has been increasingly inward-looking over the past eight years,’ he said. ‘Foreign policy is not a top topic in this election and foreign intelligence and counterintelligence are mostly left to professionals.  

‘Yet the Trump-Russia dossier and other documents from the Trump presidency remain relevant to understanding how US foreign policy will shape up both under Harris or Trump.’ 

Mr Danchenko now views Trump and the Kremlin as having aligned interests — regardless of what Russia may have locked away in the cabinet.

Asked if the reported links remain, he replied: ‘It depends what one sees as a “link”. In a sense of campaign links to people in the Russian government or intelligence circles, as in 2016, I don’t observe that.

‘But there are certainly shared interests and overlap and cross-pollination in the propaganda and ideology echo chamber on both sides and there are some cases of Russian election interference.’ 

Harris has a narrow lead over Trump with swing states Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nebraska’s 2nd District being critical to the poll, according to YouGov.  

Ukraine’s near three-year fight against the full-scale Russian invasion hangs on the result, as the US is Kyiv’s biggest provider of arms.  

Trump has said he will be able to ‘work out something out’ if he wins the election but has not provided any further details.  

Harris, the current vice-president, has pledged to be a firm ally of Kyiv and to ‘work to ensure Ukraine prevails in this war.’ 

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