‘Trump is Again Ours,’ Russian Military Journal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 6 – Viktor Kamenev, a commentator for the influential Russian military journal, Voyennoye obozreniye, says that the visit to Washington by the three heads of Russia’s security services as well as a series of other events in Washington, Davos and Dubai prove that “Trump is again ours.”

            The simultaneous visit of the heads of the three Russian special services, the SVR, the FSB and the GRU, to Washington was “an unprecedented event,” Kamenev says. Officially, they declared they were there to discuss cooperation in countering terrorism “but what else could they say” (topwar.ru/135288-tramp-opyat-nash.html).

            The Russians and the Americans could easily have discussed “’the struggle with terrorism’ in another place, without fanfare,” he continues. But they chose to have a meeting in the US capital, apparently at the request of the American side but with the Russians interested in getting the American president to end the sanctions regime.

            Moreover, the Voennoye obozreniye commentator says, the Russian side travelled on regular airlines “in order to ensure that their visit could not remain unnoticed” and the Russian ambassador in Washington made sure that it was covered in the American press as an important event and that “the visit of the Russian special service heads had been completed successfully.”

            In order to understand what is going on, Kamenev continues, it is necessary to take note of the fact that “in the US a real war of elites is going on or a fratricide within the ruling class” between the neo-con globalists who lost the 2016 elections and the supporters of President Trump.

            Many of the former had suggested that Trump would have left office by the end of last year, Kamenev says. But “this didn’t happen. Donald Trump has held on to the Oval Office and now is taking the initiative into his own hands.” 

            “The main instrument of the neo-cons in the struggle with Trump were the American special services,” the Moscow military commentator says. “It was precisely they who organized the sensational ‘leaks’ to the press and the file supposedly showing ‘the conspiracy of Trump with the Russians.’”

            But Kamenev says, Trump “somehow was able to take under control the special services” in part by his alliance with Republicans in Congress like Representative Devon Nunes whose report “in fact reveals a conspiracy of FBI agents and the Justice Department against President Trump.” That report may lead to “a massive purge of the FBI, other US special services, and the Justice Department as well as a political earthquake in Congress.”

            According to Kamenev, “the special services are the main instrument of American democracy; and if Trump masters them completely, then the days of the fake globalist press and of the Congress which has fallen under its sway are numbered.”

            The Russian commentator says no one in Moscow should be misled by the statements of Michael Pompeo, the CIA director, that Russia interfered in the American elections. He is a player in Washington, “the first victim of any war is truth,” and what one needs to watch is not his words but his “hands and feet.”

            Kamenev points out that the Washington visit of the three Russian security chiefs “took place after the Volker-Surkov summit in Dubai. A chance coincidence?” The Russian analyst doesn’t think so. Nor in the context of both these events is Trump’s snubbing of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at Davos.

            “It is difficult to say how the fight of President Trump with the neo-cons and with the Congress standing behind them,” Kamenev says; “but the president has gone over into the attack.” That is why the Russian security chiefs were invited to Washington. Trump is showing that he feels free to do this regardless of what the other side says. 

            “For Russia,” he argues, “it is important that this war of the special services in America have an impact on the Ukrainian question.” The American neo-cons want a war in Ukraine.  “Trump in contrast is not interested now in a military escalation in Ukraine: it can interfere with his suppression of those pursuing him. Therefore, now he is ours.” (emphasis added)