Andrei Piontkovsky

Senior Adviser of Free Russia Foundation

Feb 21, 2018
Bortnikov – the Bostonian in DC

In my article published the day before New Year’s Eve I posited that Russian diplomacy would devote all its efforts to convince their “US partners” to keep Putin and his personal financial guard out of the “Kremlin Report.” As the fateful January 29th deadline kept drawing mercilessly closer, the Kremlinites desperately had to find some kind of dramatic blackmail. And at the eleventh hour, a troika of Russia’s top security officials arrived in DC.

By then, the “Kremlin Report” had already been finalized by the agencies that drafted it and was ready to go to the Congress. As prescribed by August 2nd, 2017, Act, the Report included a list of individuals closest to Putin who were most intimately involved in his military and financial crimes.

On January 29th (when the Act-prescribed 180 days to draft the “Kremlin Report” expired), DC spent the day in anticipation. However, it was only learned the next morning that the report had in fact been presented at the stroke of midnight. The delay was apparently due to significant last-minute changes introduced at a very high government level. You will recall that the  Section 241 of the Act (concerning individual sanctions) required that the executive branch list the individuals close to Putin and involved in his crimes, as well as detail each such individual’s financial information, including net worth, sources of income, corruption schemes, property held by their family members, and include a comprehensive list of all such assets held in the US jurisdiction. The crucial last-minute change was the following: this detailed financial information was classified, hidden from the public eye in a special secret section of the Report.

While the “Kremlin Report” was being drafted, the very credible US institution, the National Bureau of Economic Research, estimated that private Russian assets in the US total around 1 Trillion Dollars (more precisely, between 0.8 and 1.3 Trillion). This number is mind-boggling. Even the most merciless critics of Putin’s regime had no idea the robbery was so large-scale. The Act required that this Russian Trillion is broken down in detail: How much belongs to Abramovich, how much to, say, Mordashov and to the various frontmen who hold Putin’s personal assets.

This now classified document numbers hundreds of pages and is potentially devastating to the Russian Kleptocracy for two reasons. First: Yes, it’s no secret in Russia that its rulers steal but that’s just general knowledge whereas detailed information about the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from Russia by its rulers will have a great political impact, with consequences that are hard to predict. This is not even the robbery of the century – it’s the robbery of the millennium, unprecedented in world history. Never in the history of human conflict have so many been robbed of so much by so few.

The second reason the Report is devastating to the Russian Kleptocracy concerns the consequences of the Report for the Russian Trillion’s beneficiaries. When the classified portion of the Report is disclosed, its contents will easily enable the judicial authorities (with no new sanctions or other political decisions) to charge those named in the Report with money laundering, freeze their assets, confiscate these assets, and ultimately return the stolen goods to the victims of these crimes, the Russian people. In fact, the British government is already doing this, requiring Russian mega‑conmen (starting with RF First Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov) to explain the source of their wealth. There is no way Russian leaders could have made this type of money legally during non-work hours.

And that’s exactly what the Russian elite has been fearing, which is why panic, and hysteria reigned on all Russian political TV shows on January 29th. During one broadcast, for example, a prominent public servant exclaimed: “Trump betrayed us! Now we have to reveal all the dirty laundry we have on him.” Intrigued, the host  asked: “Oh, we got dirty laundry on him?”- to which the politician exclaimed: “Sure we do!”

Compared to the day prior, the atmosphere on the same TV screens on January 30th was night and day, and we heard joyful exclamations “Trumpie is ours again!”, while Putin spent the day sounding off on how Russia must keep constructively working with the US (first and foremost, naturally, in the joint fight against Islamic terrorism).

For the umpteenth time, Putin passionately recited the story with the Tsarnayevs brothers, saying Moscow warned the US about the Tsarnayevs in 2011 but was ignored, and in 2013 the Boston Marathon bombing took place. Why does Putin permanently bring up the Tsarnaev story? The answer is simple: this is a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. In retelling the story over and over, Putin deliberately leaves out a key linking element.

Yes, it’s true that Moscow warned the US – twice – that the Tsarnayevs were dangerous Islamic extremists and potential terrorists. However, Moscow furnished no evidence that would enable the US authorities to prosecute the Tsarnayevs.

Still, after being alerted by Moscow, the FBI questioned Tsarnaev the elder – twice. Nevertheless, in 2012, Tsarnaev (now fully aware that the Russian authorities have declared him a dangerous Islamist extremist) traveled to Moscow. No, he didn’t find some secret trail to smuggle himself into Russia: He traveled quite openly, using his own passport, boarding a Delta flight to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. He could only go to Russia if he had no doubt he’d be totally safe there (and why wouldn’t he be – after all, he was going to see his friends and mentors). Naturally, upon arrival, he was met by competent Russian authorities, under whose watchful eye he remained over the next six months or so while traveling in the Caucasus region and meeting with Islamist underground activists. Those activists were done away with, yet Tsarnayev remained safe and unharmed, returning to Moscow and, with his mentors’ blessing, boarding another Delta flight to the US, to meet his fate. The Boston bomber was loaded.

The story continues. In 2013 a group of US senators came to Moscow to investigate Tsarnaev’s Russian ties. After initially being given the run-around and told that Tsarnaev had never been to Russia, the senators then fell for a hoax when the Russians used a stool pigeon who promised to provide intel on Tsarnayev. What followed was an on-camera arrest of a US diplomat, quite theatrically orchestrated by the Russians. Thereafter Ambassador McFaul came to rescue the diplomat from the FSB, whereupon the Americans asked no more questions about Tsarnaev.

There is a great deal of direct, indirect and psychological evidence that, in 2012, Tsarnayev the elder spent six months in Russia getting ready for his 2013 mission in the US. Until and unless the Americans find the courage to face the truth about their Russian “partners,” those “partners” will keep on pulling the wool over the Americans’ eyes under the guise “fighting Islam terrorists together” – just like they did at a very high level on the eve of the “Kremlin Report” deadline.

Three war criminals (I call them that based on the aftermath of their ongoing actions in Ukraine and Syria) – Naryshkin, Bortnikov, and Korobov – unexpectedly arrived in the US, unhindered by the fact that two of them are named on the sanctions lists. While in the US, these three men met with their US colleagues, including CIA Director Pompeo. As seen from an interview with Director Pompeo and a handful of Russian and US publications, this trio used the same old tried-and-true blackmail methods Russia has been using throughout the five years following the Boston marathon bombing.

These three “nice guys” came to warn the American people of grave danger: After wrapping up the military campaigns in Iraq and Syria, hundreds, or even thousands, of Islamic terrorists of Russian and post-Soviet origin will be traveling to other countries and might end up in the US. Now wait a minute: the Kremlinites sent hundreds of terrorists to the Middle East from Russia, then proudly reported that all these terrorists have been wiped out ten times over by their glorious aerospace forces.  But now it turns out that apparently thousands of these terrorists are still out there, and if not for the resplendent Naryshkin, Bortnikov, and Korobov warning the US about this and taking themselves the necessary measures, these terrorists would be flooding the US, blowing up American cities. So, of course, you have to work with these great guys who have taken the time to warn their partners of a looming threat.

Putin’s entire crew of agents of influence in DC – the various simes, rojanskys, kissingers and grahams – are once again belting out in unison the mantra they have learned by heart: “We need the Russians, we need the Russians! We have to work with the Russians or we’ll get blown up in our own cities. And in order to make sure the Russians cooperate with us, we must forget about petty little disagreements on Ukraine and other issues. And we should forever abandon the idea of sanctions against Russia’s political leadership.”

The Kremlin has already used this cheap con dozens of times worldwide, and now the Americans fell for it once again. This time, one of the Boston Marathon bombing masterminds took part in the con in an especially callous way. It’s no accident that, whenever he brings up the Tsarnayevs, Putin says: “Bortnikov and I,” “I assigned this task to Bortnikov…” And now this Bortnikov-the Bostonian has come to the US to teach the Americans, and Bortnikov’s class is not on how to make cabbage soup, but on how to make American cities safe. For a true chekist (and Comrade Bortnikov recently told us he’s proud of each of the hundred years of this criminal organization’s (the KGB/FSB)) history, it’s just as much fun to pull the wool over the CIA head’s eyes as it is to shoot enemies of the people using Felix Edmundovich [Dzerzhinsky’s] Mauser. The degree of the Americans’ failure to understand who Mr. Putin and who Mr. Bortnikov are baffles the mind.

On January 31, I took part, I took part in the Atlantic Council seminar where the late-night metamorphosis of the “Kremlin Report” was discussed. At the seminar, I, like other speakers, ascribed the “Kremlin Report’s” overnight transformation to the Russian Troika’s DC visit. While discussing the January 30th reaction by Moscow, (which included yet another one of Putin’s diatribes on the Tsarnayevs), I did a little experiment: I asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they knew that Putin’s canonical account (of Russia warning the US about the Tsarnaevs) is incomplete because it leaves out the fact that Tsarnaev the elder spent six months in Russia in 2012 under total control of the FSB, and returned to the US unscathed and free from the FSB’s grasp. Not a single hand went up in the audience. Seminar participants honestly knew nothing about this and asked me lots of questions after the seminar. It’s worth mentioning that these weren’t just random people off the street – these 100 or so attendees were longtime experts in the security field or US-Russian relations. I was dumbfounded by how deep and pervasive the conspiracy of silence regarding the circumstances of the Boston marathon bombing run.

This silence on the subject is due to reasons of US domestic policy. The predominantly liberal US media vehemently flail Trump on a daily basis for displaying even a hint of flavor to the Putin regime. Yet the unspoken rule of political sparring doesn’t allow the media to bring up the Boston Marathon bombing’s Putinesque roots, because if the media were to do so, these fiery Democrats would have to admit that it was the Obama administration that deliberately hushed up the truth behind the Boston Marathon Bombing, the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11.

One would think that by raising the Boston Marathon bombing issue, Trump could easily call the Democrats hypocrites and once and for all smite their accusations against him concerning his mysterious Putinophilia. However, this brutal alpha male’s puzzling timidity toward his Russian counterpart is not fake, it’s real.

And so, the American political class finds itself in a two-party trap of its own making and is forced to tamely chew the cud force-fed to it by the Kremlin called “our common interests in fighting Islam terror.”  On the night of January 29th, the Kremlin Special Troika and President Trump jointly halted (albeit hopefully not for long) the “Kremlin Report’s” devastating informational and financial blow. It’s worth noting that this blow would not be aimed at Russia, its target would be the criminal Russian Kleptocracy that’s been robbing and destroying Russia for a quarter century.

The stakes couldn’t be any higher right now: either the hundreds of classified pages of the Report are disclosed in the paramount interests of the Russian and American people, or else the US voluntarily becomes a long-term hostage of the Kremlin Kleptocracy.

In order to break free from the trap of “cooperating with Russia in the fight against Islamist terrorism,” the US Congress should undertake a real investigation into all the circumstances of the Boston Marathon Bombing and into the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts of supplying ISIS with militants from Russia and other former Soviet countries.

I would strongly recommend the Congressmen start by reading СNN National Security Analyst Michael Weiss’s brilliant article Russia’s Double Game with Islamic Terror. Published back in October 2013, the article was not heeded by the Obama administration and is yet to be read and heeded by the Trump administration. This is so perhaps due to the fact that, as far as I know, Michael Weiss is the only American asking very obvious questions, hard as they may be for those defending “cooperating with Russia.” Weiss asks:

But how did Tamerlan manage to arrive at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in January 2012, then proceed to Dagestan, after the FSB was obviously aware of his purported plans to join “bandit underground groups?”

How did Tamerlan get from Makhachkala to Moscow, then board a plane back to New York, if he was wanted for questioning by the Russian security services?

For any observer in Russia irrespective of his political sympathies, these questions are rhetorical, and the answer to both is the same.

To help the Congressmen with their investigation at least four people can shed valuable light on the subject. One is former Secretary of State John Kerry (who in 2013 accompanied a delegation of congressmen to Russia); another is former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; the third one is the US diplomat and intelligence officer Ryan Fogle, who was arrested while trying to get information on Tamerlan  Tsarnaev’s sojourn in Russia, and, finally, there’s the younger Tsarnaev brother, who may well talk as the prospects of the electric chair are looming.