Ukrainian Peace Meeting Has Politics Over It

There is a great story in the Wall Street Journal today that ties some pieces together to show how Russia has managed to take over the separatist movement in Ukraine's south-east and push out the locals who were in charge.  Of course they had good reason to after those same folks shot down a civilian airliner with a Russian missile, then stayed around to try to control the situation.  The Russians had no way to get away from that story, in spite of trying really hard.  But that is not all there is to that part of the story.  I can see some other aspects of this that tie some other things to the Russians involvement.

You may remember that Paul Manafort was working for a well known politician and former President of the Ukraine, pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.  So did Vladislav Surkov, the person referenced in the WSJ article.  The Russians may have hired 10,000 people to work on the resurrection of the man who put soldiers into the main square in Kiev to stomp on a revolution that succeeded because of it.  He was not one of the good guys, but to the Russians, he was their guy.  

So The New York Times and CNN (not my best bet for unbiased coverage on this) both say Manafort's company got millions of dollars to help Yanukovych, something Manafort denies.  That part is being investigated by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, so we are not going to know much about the authenticity of any of this part until that investigation is over - possibly in my lifetime, but don't count on it.  CNN still believes there was collusion between the Trump White House and the Russians before the national election - even if very few other do.  The Russian propaganda press has managed to keep this story alive longer than anyone thought possible, and are feeding parts of it with a story from Kiev that tries to prove Manafort got those payments.  The New York Times published that last week.  Manaforts's name shows up on a list of potentials recipients of money from Yanukovych's party, though something I noticed about this makes it look like a setup.  

The Russians like to have people who work for them sign for money, an old intelligence trick to make sure your payee can be pressured later.  Many people signed for the money, but Manafort did not.  It wouldn't have been that hard to add his name to the list and then leak that list to the press.  The Russians will never stop interfering with our government, but we should make it more painful for them to keep trying.