Highly Recommended Book: Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
5 out of 5 stars MASTERPIECE: A Staggering, Compelling BRILLIANT book that will stand the test of time.
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Untitled-Camilla-Bartlett/dp/0374238715/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&ie=UTF8&keywords=putin%27s%20people&language=en_US&qid=1593832667&sr=8-1
I have read/listened to many books connected to the whole Trump/Russia saga. This book is on a category of its own. It's a very in-depth look at the development of Russia from the collapse of the USSR to the present and how the KGB and the Russian mob penetrated the government and turned Russia into a mafia state. The book describes and intertwines Putin's biography with the USSR's need to send money to the West and how that led to the development of complex money laundering networks that have bred characters like our own Donald J Trump.
This book made me understand everything about how Putin's mindset works and how his contextual experience may have formed his views and led to the installation of his puppet president in the USA; how and why the mob and the KGB forced businessmen to work for them informally or die/ lose everything. It explains how Kompromat has fueled Russia's upper echelons and how they have now exported this model to the US. Kompromat and money laundering bred the orange rat officially known as 'president'.
The book is impeccably researched, written by a person who clearly speaks Russian. The author has lived there and has a very in-depth understanding of Russian culture AND the storytelling is just as fascinating as the factual information she has gathered. It's a legit MASTERPIECE that explains what happened to Russia and how they applied their mafia-KGB-style method to the rest of the world.
Documentary "The Oligarchs" : What Ukraine's recent past can teach us about Trump, money laundering and puppet presidents
As you guys know I have a thing for documentaries and recently I came across this excellent documentary about Oligarchs in Ukraine and Russia.
It explains how oligarchs are connected in Ukraine and how they paid for the election of Viktor Yanukovych. Paul Manafort, who is now in prison, was hired by oligarchs to create Yanukovych’s campaign and lead him to win the election, which he did.
Yanukovych was not just elected, but eventually deposed after a popular uprising. Which in some ways, parallels what is happening here now. There is a passage in this documentary that shows footage of Yanukovych leaving Ukraine in the middle of the night, ‘rescued’ as it were by a Russian helicopter. He is now living in Russia.
This is not THAT different from the situation we are living with Trump. His election was managed by Manafort, he was created and propped by an adversary to harm his own country. Just like Yanukovych.
This documentary also does a fantastic job of explaining how money laundering works and how these oligarchs use shadow companies to transfer dirty money, often literally stolen from the Ukranian treasury. It also brings up some new oligarchs I had never heard of, who just happen to be connected to Giuliani and Trump. One of them in fact, was negotiating for Trump Tower Moscow…
Which reminds me of how I first found it. I was looking up "Pavel Fuchs and Giuliani" and documentary came up. Pavel Fuchs is an oligarch I had never heard of who is supposedly being investigated at SDNY in the Lev/Igor/Giuliani case. This WSJ article explains the connection between Giuliani, Fuks and Trump:
In May 2017, Giuliani Security & Safety inked a contract with the city administration of Kharkiv to streamline municipal emergency services, according to the company. A person familiar with the negotiations said Pavel Fuks, a Kharkiv native who had made a fortune in Russian real estate, paid the contract. Mr. Fuks didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on that arrangement.
About a decade earlier, Mr. Fuks had negotiated with Mr. Trump to license the Trump brand for a tower that Mr. Fuks was building, with other partners, in the Russian capital’s Moscow City, Mr. Fuks said at the time. The deal didn’t come together.
Jill Wine-Banks' memoir is coming out in February!!! YAAAYYYYY
The Watergate Girl
Jill Wine-Banks, the chic legal analyst on MSNBC who was part of the Watergate investigation has a book coming out in February. I just pre-ordered on Amazon!!!!
Can’t it to read it!!!