Who Hacked Who

Russia, Putin, the future of American-Russian relations, Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine and many other things related to Russia are, for the first time in a long while, maybe several decades, one of the main issues in the U.S. presidential race.

Putin praises Trump. Trump is in awe of Putin. The head of Trump’s election campaign, Paul Manafort, resigns amid scandal after articles appear in the American press about his ties to Russians in Moscow, his work in Kiev for exiled ex-president Viktor Yanukovich, and pro-Russian forces on his staff.

Trump’s detractors are up in arms, saying that a Republican candidate complimenting the leader of the Kremlin and all of these dubious connections are tantamount to a grave threat to U.S. national security.

Hillary Clinton calls Putin the godfather of a new global brand of right-wing nationalism. Clinton’s opponents in turn warn Americans that if she wins the election, she will undoubtedly start a war with Russia, or at the very least, a cold war.

I will say right away that I think this is complete nonsense, especially if you take into account that the people pushing this argument so forcefully are the ones who want to re-examine Russian-American relations immediately, proponents of a new, close relationship with the Kremlin. These are interesting people: You can’t throw a rock without hitting a clear conflict of interest. Take any Putinophile and they’re either a consultant for a business in Moscow, a pro-Russia lobbyist in Washington, a guest speaker from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, or at the very least, a regular face on the Russian propaganda station, Russia Today.

Recently, many influential American publications made a lot of noise, The Washington Post for one, about hackers, possibly tied to Russian intelligence services, the SVR and GRU, attacking the Democratic National Committee server and other American institutions. The Washington Post said it got this information from sources in American intelligence and in the upper ranks of the government. According to the Post, American intelligence services are looking into the possibility of voting machines being hacked into, and that the FBI told federal and local governments about possible cyber-threats. Seeing as how just the other day Putin himself had to basically justify himself in an interview with Bloomberg news, this is a big deal.

Vladimir Vladimirovich* unsurprisingly denied everything, declaring that the Russian government doesn’t have anything to do with the hacks and that it’s hard to know, really, who is even behind cyber crimes. Honestly, did anyone expect that he would admit it? It’s hard not to recall the story with Crimea.

Remember, in the beginning Putin categorically refused to admit that there was any Russian military involvement in the takeover operation in the peninsula. In Putin’s first version of the story, there was no Russian military there at all, there were only “local self-defense forces” dressed in military uniforms bought at the nearest shopping center. The story about uniforms from a store, as we remember, became a meme.

Afterwards, Putin admitted that there were indeed Russian soldiers in Crimea, supporting these mythical “self-defense forces.” When the annexation of Crimea finally blew over for Putin (too soon, I reckon), the president finally admitted that the takeover was a full-scale military operation which he personally oversaw, and in the course of this operation, the possibility of putting Russian nuclear forces on high alert was even discussed.

I think, though, that attempts to cause chaos in the American presidential race using hacker attacks and other means of meddling, unlike the story with Crimea, won’t give Putin any cause for celebration and self-congratulation: One doesn’t brag about failed secret operations.

In his interview, Putin made a couple of stunning statements. When talking about how it’s pointless for Moscow to try and influence the U.S. presidential election, Vladimir Vladimirovich gave the entire Russian community of American affairs experts an “F,” so to speak. It turns out that even our specialists in the foreign ministry don’t really have a finger on the pulse or understand the details of domestic policy in the United States. Sergei Lavrov and company are nervously smoking in the corner, or even eating humble pie.

Maybe Vladimir Vladimirovich is right, since in 2014, so-called “experts” on Ukrainian affairs seemingly convinced Putin that the residents of Eastern Ukraine, up to the Dnepr River, would greet the polite “little green men” with flowers and bread and salt.** But, in fact, they were met with volunteer battalions and the “Novorossiya” project went belly-up.*** So from that point on, Putin could be justified in being wary that even experts on American politics would risk being similarly “realistic” when it comes time for a real-world test.

But that’s not all: Putin’s second statement in the Bloomberg interview was even more radical, especially if you read into it. “Listen,” said Putin, “Does it even matter who hacked the data? The important thing is that the content that was given to the public.”

Listen, but that statement means exactly the following: What’s the difference whether it was us that hacked the server or not? Let’s not talk about the fact of the hack, but what we managed to steal from these servers.

Putin continued: “There’s no need to distract the public from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it.”

Wow, you call those minor issues? In Putin’s opinion, suspicions that Russian intelligence forces could have been responsible for breaking into the servers of one of the two biggest political parties in the U.S. whose candidate is most likely (at least at present) to win the presidential election is distracting the American public from the real issues!

I wonder, what would Vladimir Vladimirovich say if it turned out that some hackers linked to American intelligence services tried to hack into the servers of the United Russia campaign headquarters? Just imagine the hysterics from all the Kremlinites! That’s what I thought.

*Editor’s note: Vladimir Vladimirovich is a reference to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, current president of the Russian Federation.

**Editor’s note: This term is a traditional greeting ceremony in rural Slavic culture.

***Editor’s note: Novorossiya is a historical term of the Russian Empire denoting a region north of the Black Sea which is currently part of Ukraine.