Have Russians Left Yet?

Pavel Sharikov, an expert at the Institute for USA and Canada Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, talks about Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election

The Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume of the “Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election” report. It looks like the thousand-page long volume will be the last official document examining this topic. For the last four years, representatives of all branches of the U.S. government were trying to make sense of what happened in 2016, and had no luck finding the ties between Russian campaigns and President Donald Trump.

One could write a screenplay for a fascinating political thriller based on this report. It provides a detailed account of all connections between Trump’s partners and supporters and Russian actors, from Miss Universe pageants to the Trump Tower project in Moscow. The report also outlines all major players in Russia’s current political and business establishments and their contacts with Trump’s associates. The document did not focus so much on the notorious issues of the WikiLeaks email dump and the activities of the Russian troll factory, since they had been extensively covered in the four volumes released previously.

The fifth volume of the investigation report draws the final line in refuting collusion between Trump and the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. However, the U.S. Democrats have used the alleged collusion multiple times to pressure the president and the Republican Party.

For a very long time, the protracted Robert Mueller investigation created an impression that Trump was going to be impeached for his connections with the Russians, but that did not happen.* As a response to the allegations, a serial turnover in the Trump administration ensued. For example, Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn resigned less than a month after being appointed.

Russian interference allowed the U.S. Congress to expand its role in foreign policy. The sanctions against Russia imposed by the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, can only be lifted with the approval of the Congress. Furthermore, the controversial Countering America’s Adversaries through the Sanctions Act limits the president’s power.

The Democratic Party has benefited from “Russiagate” in many instances. Most of the U.S. citizens accused of having controversial connections with Russian actors were either charged or sustained severe costs to their reputations. Their Russian counterparts are now under sanctions in many respects thanks to the Democrats’ efforts. These results were a success for the Democratic Party.

Russian interference was the reason why the U.S. restructured its intelligence organizations in major ways. According to some public officials’ statements, as of 2020, the United States is fully equipped to deter Russian aggression in cyberspace during the election. Hackers from China, Iran and North Korea are also on the list of potential threats.

Even though the 2020 election campaign is coming to its final stage, we have not heard about Russian hostile actions against any of the candidates. The Democratic primaries and the party convention went off without scandals, even though most of the campaigning and the voting was done online, which had offered unprecedented opportunities for meddling.

This does not mean that the U.S. politicians have stopped accusing Russia of interfering in the election. However, now they perceive the Russian threat more as background noise, as yet another stereotype. The rhetoric surrounding Russia has changed. There is some hope that if Trump does not get reelected and the Democratic Party manages to increase its majority in Congress, they will focus much less on Russia’s interference.

*Editor’s note: The U.S. House of Representatives approved articles of impeachment of President Trump on Dec. 18, 2019, but the U.S. Senate acquitted Trump of these charges on Feb. 5, 2020.