The 'Muscovian Candidate': Was Donald Trump Russian Intel Asset 'Krasnov'?

NDTV

20-05-2025

On February 20, 2025, Alnur Mussayev, who claimed to be a KGB officer, made the most fantastic of Facebook posts - that in 1987 Russia recruited a then 40-year-old Donald Trump as an 'intelligence asset'.
It has been a busy fortnight for ' Krasnov ', an alleged ex-Russian intelligence asset working undercover in the United States government and holding an impossibly high position.
On May 10 he "sure as hell helped" India and Pakistan reach a ceasefire deal to end a 100-hour military conflict sparked by the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam.
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On May 20 he declared his tactic - of using trade with America as a reward - had pushed Russia and Ukraine to " immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire" to stop a three-year war.
But who is 'Krasnov', you might ask? What does he look like? What position does he hold? How could he have influenced India and Pakistan, and what role might he have in the Ukraine war?
Well, according to ex-KGB agent Alnur Mussayev, 'Krasnov' is a 78-year-old businessman with a shock of orange-blond hair who owns the Mar-a-Lago resort, and he lives in the White House.
Surprised?
On February 20, 2025, Mussayev made the most fantastic of Facebook posts.
That the KGB, in 1987, recruited a then 40-year-old American businessman travelling to Moscow.
A man claiming to be a former KGB officer, Alnur Mussayev, claimed Trump was 'Krasnov'.
The businessman - allegedly US President Donald Trump, if you haven't followed so far - was codenamed 'Krasnov', which translated refers to the colour red.
OK. First, Trump as 'peacemaker'?
The 'Trump the peacemaker' narrative, pushed enthusiastically by his deputy, JD Vance, and members of his administration, seems to be gathering steam; indeed, a Republican Congressman from California, Darrell Issa, has nominated his boss for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But not everyone, of course, is convinced, and certainly not by his less-than-specific posts on Truth Social about the Russia-Ukraine situation, which were short on details on how Kyiv and Moscow might be pushed to halt the bloodiest European conflict since World War II.
And the lack of those details, added to Trump refusing to follow the West in imposing new sanctions against Moscow - to push Vladimir Putin toward a ceasefire - have raised eyebrows
They also re-spawned rumours Trump is 'Krasnov', a Russian intelligence asset.
Now the first important statement.
Trump has denied any link to Russia or ever having worked as a KGB intelligence asset. In 2019, during his first term, he specifically told The New York Times "I never worked for Russia".
And then the second.
Mussayev, a Kazakh national, never offered any proof of his remarkable claim. In fact, there are question marks over his claims, including the position he claimed to hold in the KGB.
Mussayev's wasn't the first time such a claim was made.
In 2021 another ex-KGB operative - Yuri Shvets, a key source for a book by an American journalist - told the Guardian that 40 years ago Trump had been 'cultivated as a Russian asset... and proved so willing to parrot anti-West propaganda there were celebrations in Moscow'.
The denial was in reference to an FBI inquiry into claims Moscow had interfered with, and possibly even manipulated the results of, the 2016 American presidential election.
There is more authenticity attached to this claim; Shvets was a Major in the Russian army and had a documented cover position - as a news reporter - when posted to the US in the 1980s.
And four years earlier there was the Steele dossier, a report by former British spy Christopher Steele that claimed to expose shocking connections between Trump and Russia.
But, by November 2021, the Steele dossier was widely discredited; a detailed report by CNN pointed out multiple inaccuracies, flaws, and even mistruths, and how part of it may have even been put together by Trump's rivals, the Democrats, in an effort to 'dirty up' the President.
What do we really know?
That Trump went to Moscow in 1987.
According to Shvets the Russians had been tracking Trump from a decade earlier, when he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova in 1977.
And when in Moscow, the KGB swung into action. "... for the KGB, it was a charm offensive... the feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable psychologically... prone to flattery."
Trump's 'recruitment', journalist and author Luke Harding said in his book 'Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win', was linked to General Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov, the head of the KGB's recruiting team at the time, urging "bolder use of material incentives".
These, he said, were to include money and flattery.
Trump returned to the US and explored a run at the 1988 presidential campaign; he took out three full-page ads, including one in The New York Times, in which he harped about America being "exploited" by NATO (a sentiment he continues to express today) and about Washington's payments to the bloc.
There was no mention of Russia but, according to Shvets, the ads prompted celebration in Moscow as proof of 'Krasnov'. And those celebrations returned 28 years later, when Donald Trump secured 304 Electoral College votes to defeat Hillary Clinton and become POTUS.
"Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways..." Shvets told the Guardian, "His narcissism made him a natural target...he was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election."
Was Trump really a Russian asset?
This is important - there is no proof, none whatsoever, that Trump worked with the KGB or any Russian intelligence agency to, consciously or otherwise, destabilise the United States.
An American investigation - the 2019 Mueller report - into allegations Moscow interfered with the 2016 presidential election to support Trump did not "establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired, or coordinated, with Russia in its election interference activities".
"It's a disgrace that you even ask that question. It's all a big fat hoax," Trump said then.
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