Alleged meeting of Trump aides, Kremlin reps took place in Prague
The meeting of associates of Donald Trump, then the US Republican presidential candidate, and Kremlin representatives, which according to intelligence sources cited by Newsweek was spied upon by the Estonian Information Board (EIB), the Baltic country's foreign intelligence service, likely took place in Prague, it appears from US intelligence reports cited by buzzfeed.com
US media published a report saying that a delegation of Trump aides, led by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, allegedly traveled to Prague in late August or early September 2016 to meet with Russian intelligence to discuss the hacking of the opposing Clinton campaign, Prague-based think tank European Values said.
The report also states that Oleg Solodukhin, a representative of the Rossotrudnichestvo organization working in conjunction with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, served as "an interlocutor" of those meetings.
"What we can add, as a security-oriented European Values think thank, is that Mr. Solodukhin is well known in Prague diplomatic circles and that he has been repeatedly gathering intelligence at our public events," said Jakub Janda, deputy director of European Values and head of the think tank's Kremlin Watch program. "Mr. Solodukhin has denied that he has 'met any American citizen during the last five years' when he was asked about this story by Czech weekly Respekt."
According to the intelligence files, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Konstantin Kosachev has been identified by an intelligence source as an important figure in the Trump campaign-Kremlin liaison operation. As a member of the Russian legislative branch rather than the executive, Kosachev was "plausibly deniable" in facilitating contact in Prague and, by implication, may have attended the meeting with Cohen there in August, the intelligence files say.
European Values said that Respekt had learned that there was no record of Cohen arriving to Prague via plane, and so if the alleged meeting in Prague took place, he would have likely arrived there by flying into another European airport and then traveling on to Prague by car. As there are no border checks within the Schengen zone, nobody would have noticed and no record into police databases would hav been taken of his arrival.
Cohen tweeted that he had never been to Prague, stating that "between August 23-29 I was in Los Angeles." He did not say, however, what he was doing in early September.
A spokesperson for the Czech counterintelligence agency BIS said that their agency "will not comment on this."
Intelligence files available on the internet do not offer any information on surveillance of the meeting having been conducted by an Estonian agency.
Newsweek: Reports indicate Trump associate met with pro-Putin parliament member
An article published in Newsweek about Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election campaign and its creating of a political division in the US said that, at one point, Trump's inexplicable behavior led top Russian officials to believe that Trump would be forced to withdraw from the race due to his mental state and apparent unsuitability to be president, according to information obtained by a Western intelligence service.
In particular, Kremlin officials feared they could not predict what the impact on Russia would be should Trump step aside. As a result, Moscow decided to stop forwarding documents obtained by its hackers through channels to Wikileaks, which had been disseminating the records publicly.
"About that time, according to reports obtained by Western intelligence, a Trump associate met with a pro-Putin member of the Russian parliament at a building in Eastern Europe maintained by Rossotrudnichestvo, an agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for administering language, education and support programs for civilians," the article published on Wednesday stated. "While Newsweekcould not determine the purpose of the meeting, a Western intelligence official said that surveillance of the meeting was conducted by or on behalf of the Estonian Information Board (EIB)."
Editor: Editor: Aili Vahtla
Source: BNS