Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer serving as the current president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012.
Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin is a Russian far-right political philosopher.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza is a Russian and British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and political prisoner. A protégé of Boris Nemtsov, he is vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by Russian businessman and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov. As of 2021, he acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018.
Christopher Wallace is an American broadcast journalist. He is known for his tough and wide-ranging interviews, for which he is often compared to his father, 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace. Over his 50-year career in journalism he has been a correspondent, moderator, or anchor on CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News, and now CNN. In 2018 he was ranked one of the most trusted TV news anchors in America. Wallace has won three Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, a George Polk Award, the duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award, and a Paul White lifetime achievement award.
John Paul Sweeney is a British investigative journalist and writer. He worked for The Observer newspaper, and the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight series. Sweeney ceased working for the BBC in October 2019.
Make Everything Great Again was a street art mural by artists Dominykas Čečkauskas and Mindaugas Bonanu. It was located on the wall of the barbecue restaurant Keulė Rūkė in the railway station area of old town of Vilnius in Lithuania.
Before being elected president of the United States, Donald Trump had produced and hosted reality TV shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice from 2004 to 2015. He also made dozens of cameo appearances in films, television series, and advertisements since the 1980s. He has won the Worst Supporting Actor award at the 11th Golden Raspberry Awards for Ghosts Can't Do It in 1990, as well as awards for Worst Actor and Worst screen Combo at the 39th Golden Raspberry Awards for his roles in the documentary films Death of a Nation and Fahrenheit 11/9 in 2019.
The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta —was ordered directly by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.
The following lists some of the events from the year 2017 in Russia.
The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a controversial political opposition research report written from June to December 2016, containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign. Several key allegations made in June 2016 were later corroborated by the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton; that he personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties; and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian agents. While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.
This is a timeline of events related to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Since Donald Trump was a 2016 candidate for the office of President of the United States, myriad suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies have been discovered by the FBI, Special counsel, and several United States congressional committees, as part of their investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following intelligence reports about the Russian interference, Trump and some of his campaign members, business partners, administration nominees, and family members were subjected to intense scrutiny to determine whether they had improper dealings during their contacts with Russian officials. Several people connected to the Trump campaign made false statements about those links and obstructed investigations. These investigations resulted in many criminal charges and indictments.
George Demetrios Papadopoulos is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.–Russia relations and the Donald Trump presidential campaign. In 2018, he served twelve days in federal prison, then was placed on a 12-month supervised release. During his supervised release from prison, he participated in the filming of a still-unreleased docuseries. In March 2019, Papadopoulos released his book, Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump. He was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.
Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections is a report issued by the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that assessed the extent and basis of Russia's interference in United States' elections in 2016. Published on January 6, 2017, the report includes an assessment by the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the type and breadth of actions undertaken by Russia and affiliated elements during the elections. The report examines Russia's utilization of cyberspace such as hacking and the use of internet trolls and bots, and an intensive media campaign to influence public opinion in the United States. Additionally, it analyzes Russia's intentions and motivations in regards to their influence campaign. Issued in two forms, a classified version and a declassified version, the report drew its conclusions based on highly classified intelligence, an understanding of past Russian actions, and sensitive sources and methods.
The 2018 Russia–United States summit was a summit meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland. The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs officially titled the summit as the #HELSINKI2018 Meeting and it was hosted by the President of Finland Sauli Niinistö.
The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is a 2016 film directed by Andrei Nekrasov, concerning the 2009 death in a Moscow prison cell, after 11 months in police custody, of 37-year-old Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky. In 2007, Magnitsky was hired by American-born British financier Bill Browder to investigate the government's seizure of three of Browder's Russian subsidiaries. Discovering evidence of embezzlement, Magnitsky implicated two senior police officers in a tax rebate scam that used shell corporations plundered from Browder's holdings to defraud the Russian treasury of $230 million. Subordinates of those officials then arrested Magnitsky and charged him with the very crime he had exposed.
Active Measures is a 2018 documentary film by director Jack Bryan. The documentary centered on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and looks at the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. Additional topics covered included the life of Vladimir Putin, social media manipulation broadly, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Maria Konstantinovna Pevchikh is a Russian investigative journalist and anti-corruption activist serving as the chairwoman of the board of directors of the Anti-Corruption Foundation since March 2023. Pevchikh is known for exposing high-level corruption in Russia.
Russian disinformation campaigns have occurred in many countries. For example, in Africa, disinformation campaigns led by Yevgeny Prigozhin have been reported in several countries. Russia, however, denies that it uses disinformation to influence public opinion.
Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina, also known under the pen name Daria Platonova, was a Russian journalist, political scientist, and activist. She was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a supporter of Vladimir Putin and a far-right political philosopher, whose support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine she shared. She was killed in August 2022 in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow.
