OS: There’s
been quite a lot of activity the last
few months. My country, America has had an election.
VP: I congratulate you on that.
OS: Donald Trump won. This is your fourth president, am I right? Clinton, Mr. Bush, Obama, and now your fourth one.
VP: Yes, that’s true.
OS: What changes?
VP: Well, almost nothing.
OS: Is that your feeling? In between all of the four presidents or do you think . . .?
VP: Well, life makes some changes for you. But on the whole, everywhere, especially in the United States, the bureaucracy is very strong. And bureaucracy is the one that rules the world.
OS: The bureaucracy rules the world. IN all countries?
VP: In many countries.
OS: You said this to me last time – there was a system, we call it the military industrial security complex in America.
VP: Yes, we’ve got a similar system – such systems exist everywhere.
OS: Some people call it the Deep State.
VP: Well, you can call it different names, but this doesn’t change the essence.
OS: Is there any possibility, a hope of change with Mr. Trump?
VP: There is always hope. Until they are ready to bring us to the cemetery to bury us.
OS: [smiles] Wow, that’s very Russian. Very Dostoyevsky. The election has been heavily criticized and the narrative written by the West has now become that Russia interfered in this election to the benefit of Mr. Trump.
VP: You know, this is a very silly statement. Certainly, we liked President Trump and we still like him because he publicaly said that he was willing, he was ready to restore American-Russian relations.* And when journalists from different countries were asking questions about that, they were trying to catch me, so to speak, I was always asking back, “Are you against good relations between the US and Russia? All the journalists were saying, “Yes, we want good relations between these two countries. We support that.” Well, that would simply be ludicrous in Russia not to welcome that, certainly we welcome the re-establishment of relations. And in this sense we are glad that Donald Trump has won. Certainly, we’ve got to wait and see how, in reality, in practice, the relations between these two countries are going to develop. He was talking about a re-establishment of economic ties, of a joint fight against terrorism . Isn’t that a good thing?
OS: Yes, so why bother to hack the election then?
P: We were not hacking the election at all. It would be hard to imagine that any other country – even a country such as Russia- would be capable of seriously influencing the electoral campaign or the outcome of the election. And some hackers indeed revealed problems that existed within the Democratic Party, but I don’t think that it has influenced in any serious manner either the electoral campaign or its outcome. Yes, these unrecognized hackers, they have brought to light the problems that existed, but they didn’t tell any lies, they were not trying to deceive or fool anyone. And the fact that the chairwoman of the executive committee of the Democratic Party has resigned testifies to the fact that she admitted it’s true – everything that has been said. So hackers are not the one’s to blame. These are internal problems of the United States. These are people who tried to manipulate public opinion shouldn’t have tried to create an image of an enemy in the face of Russia. They should have apologized to the electorate, but they didn’t do that. But that is not right, that is not the main problem. Judging from everything, the US people have been waiting for some serious change.
I refer in particular to security-related matters, to the fight against unemployment and the need to crate new jobs in the country. I refer to the protection of traditional values, because to a great extent, the US is a Puritan nation, to a great extent. Well, at least in the hinterland. And Donald Trump and his team have been very wise in running their electoral campaign. They knew, they understood where their voters were located. The states where the concentration of electors was. And they knew what people living in those states required. They knew how to get the majority of electors to win. When I watched his speeches during the campaign, I thought he went a little bit too far from time to time. But it turned out he was right. He knew the fiber in the souls of the people. He knew how to play to win their hearts. And I think that no one is going to be able to challenge the outcome of this election. Instead, those who’ve been defeated should have drawn conclusion from what they did, from how they did their jobs, they shouldn’t have tried to shift the blame on to something outside. And I think that Obama’ outgoing team has created a minefield for the incoming president and for his team. They have created an environment which makes it difficult for the new president to make good on the promises that he gave to the people. But in reality, we’re not waiting for anything revolutionary. We are looking forward to the new administration when it has been completed, when they are willing to launch a dialogue with Russia, with China, with Asia, with all the other countries. So that we can finally understand when the new administration addresses the key issues on the international agenda, and our bilateral agenda as well.
OS: But, you know, even Trump has said the Russians hacked the election – that was a quote.
VP: I do not understand what he means when he says, “Russia hacked the election.” I’ve heard different statements of his saying that any hacking attacks, given the current level of technologies, can be produced by anyone anywhere, by a person who lies on his bed somewhere and has a laptop. And you can even make it seem as if the hacker attacks are coming from another place, so its very difficult to establish the original source of attack.
OS: Well, this all seems to me still historically enormous – I’ve never seen where the two leading political parties, Democrat and Republican, the intelligence agencies, FBI, CIA, NSA, and the political leadership of NATO believe this story that Russia hacked the election. It’s enormous.
VP: This is not exactly how it is. Well, I think you’ve read the documents related to that, the analysis that have been published.
OS: Have you read the 25 page report?
VP: I congratulate you on that.
OS: Donald Trump won. This is your fourth president, am I right? Clinton, Mr. Bush, Obama, and now your fourth one.
VP: Yes, that’s true.
OS: What changes?
VP: Well, almost nothing.
OS: Is that your feeling? In between all of the four presidents or do you think . . .?
VP: Well, life makes some changes for you. But on the whole, everywhere, especially in the United States, the bureaucracy is very strong. And bureaucracy is the one that rules the world.
OS: The bureaucracy rules the world. IN all countries?
VP: In many countries.
OS: You said this to me last time – there was a system, we call it the military industrial security complex in America.
VP: Yes, we’ve got a similar system – such systems exist everywhere.
OS: Some people call it the Deep State.
VP: Well, you can call it different names, but this doesn’t change the essence.
OS: Is there any possibility, a hope of change with Mr. Trump?
VP: There is always hope. Until they are ready to bring us to the cemetery to bury us.
OS: [smiles] Wow, that’s very Russian. Very Dostoyevsky. The election has been heavily criticized and the narrative written by the West has now become that Russia interfered in this election to the benefit of Mr. Trump.
VP: You know, this is a very silly statement. Certainly, we liked President Trump and we still like him because he publicaly said that he was willing, he was ready to restore American-Russian relations.* And when journalists from different countries were asking questions about that, they were trying to catch me, so to speak, I was always asking back, “Are you against good relations between the US and Russia? All the journalists were saying, “Yes, we want good relations between these two countries. We support that.” Well, that would simply be ludicrous in Russia not to welcome that, certainly we welcome the re-establishment of relations. And in this sense we are glad that Donald Trump has won. Certainly, we’ve got to wait and see how, in reality, in practice, the relations between these two countries are going to develop. He was talking about a re-establishment of economic ties, of a joint fight against terrorism . Isn’t that a good thing?
OS: Yes, so why bother to hack the election then?
P: We were not hacking the election at all. It would be hard to imagine that any other country – even a country such as Russia- would be capable of seriously influencing the electoral campaign or the outcome of the election. And some hackers indeed revealed problems that existed within the Democratic Party, but I don’t think that it has influenced in any serious manner either the electoral campaign or its outcome. Yes, these unrecognized hackers, they have brought to light the problems that existed, but they didn’t tell any lies, they were not trying to deceive or fool anyone. And the fact that the chairwoman of the executive committee of the Democratic Party has resigned testifies to the fact that she admitted it’s true – everything that has been said. So hackers are not the one’s to blame. These are internal problems of the United States. These are people who tried to manipulate public opinion shouldn’t have tried to create an image of an enemy in the face of Russia. They should have apologized to the electorate, but they didn’t do that. But that is not right, that is not the main problem. Judging from everything, the US people have been waiting for some serious change.
I refer in particular to security-related matters, to the fight against unemployment and the need to crate new jobs in the country. I refer to the protection of traditional values, because to a great extent, the US is a Puritan nation, to a great extent. Well, at least in the hinterland. And Donald Trump and his team have been very wise in running their electoral campaign. They knew, they understood where their voters were located. The states where the concentration of electors was. And they knew what people living in those states required. They knew how to get the majority of electors to win. When I watched his speeches during the campaign, I thought he went a little bit too far from time to time. But it turned out he was right. He knew the fiber in the souls of the people. He knew how to play to win their hearts. And I think that no one is going to be able to challenge the outcome of this election. Instead, those who’ve been defeated should have drawn conclusion from what they did, from how they did their jobs, they shouldn’t have tried to shift the blame on to something outside. And I think that Obama’ outgoing team has created a minefield for the incoming president and for his team. They have created an environment which makes it difficult for the new president to make good on the promises that he gave to the people. But in reality, we’re not waiting for anything revolutionary. We are looking forward to the new administration when it has been completed, when they are willing to launch a dialogue with Russia, with China, with Asia, with all the other countries. So that we can finally understand when the new administration addresses the key issues on the international agenda, and our bilateral agenda as well.
OS: But, you know, even Trump has said the Russians hacked the election – that was a quote.
VP: I do not understand what he means when he says, “Russia hacked the election.” I’ve heard different statements of his saying that any hacking attacks, given the current level of technologies, can be produced by anyone anywhere, by a person who lies on his bed somewhere and has a laptop. And you can even make it seem as if the hacker attacks are coming from another place, so its very difficult to establish the original source of attack.
OS: Well, this all seems to me still historically enormous – I’ve never seen where the two leading political parties, Democrat and Republican, the intelligence agencies, FBI, CIA, NSA, and the political leadership of NATO believe this story that Russia hacked the election. It’s enormous.
VP: This is not exactly how it is. Well, I think you’ve read the documents related to that, the analysis that have been published.
OS: Have you read the 25 page report?
VP: Yes, I
have. One intelligence service says that there is a great probability that
Russia has interfered. Another intelligence service says that the probability,
the certainty is not that great. They make some conclusions based on the analysis
that they had conducted. But there is nothing concrete. Nothing clear-cut. You
see? I don’t know if that is proper. It reminds me of an ideology, kind of a
hatred for a certain group like anti-Semitism. If someone doesn’t know how to
do something, if someone turns out to be incapable of addressing this or that
matter, anti-Semitists always blames the Jews for their own failure,. They blame
the Jews. Those people have the same attitude towards Russia, they always blame
Russia for anything that happens. Because they do not want to recognize their
own mistakes and they are trying to find someone to shove the blame on, on our
side. . .
OS: Russia has been accused of enormous treachery now. Now this is a major charge and the media repeats and repeats it, and it seems to have entered the lexicon in the United States – it’s just taken for granted. You can say Russia hacked the election, and many people say Trump is in the Kremlin’s pocket, has a debt to the Kremlin. So, you see where this leads. It makes it impossible to correct relations with Russia. Very difficult for Mr. Trump if he indeed intends to do so, to reset relations.
VP: As I said, and can say it again – any talk about influencing the outcome of the election in the United States, all these are lies. But we that see this campaign of manipulating the information has a number of goals. First, they are trying to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump. Second, they are trying to create conditions that preclude us from normalizing our relations with the US. Third, they want to create additional weapons to wage an internal political war. And the Russian-US relations in this context are a mere instrument, a weapon in the in the internal political fight in the US. . . .we do not want to get mired in that. Many in the US think that all these claims about hacker attacks are fraudulent and we are glad that there are people like that. However there are people who promote this idea and express this insane notion because they want to use it as an instrument of political attack, and our refutation is not going to stop them from doing that. They are only going to use our refutation in order to continue using new instruments. We know all their tricks.
OS: Russia has been accused of enormous treachery now. Now this is a major charge and the media repeats and repeats it, and it seems to have entered the lexicon in the United States – it’s just taken for granted. You can say Russia hacked the election, and many people say Trump is in the Kremlin’s pocket, has a debt to the Kremlin. So, you see where this leads. It makes it impossible to correct relations with Russia. Very difficult for Mr. Trump if he indeed intends to do so, to reset relations.
VP: As I said, and can say it again – any talk about influencing the outcome of the election in the United States, all these are lies. But we that see this campaign of manipulating the information has a number of goals. First, they are trying to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump. Second, they are trying to create conditions that preclude us from normalizing our relations with the US. Third, they want to create additional weapons to wage an internal political war. And the Russian-US relations in this context are a mere instrument, a weapon in the in the internal political fight in the US. . . .we do not want to get mired in that. Many in the US think that all these claims about hacker attacks are fraudulent and we are glad that there are people like that. However there are people who promote this idea and express this insane notion because they want to use it as an instrument of political attack, and our refutation is not going to stop them from doing that. They are only going to use our refutation in order to continue using new instruments. We know all their tricks.
* From Putin’s
point of view these relations foundered on several key issues. The U.S. reneged
on the ABM treaty and has enplaced several of these systems in Eastern Europe,
under the now hollowed out pretext of protection from Iran’s nuclear program;
U.S. support for the coup d’etat in
Ukraine and the economic price that both Russia and Ukraine are expected to pay
for that, as well as failure to insist on the Minsk agreement to end the civil
war there: failure to respect the wishes of the people of Crimea to become part
of Russia though the had previously granted Kosovo that privilege; blaming Russia
for the aggressive attack of Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili on Abkhazia and South Ossetia; covert support for
Islamic radicals in Chechnya and Syria.
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