Vladimir Putin is looking to intensify his propaganda war on the United States, inside the United States. He intends to be back at his old bag of atrocious disinformation tricks in America's 2022 and 2024 elections. Putin's technological sabotage is tantamount to declaring war on the U.S., for his elevation of Donald Trump or some Trumplike politician would mean America's final destruction.
Putin's strategy is that of outlasting the Biden Administration, reports the Daily Beast (paywalled). He is expected to argue, via Russian troll farms, state media outlets and other online venues — all of it embedded in, or reaching secondhand, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites — that President Biden's military and financial support of Ukraine has caused the Russia-Ukraine war's prolongation, thus bleeding American citizens of their own finances, as well as starving the world of food staples.
America's disaffection with Biden's vital assistance to Eastern Europe would therefore grow, predict former officials of the CIA and Department of Homeland Security. And that would result, as noted, in a Trump or Trumpian isolationist, 2025 U.S. presidency. "[Putin is] going to really, really try hard," says Daniel Hoffman, a former Moscow chief for the CIA, "to exacerbate those isolationist tendencies and kind of induce us to question, 'Why are we supporting Ukraine?'" In short, added Hoffman, "He’s trying to dilute U.S. support for Zelensky."
A recent U.S. intelligence bulletin ("obtained" by the Daily Beast) suggested that "already, Russian influence operations targeting American and Western audiences appear to be weakening Americans’ support and appetite for providing aid to Ukraine." Those are the Daily Beast's words, though only partial substantiation can be found. The Washington Post (paywalled) reported on 16 June that "a new poll of European populations shows rising anxiety and impatience about the conflict and, in particular, its economic repercussions." A search of contemporaneous polling in the U.S. produced nothing. Nevertheless, reasonable it is that the U.S. will soon follow Europe's anxiety.
The aforementioned intelligence bulletin also assessed that Putin's Russia is a "primary threat" to the U.S. through its "malicious cyber operations against federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments [and] election organizations." Russia's disinformation campaign has, in addition, "been zeroing in on the idea that Western security assistance to Ukraine has been escalating the war." (Emphasis mine.)
The former CIA chief in Moscow summarizes his assessment of "Putin's thinking" in this way: "I can outlast all you people. And if I get this to 2024, I might get a Republican who doesn’t feel like Joe Biden."
I would summarize Putin's thinking as an unspoken declaration of war against the United States. For if Joe Biden or another Democratic presidential nominee fails to retain the White House in November 2024 — and Trump's current labors to achieve that result, made possible by Putin's assistance in 2016, will be a big assist — then America will have seen its last days as a free, democratic nation. The U.S. will become unrecognizable to every honorable, conscientious American living in it.
As Shakespeare's Iago chillingly said, "I am not what I am." Those words shall be America's epitaph under a Trumpian administration. Is it not time — now — to fight back? To save the United States, in whatever ways possible, while we can?