Robert Waldeck with a comprehensive, compelling account of how the Ukraine crisis propelled Putin’s information war, the courtship of Donald Trump and the targeting of Joe Biden
The Frank Project
In the fall of 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort launched what he called ‘the Frank Project’. The story of the Frank Project links the Russian interference campaign of 2016 to Trump’s attempts to obtain disinformation on Hunter Biden, son of his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
An attempt to pay Russia back for its help in the presidential election, the Frank Project attempted to force Ukraine into a peace process based on the Minsk Agreement, a peace plan negotiated between Ukraine and Russia, and mediated by France and Germany.
The project began with Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker, oligarch, and Trump associate. In June 2016, Onyshchenko fled Ukraine for Russia after investigators announced a corruption probe against him.
A week later, the New York Times reported that US Intelligence determined that the Russian Government had hacked the Democratic National Committee, obtaining emails from the governing body of the Democratic Party.
Putin was moving to collect Trump’s debt to Russia. On 2 August 2016, Manafort and the Trump campaign’s deputy chair Richard Gates met with Russian Intelligence Officer Konstantin Kilimnik in New York City. There, Kilimnik gave Manafort a copy of Russia’s plan for peace in Eastern Ukraine – seeking the return of disgraced pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, to rule over an autonomous region of Donbas.
At the same time, Manafort provided Kilimnik with polling data from the Trump campaign, showing Trump could win and told the Russian to give the data to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
Twelve days later, the New York Times revealed Manafort’s name was found in the “Black Ledger” a record of off-the-books political influence spending in Ukraine. Trump fired Manafort on 19 August. Kilimnik told associates that Manafort “remained” with Trump. Gates stayed on the campaign.
The Peace Plan and the Biden Kompromat
In the following weeks, facing the potential of a Trump presidency, and perhaps aware of Manafort’s polling data, then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko began moving towards peace with Russia.
On 14 September 2016, a former State Department staffer, Frank Mermoud, reached out to Gates at the Trump campaign and requested a meeting with Poroshenko on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. When a meeting could not be arranged, a phone call was discussed. It is unclear if the call happened.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators in Minsk quietly announced a breakthrough on 21 September – they had signed a ‘Framework on Disengagement of Forces and Hardware’ that would be followed by talks on implementing the Minsk formula.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in September, Lev Parnas and David Correia – business associates of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani – entered into a development deal to obtain foreign funding for a Florida development company. The key partner in the deal was top Ukrainian official Roman Nasirov, a Poroshenko ally.
On 5 October, European diplomats began setting up a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Poroshenko, French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Parnas recently revealed in a tweet that his first real meeting with Trump occurred that October, hinting at revelations to come.
THE KEY PLAYERS
- Paul Manafort – Chair of the 2016 Trump campaign from June to August that year.
- Hunter Biden – Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
- Oleksandr Onyshchenko – A pro-Russian lawmaker and Trump associate.
- Richard Gates – Deputy chair of the 2016 Trump campaign, under Manafort.
- Konstantin Kilimnik – Russian intelligence officer.
- Viktor Yanukovych – Pro-Russian Ukrainian President in office from 2010 until 2014, when he was ousted in a revolution.
- Petro Poroshenko – Ukrainian President from 2014 to 2019.
- Frank Mermoud – Former State Department staffer.
- Lev Parnas and David Correia – Business associates of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
- Roman Nasirov – Top Ukrainian official and Poroshenko ally.
- Kirill Dmitriev – Head of Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.
- Andrii Artemenko – Poroshenko’s Trump go-between.
A Normandy Peace format meeting was held on 19 October in Berlin with Merkel, Putin, Poroshenko and Hollande attending. A tweet by Parnas’ attorney Joe Bondy shows that later that evening, Parnas appeared in photographs with top Trump surrogates at a presidential debate. Parnas followed with a $99,000 donation spree to Republican committees.
On the day after the US election, Onyshchenko told Ukranian publication Strana he had congratulated Trump, that the election would help his criminal case in Ukraine, and that the new President would bring peace with Russia. On 30 November, Onyshchenko claimed that he had secretly recorded telephone conversations with Poroshenko showing their joint involvement in corruption involving Burisma – one of the largest private natural gas firms in Ukraine.
Cryptically, in a now-deleted tweet, Parnas’ business partner hinted that Hunter Biden’s role at Buri