After Trump’s Return, Britain Is Next in the Firing Line of Putin’s War On Democracy

Since becoming a major force in American politics, Elon Musk has attacked the UK’s new Labour Government on multiple occasions through his social media platform X (formerly Twitter). He claimed civil war was “imminent” as riots swept across the country this summer. He has signal-boosted one of the riots’ instigators, the currently jailed convicted far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as ‘Tommy Robinson’). And he is now reportedly considering donating up to a $100 million to Reform UK Leader and MP Nigel Farage. 

This all prompts the question: why does Musk suddenly care about what’s happening in Britain?

In my new book, published by Byline Books, Alt Reich: The Network War to Destroy Democracy From Within, I explain Musk’s pivotal role in the network behind Trump’s return and the forming of a new ‘techno-utopian fascism’ that merges corporate tech power with the state.

Musk and X are part of a broader network of billionaire oligarchs with questionable views on race, tech platforms, and far-right groups that are fed up with democracy as we know it. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is an integral player in this network. And this has significant implications that the Western national security establishment ignores at everyone’s peril.

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Musk and the Russian Propaganda Maestros

SINCE 2022, CREDIBLE REPORTING HAS SUGGESTED THAT MUSK has engaged in multiple, direct, and secretive communications with Putin and other high-ranking Russian officials.

These interactions have encompassed discussions on personal issues, business interests, and geopolitics. At one point, Putin reportedly personally requested Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favour to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Musk apparently complied.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk has been in regular contact with Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, who holds enormous sway over the Kremlin’s war effort and control of Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. 

Kiriyenko was identified by the US Department of Justice in September as a key figure linked to 32 internet domains that appeared to be legitimate American news sites but were, in fact, created specifically to amplify Russian Government disinformation campaigns. 

The domains were operated in breach of US money laundering and criminal trademark laws by three Russian companies under Kiriyenko’s control. He used these domains, and other platforms, according to the Department of Justice, to “covertly spread Russian Government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in US and foreign elections, including the US 2024 Presidential Election”.

Tennessee-based ‘Tenet Media’ was one of the platforms under Kiriyenko’s control. It received $10 million through the Russian state-owned broadcaster RT and paid right-wing US influencers to disseminate Moscow-approved content. 

Kiriyenko is under US, UK, and EU sanctions for such criminal activities. 

Kiriyenko’s influence operations targeting America can be traced back a number of years. As can his relationship with Elon Musk.

In 2021, it was Kiriyenko who first announced that Musk was slated to speak at a glamorous Russian state-sponsored education conference organised by the Znanie Society. Musk subsequently addressed the event via video link. He acknowledged that his invitation to speak had come directly from Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, who hosted the conference and introduced Musk. 

Peskov is also now facing sanctions. The Znanie Society was originally founded in 1947 by Stalin, and controlled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to carry out Soviet propaganda through domestic education programmes. 

Keir Starmer’s landslide Labour Government was a major setback for the Russian-led transatlantic strategy

In 2015, Putin issued an executive decree to revive the organisation as a ‘digital-first’ instrument of Russia, aiming to consolidate a wide range of educational activities across the country under centralised Russian Government control, with a focus on online content.

The Znanie Society has endorsed Russia’s war in Ukraine, while promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda around Russian national greatness. 

Earlier this year, it too was sanctioned by the US and EU.

Musk is not the only channel for Russian influence operations in the US. So too are many key figures in the Trump administration – as well as Donald Trump himself, with an unnamed Trump aide revealing to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward that Trump had spoken directly to Putin seven times since leaving office in 2020.

Among the investors that helped Musk buy X was venture capital firm 8VC.

The company was co-founded by Joe Lonsdale – an entrepreneur long mentored by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, with whom he co-founded Palantir, the giant data firm and Pentagon contractor. 

Two of Lonsdale’s employees at 8VC are sons of sanctioned Russian oligarchs within Putin’s inner circle. The first, Jack Moshkovich – who secured permanent residency in the US this year – is the son of Putin confidante Vadim Moszkowicz, who made his fortune in agriculture. The second, Denis Aven, is the son of Petr Aven, the former head of Russia’s Alfa Bank.

Earlier this year, Lonsdale teamed up with Thiel, and former PayPal executive David Sacks, to raise millions for Elon Musk’s pro-Trump political action committee, the America PAC. 

Lonsdale also co-invested in weapons company Anduril alongside incoming Vice President JD Vance, who was also mentored by Thiel. 

According to Lonsdale, Vance will be a top candidate for a presidential run in 2028. 

‘Project Russia’

THESE INCREASINGLY INTIMATE AND HIGH-LEVEL TIES between the Trump movement and Putin are symptoms of a longstanding Russian strategy to destabilise Western democracy. 

The nature of this agenda can be gleaned from the writings of ultra-nationalist Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin. 

He has been credited with influencing Putin’s foreign policy vision and has served as an advisor to State Duma chairman and Putin ally Sergey Naryshkin. Dugin’s disciple, Ivan Demidov, was a member of the ideology directorate of Putin’s United Russia party.  

While his direct, formal influence on Putin has waned, Dugin’s seminal 1997 book, The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, had considerable impact on Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites, and remains an assigned textbook at the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Army and other military colleges in Russia. 

“The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us,” Dugin wrote in it. 

To undermine the US-centric world order, Dugin advocated fostering internal discord throughout Western democracies. This implies exploiting social, political, and ethnic divisions, in order to fragment and destabilise democracies from within. 

The first element of this strategy is to attempt to take control of the centre of the ‘unipolar’ world order, the United States. Some in Putin’s inner circle appear to believe this has now occurred. Presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev told Russian business daily Kommersant: “To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfil them.” The comments were amplified by the Russian state news agency Tass.

The second element involves targeting the UK, due to its role as a vital ally to America. The aim is to diminish Britain’s influence in Europe, and to undermine NATO and other Western alliances in which Britain plays a significant operational and leadership role. 

The third element seeks to encourage divisions within the European Union and promote Eurosceptic nationalist movements – usually far-right, nativist movements – that challenge EU integration and liberal democracy. 

For Dugin, ‘cultural warfare’ is a key mechanism to undermine liberalism and the ideological integrity of the Western world. 

In November 2018, Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon met with Dugin for eight hours in a hotel in Rome. It was a meeting at which they discussed US and Russian political strategies. 

Despite several fallings-out, Bannon remains in close contact with Trump, and was instrumental in supporting his 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential campaigns. Jason Miller, who co-founded and co-hosted Bannon’s War Room podcast, is currently Trump’s senior press strategist. 

Having inserted himself into the 2024 Presidential Elections on behalf of Trump, Elon Musk’s sudden desire to interfere in British politics, by backing Nigel Farage, seems entirely consistent with Dugin’s strategy to destabilise the West through targeting the US, the UK, and Europe.

Dugin’s writings are not the only evidence that Putin is pursuing such a strategy. 

Another is a series of six little-known books commissioned by the Kremlin, Project Russia, which were widely circulated among Russia’s political elite. Described in detail in a 2018 peer-reviewed paper in the South Central Review journal published by John Hopkins University (which came to light courtesy of US journalist Dave Troy), Project Russia is perhaps “the most candid source of Putin’s outlook” on world affairs and his plans for the future. 

It reveals that, according to Russian doctrine, “democracy does not work” and that “all democracies are decadent”. Soviet Russia was “superior”, it claims, and only collapsed due to Western interference, with Putin’s oligarchy as its natural successor. 

“The West will soon collapse, upon which Putin the ‘Prince-Monk’ will establish a worldwide, totalitarian, ‘supra-national’ state, with a state religion to provide him with legitimacy and social control,” the journal paper states. “Putin seems serious about pursuing the project outlined in Project Russia. Indeed, there are numerous indications that it is already being pursued. Familiarity with the outline of this plan as contained in the Project Russia book series has therefore become critically important.”

The Opportunity of Resurgent Trumpism

THE INTERSECTING TIES BETWEEN TRUMP AND PUTIN have not developed in a vacuum. They are the result of concerted Russian state efforts to accelerate the collapse of Western societies, while working to restore and revitalise a new Russian imperial order.

Stoking division, fighting culture wars, spreading disinformation, and sowing confusion through the weaponisation of the far-right are all part of this strategy. 

Now Trump’s co-chair of the new US Department of Government Efficiency, Musk’s sudden interest in British politics aligns with Putin’s playbook.

“All I can say is that I’m in touch with him and he is very supportive of my policy positions”, Farage recently told The Times in relation to rumours of Musk donating to Reform. “We both share a friendship with Donald Trump and Trump has said good things about me in front of Musk. We’ve got a good relationship with him.”

He later told GB News: “What I do know is that Elon Musk is very supportive of me and what I’m trying to do, and he thinks that if Reform do well in the UK, we can bring about the same kind of change that he intends to do with Donald Trump in America.”

Following Trump’s election win in November, Bannon – previously a harsh critic of Musk’s relationship with China – admitted to being “impressed” by the Tesla chief’s willingness to “put money up for the least glamorous part of the victory”. Without Musk’s millions, Bannon told his War Room podcast listeners, Trump wouldn’t have had “the massive victory” and so Musk “deserves to see the table”.

Nigel Farage is also a favourite of Steve Bannon. 

When Bannon was released from prison just before the US election, having completed his jail sentence for contempt of court, his welcome committee included Raheem Kassam – Farage’s former chief advisor and campaign manager, who now edits the far-right blog The National Pulse, for which he interviewed Trump in the autumn. He was also the first to interview Farage after he won a seat as MP for Clacton-on-Sea in this summer’s General Election.

In 2013, Bannon spoke alongside Kassam at a Young Britons Foundation (YBF) event at Cambridge University. The YBF was funded almost entirely by Robert and Rebecca Mercer, the top Trump donors who were instrumental in his 2016 campaign. The money was funnelled through a Virginia non-profit called the Cherish Freedom Foundation run by YBF’s directors. 

At this time, Bannon already knew Farage and went on to handpick Kassam to become the Editor of the London division of the Mercer-funded Breitbart site. 

In 2019, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party manifesto was drafted by a Thatcherite think tank on the back of a $60,000 grant from the Cherish Freedom Foundation, which had received more than half a million from the Mercers. Johnson had been in touch with Bannon while still Theresa May’s Foreign Secretary. Farage then played his role in Johnson’s election as Prime Minister by standing down Brexit Party candidates in Conservative safe seats.

But the failures of the hard Brexit era under Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak ultimately paved the way for the historic losses of the Tory Party at the ballot box this year. Keir Starmer’s landslide Labour Government was a major setback for the Russian-led transatlantic strategy. 

Any financial interest or involvement of Elon Musk with Nigel Farage is likely to signal the scale of what could be coming to the UK in the years ahead. The forces behind Donald Trump’s 2024 victory see this as merely another step in a longer-term strategy to destabilise Western democracies. They will want to urgently exploit the advantage brought about by resurgent Trumpism. Britain will be next in line. Europe is the prize. 

And the entire Western world is at stake.

‘Alt Reich: The Network War to Destroy Democracy From Within’ is published by Byline Books.