1/Vladimir Kryuchkov was literally Putin’s boss, and he recruited Donald Trump, Robert Maxwell, and Jeffrey Epstein. His goal was to export Communist Party funds to Western banks. Why? Because the USSR was crumbling and they had no private banks in Russia.

2/Mikhail Gorbachev served a purpose here: open up channels to the West and make Russia approachable. ‘Glasnost’ and ‘Perestroika’ lured gullible Americans to Genrikh Borovik, Kryuchkov’s brother in law, a KGB agent who ran the Soviet Peace Committee.

3/It was through these channels that Kryuchkov would attempt to establish beachheads of influence in the West, channeling funds towards Russia friendly projects. Putin, Kryuchkov’s junior lieutenant, would be the ultimate beneficiary of these investments.

4/That’s it: the post Cold War Russia playbook in a nutshell. To unravel it, subpoena banking records and living witnesses before Congress. FIMACO, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and countless other targets. ‘Perestroika’ was ultimately a KGB ploy to get access to Western banks.

5/This strategy had precedent: Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” of 1922 was meant to open Russia to Western capitalism as an expedient measure to generate wealth, without ‘officially’ deviating from Communist doctrine. It worked then, and it worked later repackaged as “Perestroika.”

6/Officially, Kryuchkov and Gorbachev were at odds, a rift that culminated in the failed August 1991 coup. But with Borovik in the role of public face of Perestroika, the KGB used Gorbachev’s policies to their advantage. Ultimately we will need access to more archival records to determine the full history here.