Last week, a day before the 2.5-hour Trump-Putin phone discussion on Oct. 16, the governing body of the “Free Russia Forum” issued a statement headlined, “We Fully Support the Forcible Overthrow” of the Russian government. It called for finishing off “the real terrorists who have seized Russia” by pushing the Russian army out of Crimea and the four regions that had voted to join, or rejoin, Russia and accomplishing “a comprehensive defeat” over Russia’s army. As part of that, they called for the support of the Russian Volunteer Corps (of neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin), the “Freedom of Russia” Legion (headed by right-wing nationalist “Caesar"), and other unnamed paramilitary operations. While their website is mum as to their funding, it does claim that the FRF’s leadership was centrally targeted by Moscow’s criminal indictment of London billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s group.
Most of the anti-Moscow crowd, so far, have bitten their collective tongues regarding the “Trump-Putin Tunnel” project proposed last week by Putin’s Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and this includes the FRF’s Council. However, Ivan Preobrazhensky, identified as on the Council of the Free Russia Forum (though not confirmed by a current listing of the Council), was provoked to weigh in publicly with a bizarre reaction. He was interviewed on Rain TV by Ekaterina Kotrikadze. Rain TV departed Russia in 2022, had multiple alleged violations in Latvia and had its license cancelled, and now is operating with a Dutch broadcast license.
Kotrikadze opened by admitting that they had been caught off guard by the “completely unexpected story.” She was outraged that the U.S. would fall for a “political strategy game,” initiated by Russia passing documents “through an American senator [sic].” Her reference is to the Russian ambassador in Washington responding to the request of U.S. Rep. Ana Paulina Luna (R-FL) by providing Russian documents on the JFK assassination, which included one page on the “Kennedy-Khrushchev International Peace Bridge.” That page was highlighted by Dmitriev last week.
Preobrazhensky then explained that Moscow is just playing Trump, as there are no economic benefits from the Bering Sea crossing. From there, he offered several minutes of various conspiracy theories, e.g., as to how Trump was playing Putin and vice versa. He packs a lot into seven minutes, but his ramblings won’t be further summarized here.
