Unmasking Russia! Putin gives advice on mail-in voting and Trump parrots the propaganda Olga Lautman Aug 20 President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrives at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Friday. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images The Manufactured Rise of Putin It was 1999, and a series of events — orchestrated and exploited by Russia’s security services — secured Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. In early August, Islamist fighters led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab invaded Dagestan, giving the Kremlin a ready-made pretext for escalation. Many later suspected the conflict was not only anticipated but facilitated by Russia’s security services as a justification for a new war in Chechnya. What began as a limited operation to secure northern Chechnya soon expanded after a wave of apartment bombings in September killed more than 300 civilians, plunging the nation into fear. The attacks created precisely the crisis that Vladimir Putin — then an obscure “former” KGB officer elevated by Boris Yeltsin — and his FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev needed to vault him onto the national stage. Mounting evidence has pointed to these bombings as a ruthless false-flag operation carried out by Russia’s security services, trading the lives of ordinary citizens for the political legitimacy of a soon-to-be autocrat. Behind the scenes, Boris Berezovsky and Yeltsin’s inner circle — known as “the Family” — were maneuvering to install Putin as their protector, quietly backed by the FSB, to shield them from prosecution and preserve their stolen fortunes. The manufactured crisis gave them the hysteria to sell Putin to the Russian people as a man of “order” and “stability.” From the very outset, Putin’s ascent rested on manufactured terror, and the Second Chechen War forged his image as Russia’s iron-fisted leader — a reputation that would define his rule for decades to come. One of the first to expose this was Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who fled Russia and publicly accused the security services of orchestrating the bombings, publishing detailed allegations in exile linking the FSB— and Putin and Patrushev—to the bombings. At the same time, independent journalists at Novaya Gazeta played a critical role inside Russia, investigating incidents like the Ryazan “incident” and raising early, credible doubts about the Kremlin’s official story. Putin’s Rigged Legitimacy Over the years, Putin entrenched his dictatorship through sham elections — ballot stuffing, coerced turnout, manipulated counts, intimidation of voters, and the systematic elimination of opponents — all masked by hollow “democratic” rituals. For more than twenty-five years, he has sustained power at home through rigged legitimacy while waging a relentless war on democracy abroad: financing far-right parties across Europe, flooding Western media spaces with disinformation, hacking election infrastructure, and spreading the corrosive claim that free elections are inherently fraudulent. And now, Putin is giving election ‘advice’ to Trump. ‘It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections,’ he declared — a line Trump eagerly repeated, as if the KGB thug’s propaganda were gospel. “You know, Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things. He said, ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections,” Trump told Fox News. When Trump Takes Advice From a KGB Thug Just imagine the absurdity: a KGB thug who has attacked multiple U.S. elections now posing as an authority on how Americans should vote — and a U.S. president parroting him. At their recent meeting in Alaska, Putin — a terrorist and war criminal responsible for mass murder, genocide, the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, and the silencing, jailing, and assassinating of critics at home — reportedly told Trump that mail-in ballots made U.S. elections impossible to trust. This from a man who has never permitted a free and fair election in his life, whose regime has stuffed ballot boxes on live television, falsified tallies at will, and even poisoned an election worker. Russia doesn’t even have mail-in voting, and its elections are stage-managed spectacles designed to preserve Putin’s rule. That Trump not only welcomed Putin to a summit but then echoed his words on Fox News is not just absurd — it is dangerous. It confirms what has long been obvious: Trump sees Putin as a model, and he is intent on importing Putin’s system into the United States. For a decade, I have been warning that Trump’s goal is to build a Russian-style regime in America — a police state built on mass surveillance, controlled media, indefinite rule, and the systematic dismantling of democratic safeguards. Trump has promised executive orders to curtail mail-in voting, threatened voting machines, and lied that he — not the states — has the unilateral authority to dictate election rules. None of these assertions withstand constitutional scrutiny, but that is beside the point. The point is that Trump is yet again delegitimizing elections before midterms, sowing distrust in the process, and laying the groundwork to reject any result that does not deliver victory—and now using Putin’s words to further his agenda. The Kremlin’s Global War on Elections What Putin has done inside Russia, he has exported abroad, treating free elections as a battlefield of hybrid war. Since 2016, Russia has launched multi-pronged attacks on every U.S. election — blending cyber attacks, disinformation operations, financial influence, and covert networks. Across Europe, the interference has been just as relentless: the Kremlin hacked the Bundestag in Germany, attacked the Macron campaign in France, and has sought to sway virtually every election in Europe. Russia has poured money into extremist parties, infiltrated religious institutions, manipulated social media algorithms, and orchestrated coordinated propaganda offensives — all with one purpose: to convince citizens everywhere that democracy is chaotic, corrupt, and doomed. Trump wants to be like Putin, and his words and actions on elections show him actively seeking ways to rig the process. And it’s not just elections that he is copying Putin on: he relentlessly targets the press, pressures the judiciary to bend to his will, launches investigations into political opponents, and is trying to seize control over universities, museums, and cultural institutions. He is building a surveillance state, chilling free speech, and weaponizing federal agencies to enforce his corrupt and extremist agenda. Each step mirrors the Kremlin playbook. A Clear and Present Danger Many once dismissed Trump’s threats as empty bluster — but that was said in 2020, before he tried to overturn a free election and incited an insurrection at the Capitol. Today, his attacks on mail-in voting, now cloaked in Putin’s “advice,” are not mere rhetoric but preparation: a deliberate attempt to poison faith in elections and normalize Kremlin logic in American politics. T The irony of Putin lecturing America on democracy is almost too grotesque to contemplate, but the greater tragedy is that Trump is parroting him. What began in 1999 with bombs in Moscow to elevate Putin has metastasized into a global authoritarian playbook. Unless it is confronted with urgency, the United States will watch its democracy fully collapse at the hands of Republicans who view freedom as an obstacle to power. Thanks for reading Unmasking Russia! This post is public, so feel free to share it.