Will the relationship between Washington and Moscow change after the publication of the Muller report

Published in the USA investigation results special prosecutor Robert Muller, according to which President Donald Trump did not enter into a conspiracy with Russia to win the election. Will relations between Washington and Moscow change now?

The investigation, which was supposed to reveal whether Trump had negotiated with Moscow about the support that would have allowed him to bypass the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the presidential election in 2016, has been going on for the past two years.

The results of Mueller's work are not disclosed; the main conclusions are contained in the report prepared by the Attorney General and US Secretary of Justice William Barr, who received Mueller's report last week. He handed over the document to representatives of the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee - report published on the website of the Ministry of Justice.

During his investigation into Russia's involvement in the 2016 election, Mueller sought answers to several questions: whether Russia interfered in the election, whether Trump or other members of his campaign asked for support to win, and whether the US president or his associates attempted to obstruct justice.

Barr's report said that, according to Mueller's findings, "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or were in any way coordinated with Russian authorities to interfere with the election."

BBC Russian Service tells whether this investigation will affect relations between Russia and the United States.

Russia tried to intervene in the elections or not?

Mueller's investigation gives a clear answer to this question: she tried. As the report states, the special counsel proved “two main ways of Russian interference.”

The first is related to the activities of the Internet Research Agency, allegedly associated with businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is close to Vladimir Putin; this organization is also called a “troll factory” in the media.

Photo by: kremlin.ru

The report alleges that the agency attempted to “spread disinformation” and also conducted “social media operations.” These activities, Mueller believes, were intended to sow public discord and “ultimately interfere with elections.”

Mueller has no evidence that Trump or members of his campaign worked with the Internet Research Agency. At the same time, back in February 2018, the US Department of Justice published an indictment against 13 Russians who tried to influence the 2016 presidential election through a network of fake accounts on social networks.

The first number on this list is Evgeny Prigozhin, the rest are programmers, translators and managers. Prigozhin himself and his Concord holding dispute Mueller’s position on this issue.

One of the members of the list, Sergei Polozov, gave an interview to the BBC Russian Service in March, in which he said that he had indeed collaborated with the “troll factory”, but did not know that it was conducting activities to interfere in the elections.”

What did the Russian officials do?

The second type of interference Mueller described as “Russian hacking efforts aimed at collecting and disseminating information to influence the election.”

As the special prosecutor has established, the persons directly connected with the Russian authorities successfully hacked into the computers and mailboxes of people associated with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the US Democratic Party. Later, the stolen data was distributed through intermediaries, including the WikiLeaks resource.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Moscow made any efforts to support Trump, although President Vladimir Putin admitted that he wanted him to win, allegedly because the candidate had spoken of a desire to normalize relations with Russia.

What kind of Russian officials allegedly participated in the interference with the elections, the report on the results of the investigation of Muller does not say.

WikiLeaks did publish numerous documents related to the Hillary Clinton campaign, for example, about attempts to discredit its competitors from among party members. Leaks led to layoffs in the National Committee of the US Democratic Party.

The report notes that Mueller's findings led to the indictment of the "Russian military" he holds responsible for the attacks. We are talking about charges in absentia against 12 Russian citizens, whom the US authorities consider to be employees of Russian intelligence.

But Mueller has no evidence that members of the Trump campaign or people associated with it coordinated with the hackers - although, according to the special counsel, there were such proposals from the Russian side.

So, Trump is fully justified and there will be no new investigations?

Not really. The second part of the investigation of Muller was devoted to whether the President of the United States and his entourage attempted to obstruct the investigation in any way.

The work of the Muller Commission began a week after the unexpected dismissal of the FBI head, James Komi, who was one of the first to begin to formally check Trump’s possible ties with Russia.

As follows from the report of the Prosecutor General, Müller could not make an unequivocal conclusion about whether Trump’s actions could be qualified as attempts to obstruct justice.

“This report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, but it does not exonerate him,” Mueller said.

For him the conclusions were made by the Prosecutor General Barr. After consulting with the Ministry of Justice, he and his deputy found no reason to bring official charges against Trump. He explained that this requires irrefutable evidence.

Trump himself said he considered Barr's report a "total vindication." True, not everyone agrees with this. Many American politicians demanded that the Mueller report be published in its entirety so that citizens could draw their own conclusions. The US House of Representatives has already voted unanimously for this decision.

However, the decision to publish the report remains with the Prosecutor General. Otherwise, this can happen only by a court decision.

Russia and the United States will now make friends, and the sanctions will be canceled?

This is unlikely to happen.

Firstly, the Mueller report did establish facts of deliberate Russian interference in the elections - it allegedly involved persons directly associated with the authorities. Moscow categorically denies this thesis.

In addition, Russian-American relations had seriously deteriorated even before Trump came to the White House, mainly due to the annexation of Crimea, fighting in eastern Ukraine and the war in Syria.

Washington has introduced and expanded sanctions against Russia dozens of times in recent years; sanctions for alleged election interference are just one of them. This includes the “Magnitsky Act”, and sanctions against sectors of the Russian economy and defense companies introduced due to the situation in Ukraine, and the so-called “draconian sanctions” that were introduced after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England.

Under the restrictions are high-ranking Russian officials (from the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin to the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov), the largest businessmen (Viktor Vekselberg, Oleg Deripaska) and banks.

Another bill is also awaiting consideration, which American senators call “sanctions from hell” - it involves the introduction of personal sanctions against Russian politicians and businessmen associated with Putin.

In addition, this year the United States announced the termination of the Treaty on the Elimination of Short and Medium-Range Missiles. Following this, Russia emerged from it.

Is Russia satisfied with the Muller report?

The reaction of Moscow to the publication of the report on the results of the investigation was restrained.

Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the report in detail, saying that the authorities did not have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with its full version - only a summary.

“The summary, however, does not say anything new, except for the recognition of the absence of any conspiracy,” Peskov said. “We continue to consider the accusations that continue to be made against Russia in terms of interference in the election processes in the United States to be unfounded.”

He compared the investigation itself to searching for “a black cat in a dark room,” and speaking about the prospects for improving relations with America, he noted that Russia is interested in this, but it should not take the first step.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the conclusion that there was no agreement between Trump and Moscow could not be otherwise.

“It is surprising, however, that reaching this conclusion took a team of 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, forensic experts and other employees almost two years of work, during which they issued 2800 subpoenas, interviewed 500 witnesses and conducted the same number of searches,” - says the Russian Foreign Ministry in a commentary released on Monday.

“That is, colossal efforts and, obviously, considerable taxpayer funds were spent to refute the obvious fake,” Russian diplomats felt sorry for the Americans.

There are more optimistic expectations.

“There is a chance to reset a lot of things in our relations, but whether Trump will take the risk is still a question,” said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs. At the same time, Kosachev believes, “we in Russia have nothing special to celebrate here,” since “the accusations against us remain.”

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