A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a cover of a woman's phone as she takes pictures during celebrations of the Russian national holiday — Defender of the Fatherland Day — in Crimea.
The US intelligence community, still reeling from the firing of FBI Director James Comey last week, is now worried that a disclosure by President Donald Trump could put the US relationship with other intelligence agencies at risk.
President Trump reportedly shared classified information about a specific ISIS threat with Russian officials during a White House meeting last week. Some members of Congress have called for an independent investigation.
Russia is probably benefiting from the chaos, says Julia Ioffe, staff writer for The Atlantic.
“I think as somebody once brilliantly put it, Russia wants a seat at the table and to be taken seriously as a powerful player. But it gets a seat at the table not by bringing itself up to the level of the table, but by taking the table down a few notches.”
So is Russia more friend or foe right now? “Foe,” Ioffe said, adding, “I think at this point, the gloves have really come off.”
On a recent trip to Russia, she said, a source “close to the Kremlin explained to me that ‘in Russia, fairness is the most important thing. If we think something is unfair, we will go above the law.’ And that's at all levels of society, from traffic laws to international law.”
Russian officials believe that the US has been responsible for a lot of the country’s recent problems, Ioffe said. They believe the CIA organized a coup to remove Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader in 2014, that the US was responsible for the leak of the Panama Papers, which proved embarrassing for the Kremlin, and that the US was behind the ban of some Russian Olympians from the 2016 Olympics for doping.
“So they’re saying, ‘OK, you want to fight dirty? We can fight dirty.”