Russiagate crumbles, scapegoating has begun, but American left-liberal media isn’t willing to eat crow or halt new Cold War

The Steele dossier has been discredited as based on fabrications, which the alleged source denies and instead blames an employee of the British spy behind the document. So, can we pull the plug on the Russophobia now?

Perhaps I brought it upon myself by moving to the US while being Russian, but it’s cold in the rebooted Cold War. Not a day goes by that I’m not asked continuously to lace all my opinions with a stance on Putin, or even erstwhile Soviet politics.

I usually make my positions abundantly clear and never shy away from criticizing nearly anything that must be criticized while defending what I believe in. And even if the lack of a typical accent fools my interlocutors into thinking I may be from somewhere else, they still somehow work Russophobic or anti-communist jokes into the narrative because that’s part of the culture.

But at times when I’m not directly in the equation, hardly a day goes by that I don’t encounter something against my heritage. Many TV shows, even brilliant ones I otherwise enjoy, will always have a Russian spy character or Russians invading the US. Putin is on everyone’s tongues here more so than he is in Moscow. And don’t get me started if there’s a need for sex worker stereotypes. Of course, my Black, Asian, Muslim, and Native American friends have it much worse, even if they possess American passports. Still, I can’t think of a single other country that is as consistently made the butt of American jokes as Russia.

That said, at least we’re not in the Rosenbergs phase yet.

However, in the era of ‘Russiagate’, all of this has been put on steroids. It’s been a very lucrative time for Russia-affiliated actors who know how to cash in on the hate, like journalists from immigrant families in the US who like to lay it on the old country without having lived there as a grown-up, or Western ex-pats in Moscow who render the Russian reality through an orientalist lens. But, as it has recently turned out, not all opportunists are garden variety Russophobes with hazy childhood memories of Perestroika bread lines. Some are wild cards that can play those hungry for Russophobia like a fiddle.

The best recent example came to light when the Wall Street Journal confirmed some information that had been earlier reported by independent journalists on Twitter – the identity of “Source 3” in the Steele dossier. This, of course, was the infamous report from a British spook which dominated the early years of the Trump-era.

As soon as the cover photo of Source 3 in the Wall Street Journal report started flooding my Twitter feed, I recognized the woman identified as Olga Galkina. The same pixie cut, neatly shaped brows, and arresting eyes. In the 2000s, when LiveJournal was the platform of choice for Russians looking for a creative outlet for their thoughts and social networking, she had a somewhat popular blog under the nickname milonga (a Latin American dance). She was part of the so-called ‘tusovka’, a group of popular LiveJournal bloggers. A large part of Russia’s prominent figures on the frontier of politics and creative class later emerged from tusovka, among them, the politician Ilya Yashin and journalist Oleg Kashin.

Despite having a comparatively popular blog on LiveJournal myself, I was never part of the tusovka, but I marginally encountered many people from it. And while I had never met Olga personally, I was very aware of her existence because she was the ex of my ex from the mid-00s. I dated him in my early 20s while in college. He was a few years older, and his previous relationships were with women of more experience, which gave me some anxiety but also a smug belief in my youthful superiority. I remember obsessively mining her LiveJournal for past comments from him to make myself feel inadequate. 

Per the WSJ investigation, which is based on earlier sleuthing by Twitter users, most prominently, @FOOL_NELSON, Galkina, based in Cyprus then, supposedly was the source of much of the information that formed Christopher Steele’s dossier. Igor Danchenko, Steele’s informant, was her childhood friend from Perm, who approached her in Limassol and asked for information. As it turns out, prior to her meeting with Danchenko, Galkina was fired from Webzilla and had a very strained relationship with her former boss there, Alexey Gubarev. What remains unclear is whether Galkina herself made it all up, or Danchenko took advantage of her situation to present his case, in which Webzilla and Gubarew appeared as the nefarious hackers.

Read more

We've seen this playbook before: Western state-funded media is driving the narrative around Belarus protests & public is oblivious

As the issue remains largely unexplored in the American media, Russian language media, media figures and run of the mill people like myself who remember Galkina from her LiveJournal days have been abuzz. Everyone is fascinated to have encountered a familiar face, as people recall first meeting her, sometimes in interesting combinations: One Twitter user recalled being introduced to her alongside Alexey Navalny.

Galkina herself denies everything in varied interviews, as does Danchenko. It does, however, seem that he has more reason to shift the blame for fabrications to her, and just in general, trusting a woman presented as problematic rather than a man working for a notorious spy seems preferable.

Probably the most measured take comes from journalist Oleg Kashin, who also shared a snapshot of himself and Galkina hanging out earlier in the century. This is the story about Russian horizontal links, the way the world of Russians who can reach abroad remains incestuous and insular, but is not class-based, unlike the one in the West. And this allows for a situation in which people hailing from a remote stop on a Trans-Siberian railroad can shape the narrative around the world’s most powerful president, as well as the diplomacy between two countries.

Back when Galkina was a spectral presence in my life as my ex’s ex, it was my own decision to allow her to inform my relationship with a man by being overtly curious. I have since matured but, apparently, that spectral presence has returned, uninvited. And while it remains to be seen whether Galkina had any part in the events or was merely used by him as a patsy, my bigger concern is with the actors higher up the chain. I would very much love for the discredited Steele dossier to stop informing my relationship with the country I currently live in.

Of course, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. The left liberal media is too attached to the narrative about Russian hackers and golden showers, and their value will only grow should Trump win the presidency, but also will not dwindle if he doesn’t. Accusations of regular corruption, racism and misogyny are not as exciting and compelling when you crusade against the opposing party while deeply implicated in the same things, so the Dems need Russiagate to keep deflecting from real problems.

“What a boring man Trump is,” a random Russian person on Twitter wrote on the revelations about Source 3. “He even eats his steaks with ketchup.” The American reality is never innocuous, but often rather bland, so you have to spice it up, and what better pick-me-up for a narrative than the world-famous Russian wit? Sometimes, as we can see, it doesn’t come in the form of thick novels, but oral reports, also.

However, the most upsetting thing about this, to me, is that even if some reckoning happens from the side that had been upholding the myths of Russiagate, they’re probably just going to steamroll Galkina and blame everything on her. She has already been presented as an alcoholic who likes to exaggerate and manipulate, and numerous people from her past have come out to say that she is an unreliable narrator.

But history, unfortunately, knows too many stories where sources became scapegoats to protect vested interests. In her interviews, Galkina has assertively claimed that Danchenko made everything up himself and decided to blame it on her. Either way, the blame is only being allocated at the source level, and it's unlikely that it will rise up. Even if we see Danchenko blamed, this will be water off the duck’s back for Steele himself and the DNC enablers, and whoever the new president is, the cold war will continue.

Whichever way you look at it, it sucks being Russian when America has its mind set on you, even if you’re miles and miles away from it.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.