Asset (Intelligence)There are different categories of assets, including people who:
- Willingly work for a foreign government for ideological reasons such as being against their own government, but live in a country that doesn’t allow political opposition. They may elect to work with a foreign power to change their own country because there are few other ways available.
- Work in intergovernmental relations for a different part of their government but relay information to their country’s intelligence agency. They often obtain useful information in the course of their other work and are sometimes tasked with seeking it out.
- Work for monetary gain. Intelligence services often pay good wages to people in important positions that are willing to betray secrets.
- Have been blackmailed and are forced into their role.
- Do not even know they are being used (so called “useful idiots“
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…The Trump administration’s rewrite of decades of U.S. foreign policy on Russia, laid bare in the Oval Office confrontation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is bringing Washington into alignment with Moscow, the Kremlin said Sunday — a shift that could upend the geopolitics that have governed international relations since World War II.
“The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, state television reported Sunday. “This largely aligns with our vision.”
Moscow’s vision, which has focused on a push to reclaim influence over much or all of the former Soviet Union and defeat liberal democracy, has made Russia a pariah to the West. The United States has given over a hundred billion dollars in arms and aid to Ukraine since Russia’s unprovoked invasion in 2022. Washington led allies in imposing new sanctions on Moscow; the International Criminal Court issued a warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of war crimes….
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Putin has long worked to drive wedges between the United States and its allies. On Friday, Trump echoed his accusations that Zelensky was obstructing peace efforts.
The performance stunned Russian leaders. Kirill Dmitriev, the chief of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a lead negotiator in preliminary U.S.-Russia talks, called it “historic.” Propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor of Russia Today, wrote that “the Oval Office has seen a lot, but never this.”
Others were gleeful. Former president Dmitry Medvedev gloated over the “proper slap down” of “the insolent pig” Zelensky, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova marveled at Trump and Vance’s “restraint” in not punching him in the face. Zelensky’s “outrageously boorish behavior,” she wrote, “confirmed that he is the most dangerous threat to the world community.”
The meeting fit Russia’s narrative perfectly, Konstantin Remchukov, the well-connected editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, told The Washington Post.
“We don’t even have to step in — we can just retransmit what the Americans are saying,” Remchukov said. He noted that Putin had “smartly” withheld comment on the meeting, and could afford to stay silent for now.
“The public will conclude that our leaders were correct in their assessment of Zelensky as a leader of Ukraine,” Remchukov said. “This is a huge gift for them.”….
image….Foreign Policy
Not only Trump but most of the Republican Party.
Ronald Reagan has rolled over in his grave many times of late.