‘Donald Trump recruited by Moscow in 1980s’, claims ex-KGB officer: Report

Donald Trump was sworn in as the US president for the second time on January 20.

Published on: Feb 23, 2025, 15:51:04 IST

By HT News Desk

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A former officer of Russia's spy agency Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) has claimed that US president Donald Trump was groomed 37 years ago as a "potential Soviet asset'.

Ukrainian daily Kyiv post cited a Facebook post by Alnur Mussayev who claimed that he was serving in the 6th Directorate of the then USSR KGB in Moscow.

Mussayev claimed that the most important work of his unit was to recruit businessmen from capitalist nations.

In 2021, a former KGB spy Yuri Shvets claimed that Trump was “cultivated” as a Russian asset over 40 years ago (AFP)

According to him, the Soviet administration recruited Trump, who was then a 40-year-old businessmen, under a pseudonym ‘Krasnov’.

Orbis Business Intelligence in a dossier written by its co-founder, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, alleged ties between Trump's 2016 election campaign and Russia as well as other salacious allegations, all of which Trump denied.

Steele had given evidence in an interview with two FBI agents as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into an alleged conspiracy between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

Mueller concluded in 2019 that there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

According to the report, Mussayev said,"Donald Trump is on the FSB’s hook and is swallowing the bait deeper and deeper. This is evidenced by numerous indirect facts published in the media."

The ex-Kazakh security chief alleged that Trump hails from the category of “ideally recruitable people”.

Mussayev claimed that he did not doubt Moscow having a “kompromat” (compromising material) on Trump.

'Trump recruited by Moscow in 1980s': Ex-KGB officer Yuri Shvets

In 2021, a former KGB spy Yuri Shvets told The Guardian that Trump was “cultivated” as a Russian asset over 40 years ago, and was “willing to parrot anti-western propaganda”.

Shvets was deputed by the then Soviet regime to Washington in the 1980s. He compared Trump to the “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

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