Indictment against a dozen Russian spies puts a bomb under the top Trump-Putin

Moscow. The long arm of US special prosecutor Robert Mueller almost reaches Russia. The indictment of twelve Russian intelligence officers, who pulled the team out of Mueller on Friday, puts a small bomb under the top of Trump and Putin on Monday in Helsinki, 200 kilometers from the Russian border .

According to Mueller, the dozen intelligence officers of the Russian military intelligence service GROe committed in 2016 in the hacking of DNC, the Democratic Party bureau, and in the candidate's campaign to the presidential Hillary Clinton. The complaint mentions the GROe hackers with name and surname, and describes in detail how the intelligence agents proceeded: not only with the introduction and theft of information, but also with the distribution of stolen emails via the fake DCleaks site and the fictional "Romanian hacker" Guccifer 2.0

The Election Scandal

The dramatic indictment seems to have already been done before Trump and Putin could shake hands.

Read also preview of the Helsinki Summit

Last Monday, Putin's Foreign Policy Adviser Yuri Ushakov asked the Russian newspaper Kommersant to count on a joint declaration. According to Kommersant, Moscow has already submitted a concept that Washington would not have answered in the negative. An unnamed American source said US diplomats had insisted on a passage in which both governments would guarantee not to interfere in the elections of the other. Such language should certainly not look like a confession of guilt: the Kremlin denies any involvement, and Trump continues to reject the electoral scandal. This week, the US President during a trip to Europe has described the Russian investigation of "witch-hunt" on several occasions

Mueller exposes the facts

Whatever the case may be , a joint statement now seems unavailable. An hour and a half after the US Department of Justice press conference, Councilor Yuri Ushakov, the man who had been so optimistic a few days earlier, said that the chances of a statement common were thin. Trump and Putin will likely summarize the results of the summit individually, Ujsakov told the RBK news website. For the sake of clarity, the consultant again stated that "the Russian government has never interfered with or intended to interfere in the electoral processes of the United States. We are ready to talk about the facts. "

The problem for Moscow is that these facts slowly emerge from Mueller's efforts. Last February, the special prosecutor issued a detailed complaint against fourteen employees of the so-called "Internet Research Agency", the St. Petersburg company known as "troll factory". Mueller mentioned the names and numbers and showed how executives and employees have tried to exert influence on the American public through fake accounts.

Very detailed indictment

Mueller 's latest indictment is no less detailed. In the 29-page document, not only were the names of twelve GROe intelligence agents, but also their functions, and even the departments where they worked. District 26.165, according to Mueller, is located at the Komsomolski-Prospekt 20 in the center of Moscow, in a monumental building which, according to the phone book belongs to the Military Academy of the Russian Ministry of Defense. A second neighborhood, "74, 455", would be located at Kirovstraat 22 in the suburb of Chimki, in an anonymous office building that would be called "the tower" by the GROe.

The details that Mueller mentions are sometimes beautiful, and give the impression that American services have infiltrated the computer systems of the GROe. De Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur reported last January that the Dutch intelligence service AIVD had broken into the group of Russian hackers "Cozy Bear" and transmitted information to the Americans. This group of hackers is usually associated with the Russian intelligence service FSB. The military intelligence service GROe would use baptized computer hackers in the West of "Fancy Bear". According to US services, both groups were involved in the hacking of the Democratic Party.

Mueller's indictment does not mention either of the two groups, but focuses on concrete suspects within the GRO. It's a dramatic step forward. Mueller not only shows how Russian intelligence officials stole the emails from Clinton's campaign manager, but also how they put them online under the name of a fictional Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0. In a dramatic passage, Mueller describes how District 74.455 online searches were made for English terms – formulations that literally came back an hour and a half later in Guccifer's first online blog. Russian secret agents also check their spelling via Google

Putin football shooting

With such evidence on the table, denying Russian involvement is very difficult. Yet that is exactly what Putin will probably do next Monday after meeting Trump at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. The Russian president was remarkably absent from the World Cup in his country last week. Instead, he visited his favorite monastery on the island of Valaam in Karelia. Like he wanted to prepare himself spiritually.