Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko on February 23, 1982 in the industrial city of Volgograd, Russia, to math teacher Irene and Russian diplomat Vasily. She suffered from scoliosis as a child and lived with her grandmother as her father was sent to work in the Russian embassy in Kenya. She briefly attended a creative studies school in Volgograd from 1996–1997. She went on to study economics at the People’s Friendship University in Moscow, graduating at the top of her class in 2004.
In 2001 and 2002 she spent her summers visiting London, where at the age of nineteen she met twenty-one year-old student Alex Chapman. The two were married in Moscow in 2002. Soon after, now with the name Anna Chapman, she received a British passport. According to Alex Chapman, Anna’s father never took a liking to him and seemed to trust no one. Alex reported that Anna told him her father was a former KGB operative.
After eventually settling in London, Anna began habitually lying about her work experience, claiming to sell private jets to Russians on behalf of Net Jets and working closely with owner Warren Buffet. Alex began to observe her becoming increasingly secretive around this time, often meeting with other Russians in private, boasting about influential people she was meeting, and suddenly having large sums of money. The two eventually divorced in 2006.16
When Anna Chapman arrived in New York, she moved into an apartment one block south of the New York Stock Exchange. She also claimed on her LinkedIn page to run an internet real estate company valued at $2 million.17 The Daily News reported that she likely became involved with then sixty year-old millionaire Michael Bittan, who made his money in the restaurant industry, real estate, owner of a jeans manufacturer, and in pharmaceuticals.18
After being arrested by U.S. federal agents in June of 2010, the U.S. and Russian governments arranged a swap in July of the same year, exchanging the ten arrested in the U.S. for four former Russian spies who were detained in Russia for helping the U.S. One of them was instrumental in arresting former U.S. FBI Agent Robert Hansen, who had been providing the Russians with information for years.19
Upon returning to Russia, Chapman has received national celebrity status, modeling for the Russian version of Maxim magazine and appearing in multiple fashion shots. She has also met and has been praised by Putin, and made appearances in Russian military recruitment and propaganda videos. The British tabloid magazine Daily Mail, reported that Chapman posted a picture to her Instagram account this April, expressing support for 2016 GOP Presidential nominee, Donald Trump. In her account she wrote “Trump will ‘get along with Putin,’ he approves of the Russian operation in Syria and is surprised why the USA supports Ukraine. Changes in America are closer? What do you think?” An additional post also mocked Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Chapman’s return as a conquering hero, even if she was a failed spy, is not surprising in Putin’s Russia. Putin values loyalty to the nation above all else and an attractive, loyal FSB officer is propaganda gold. His sense of loyalty to the spy service propelled him to national fame under Yeltsin and keeps his position safe today. In fact, in order to be put under Putin’s “roof” of protection, it is nearly essential for that individual to have a prior association with the KGB/FSB. An estimated 78 percent of Russia’s top one thousand leading political figures worked for FSB or its predecessor the KGB or GRU.20 When asked about a book written by a dissident Putin said, “I don’t read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland.”21
This deep history of espionage, intrigue, and murder shaped Vladimir Putin’s worldview toward the West. Forged between decades of a poverty-stricken Soviet Union and tantalized by the riches of U.S. and European economic dominance, Putin’s actions and public statements hint at a world where he and his nation receive the respect and preeminence they deserve. Apparently, Putin surmises that America and NATO are waning, with the U.S. military stretched thin beyond capacity due to two failed wars costing trillions of dollars.
Russia is changing Russia’s face and not towards democracy. Karen Dawisha, a Professor at Miami University, told PBS Frontline that “Instead of seeing Russia as a democracy in the process of failing, see it as an authoritarian system that’s in the process of succeeding.”22 Putin is that authoritarian. For him to succeed at the mission of damaging the United States he will use all tools of the Russian statecraft such as forging alliances, but also including blackmail, propaganda, and cyberwarfare.
To Putin, the best of all possible worlds would be an economically crippled America, withdrawn from military adventurism and NATO, and with leadership friendly to Russia. Could he make this happen by backing the right horse? As former director of the KGB, now in control of Russia’s economic, intelligence and nuclear arsenal, he could certainly try.
4
TRUMP’S AGENTS, PUTIN’S ASSETS?
There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.
DONALD TRUMP HAS LONG SOUGHT to establish real estate relationships with Russia’s wealthy elite. In 2013 he got his chance. He was invited by one of the richest families in Russia to co-host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow.
It would not be Trump’s first visit to Russia. His Trump’s interest in Russia predated the fall of the Soviet Union. Long before the pageant, in 1987 Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin convinced Trump to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg to develop a Trump Tower for Russia. Trump went on an exploratory trip but the business and construction conditions were not optimal for him to take advantage of the Soviets or make a profit. He returned home without any projects in hand.1
Trump didn’t have to wait long for conditions to change. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to an extreme concentration of wealth in Russia. With Putin at its helm, the money went straight to his cronies and the oligarchy developed—a premier class made up of Putin loyalists. Russian oligarchs must have very deep, personal ties to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to get anything accomplished or even to hold onto their wealth. Having a “Roof” over one’s head—a Russian euphemism for sponsorship by the politically powerful—is a tradition as old as Russia itself.
Twenty years after Trump’s initial visit, there was a huge demand for more luxury and higher quality brands in Russia. Trump’s son Donald Jr. visited Moscow in 2008, looking to expand the Trump real estate brand beyond America to Europe and the Middle East. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Trump had considered aiding the reconstruction of the city’s Moskva and Rossiya hotels.2
But it wasn’t hotels or the golden Trump name that won Russians over. It was his popularity as a finger-pointing, quick-firing boss in the NBC television show The Apprentice. His fame on that show brought him into contact with the wealthy Agalarov family. Their money, lavishness, and flattery won Trump over. Aras Agalarov, a billionaire Russian real estate mogul, and his son Emin, the rich pop singer, were big fans of his—Emin even had Trump appear in one of his music videos “In Another Life,” to “fire” Emin at the end of the video as he daydreamed about luxury houses filled with hot women. Emin has been called the Donald Trump of Russia due to popularity, wealth, and his personal relations with Vladimir Putin.-72
Aras was born in Azerbaijan in 1956. His Forbes-estimated net worth is roughly $1.3 billion in real estate development. His company, Crocus Group, received Kremlin contracts for two World Cup 2018 stadiums. Putin even gave Aras a medal of honor in 2013. As with all things Putin, the medal itself wasn’t important or even valuable—it was Putin’s imprimatur in front of the nation that sealed Aras’s stature as a personal benefactor to the President.