deleted things: Dustin Giebel and Russia’s Controlled Opposition in Action: How Unwitting and Controlled Actors on the Left Are Helping Putin Win the Information War.
Dustin Giebel and Russia’s Controlled Opposition in Action: How Unwitting and Controlled Actors on the Left Are Helping Putin Win the Information War.
This article was written by Jay McKenzie aka @JamesFourM and Griff Sombke aka @Grzabjj
It’s easy for even casual observers of Russian active measures and disinformation efforts to note the similarities between the Alt-Right and the Kremlin. The Alt-Right, steadfastly loyal to Donald Trump for the last 3+ years, once pretended to be its own independent entity. These days, they gleefully share and disseminate articles from Russia Today (RT), Sputnik and other Kremlin propaganda sources. Infowars — the pro-Trump website that claims the deaths of elementary school children in the Sandy Hook massacre was hoax — has given up the ruse entirely. Alex Jones’ site has copied thousands of articles directly from RT. Jones made a video pledging his allegiance to Vladimir Putin. Most recently, we saw this headline, ‘Infowars Comes Out as Pro-Russian Collusion.’
The point is, the Alt-Right and the Kremlin have moved closer and closer towards one another over the last three years. Today, the two are often virtually indistinguishable. It’s easy to see the connections and to make this argument. That’s why you’ll find so many articles discussing it.
Still, even though it receives minimal coverage from the media, support for the Kremlin does not come only from the right. The goal of the Kremlin’s active measures is to control the conversation and control the outcomes. The truth is not important. Your reaction to what you perceive is happening is important. This strategy is centered around what is known as reflexive control. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s an article laying out reflexive control theory in great detail.
While the far right and far left may appear vastly different, reflexive control requires useful idiots and Kremlin agents of influence on the right and the left. There are far more “useful idiots” or unknowing disseminators of Kremlin propaganda than those who do so willingly, but both groups do exist.
These individuals help flood the information space by employing dezinformatsiya (deza, or disinformation) and provokatsiya (provocations). Since Donald Trump and the GOP are in power and have shifted dramatically pro-Kremlin in recent years, the Resistance to Trump falls to liberals and progressives. However, there are many people on the left who “Resist” in name only. One such person, who frequently disparages real and meaningful opposition to Putin, is a man named Dustin or Dusty Giebel. However, he does not do so alone.
Before we get continue, here’s a reminder of what controlled opposition is and how it works. We covered this in a separate article written last year.
It involves one power base either creating an opposing power base organization or movement, or infiltrating an existing opposing movement or organization. The obvious purpose of this tactic is to “control the opposition”; in other words, the controlling or infiltrating party will eventually rise to sow disinformation, dissent, confusion, and disruption. The purpose is to co-opt or take over that movement by discrediting other members, with the ultimate goal of weakening and destroying the opposing power base’s movement or organization.
This means that controlled actors on the far ends of each side of the horseshoe are actually closer to each other in their extreme ideologies — even if diametrically polar opposites — than they are to those of moderate ideologies either Right or Left of Center.
Do we know how Dustin Giebel came to be one such controlled actor? No, we can’t know for sure, but he is at best a “useful idiot” for the Kremlin’s agenda. His friends on Twitter, the people he interacts with daily and cites as “experts” in his writing, push the same messages and function the same way. Those on the left who are witting agents of influence or frequent unwitting “useful idiots” are no doubt less obvious than the Infowars crowd, but they are no less important to the Kremlin’s efforts to divide the West and turn us against ourselves. To stop them from succeeding, we must call out bad actors. If we don’t, they will continue to disparage, question and insult real experts the Kremlin abhors. Why? Because the real opponents are the ones who know how the game works.
We start with Dusty’s favorite professor and mentor, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
“He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved.” — Joseph Brodsky on Yevtushenko
Yevgeny Yevtushenko was one of the most famous poets of the Soviet Era. In his heyday, he drew thousands of people to his readings. He was the author of “Babi Yar”, which was written to commemorate the September 1941 Massacre of Ukrainian Jews outside of Kiev by the Nazis.
Unsurprisingly, this was a problem for the Kremlin. Official Soviet Policy at the time was that all the dead from what the Soviets called “The Great Patriotic War” (the Second World War) were to be counted as “Soviet Citizens”. Per Soviet policy, there was no “official” anti-Semitism at the time. It was not discussed, so therefore, it didn’t exist. That’s how propaganda works, and it’s why the Kremlin is good at it. They’ve had lots of practice.
Yevtushenko’s argument wasn’t allowed to take place within the ideological framework of the times. Something had to be done. The powers that be gave him a chance to “fix it,” according to their standards, and he did so.
“Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet poet, admitted today that he had made changes in his world-famous poem, Babi Yar, for political reasons because the West had used the poem for a propaganda effort to ‘pretend’ that anti-Semitism was widespread in the Soviet Union.”
Following orders proved Yevtushenko’s primary concern wasn’t truth, as he saw it. He was more concerned about self-preservation. The Kremlim thus knew that this was a guy who could be counted on to be “reasonable”. He was famous, and willing to toe the party line, so it was decided a promotion was in order.
“The cultural commissars preferred to keep such popular, restless talents in a gilded cage, rather than banishing or jailing them. Only the greatest resisted that embrace. He was not one of them.”
It’s fair to say now that Yevtushenko was part of the the controlled opposition of his day. Poetry was a form of rebellion that was seen as an acceptable criticism of Soviet society, but there was always a line many were never willing to cross. The compromises that Yevtushenko was known for making with the state were simply a cost of doing business.
“He had a unique role: He managed to stay in the Soviet Union, travel to see Fidel Castro in Cuba or to the United States to have a drink with his friend Robert Kennedy at the senator’s birthday party, toasting his future presidency in 1968. Yevtushenko’s lines about Kennedy’s assassination later that year were published in both the Soviet newspaper Pravda and The New York Times.”
His travel and lifestyle were a rarity at the time, so it’s safe to say that the Soviets were fine with Yevgeny’s particular brand of “rebellion.” The real rebels get treated far differently.
Consider the case of Joseph Brodsky, who was exiled from his native Russia in 1972 for writing poetry, after having been hassled for years, including stints in mental hospitals, jails, and a 5 year prison sentence in Siberia for “Social Parasitism” that was later reduced to 18 months. Strange as it may seem to Westerners, this was in many cases the best case scenario for the Soviet Union’s repressive regime.
Joseph Brodsky hated Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and it’s easy to see why. Brodsky was extremely suspicious of Yevtushenko’s offer to intercede with the KGB on his behalf shortly before he was sent to Siberia. Brodsky once referred to Yevtushenko in disparagement as “poetry’s prostitute” while apologizing to the actual practitioners of the world’s oldest trade for the comparison. He actually quit the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters over their induction of Yevtushenko.
“Now Yevtushenko’s fame is long past. He works as a professor at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, where — according to students — he has to hand out his biography to make students aware of who he is.”
Yevtushenko’s students remained quite fond of their teacher, but by the end of his life, the rest of the world had essentially forgotten him. Yet this man, a friend of the Kremlin and a KGB collaborator, a poster boy of the “Controlled Opposition” from the sixties, ended up teaching in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dustin Giebel became one of Yevtushenko’s biggest fans.
Based on Dusty’s recent activity online, it’s easy to see why Dusty felt like he’d found a mentor. Perhaps it helps explain the changes in his messaging over the years.
Who is Dustin Giebel?
He claims to be an opponent of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, but the focus of his opposition has shifted significantly in the last two years.
Here’s Dusty in 2016:
Back in 2016 — in the midst of the unfolding saga of Donald Trump, WikiLeaks and Putin — Trump was merely a pawn.
Somehow all that changed after Trump won. Here’s Dusty first in April 2017 (left) and in December 2017 (right):
So, in 2016, Dusty believed Putin was actively helping Trump win. Trump was a pawn. Manafort was on Trump’s campaign to help Putin “remove NATO,” but by late 2017 Dusty doesn’t buy 2016 Dusty’s story. Where’s the proof!
Paul Manafort, who is currently in jail awaiting two separate trials and facing dozens of charges might’ve been up to something bad, but only behind Trump’s back? We’ll have to see what Mueller’s list of over 500 pieces of evidence in the case against Manafort deliver.
That’s if we survive at all, but if we don’t, it’s all our fault anyway. Hopelessness breeds inaction. This too helps the Kremlin, as Dusty’s managed more and more of as time goes on.
After seeing Dusty’s frequent attacks against actual experts in Kremlin tactics, we decided to have a closer look at all this. Dusty is an unusual case. He went from watching and documenting the Kremlin’s attack on our election in 2016 to downplaying its impact and Trump’s Kremlin connections. How does that happen? How does one witness a crime, tell the story and then recant their previous statements at a later date?
I don’t know why it happened, but it’s hard to miss. Dusty appeared to once style himself as an investigator. Nowadays, he spends his time passively commenting on news as it happens. His real passion is attempting to discredit those he doesn’t like or disagrees with.
Even Luke Harding’s recent article failed to deliver for Dusty. If these attacks were purely partisan or ideological, Harding is certainly an odd choice. Luke lived in Moscow for four years and was harassed by the FSB until he was ultimately expelled from Russia entirely. Yet despite numerous books on Russia including Mafia State, Collusion and The Fifth Estate, Dusty believes Harding is ill-informed in his reporting on Russia.
Whatever the reason, Dusty spends most of his time attacking real experts who are focused on countering the Kremlin’s propaganda aimed at the Western world.
Discrediting Kremlin critics is a classic strategy of controlled opposition
A key component to the Kremlin’s brand of hybrid warfare is controlling the information space. They achieve this by elevating messages favorable to their propaganda. An easy and cheap way to do this now is through the use of bots, but the means of peddling disinformation becomes more sophisticated by the day. More likes and retweets means more people see the message the Kremlin wants them to see, but real people are needed to effectively guide the message.
Given this, it’s unsurprising to note the Kremlin wants fewer members of the general public to see talking points from anyone who is truly anti-Kremlin. At the same time, planting seeds of doubt in new readers about the expertise of those same authors is also helpful. Who wants to read articles from untrustworthy sources? The format of the attacks varies from person to person. The truth behind any of these attacks varies too. In the end, if the Kremlin’s controlled opposition doesn’t have a good reason to attack you, they’ll make one up.
So, when Molly McKew recently co-authored a piece with Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, the criticism for the piece was focused on McKew, not Hertling. After all, Lt. General Hertling served in the U.S. Army for 37 years until his recent retirement as the Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army. Since his retirement, General Hertling has served as a intelligence and terrorism analyst for CNN. He’s been to Ukraine and other countries which have been the victim of the Kremlin’s brand of hybrid warfare. Attempting to discredit a man with his credentials would make it pretty obvious which side the attackers are on.
Still, the disparaging remarks did happen anyway. As you can see, despite General Hertling’s ringing endorsement, Giebel’s attacks on McKew didn’t stop. One day after the Politico article was published, Dusty found another way to be outraged.
The facts of the matter aren’t important to those doing the attacking. For whatever reason, they need outside observers to believe certain Kremlin critics are not experts.
But what makes an expert? Training and experience.
What makes someone a troll? Persistence, ignorance and a grudge. Trolls also love to play the victim even they are the ones who picked the fight in the first place.
Dusty’s animus to Trump and Putin is largely passive. Yes, he makes it clear in his statements he doesn’t like them, but he spends most of his time attacking people who are actively fighting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Dusty has many targets, but he focuses his attacks particularly on former technical director for the NSA in the Balkans, Dr. John Schindler and information warfare expert Molly McKew, who has over a decade’s experience working to counter the Russia’s cyber warfare tactics. Those of you who have followed along on Twitter and in the news for the last two years are likely to know these two well. They have many opponents, but none more so than the Kremlin itself.
As you can see, the Kremlin propaganda outlet Russia Today is not a fan of Molly McKew’s writing. Their “top 10 Kremlin critics list” article was not an isolated incident, however. RT has consistently attacked McKew for calling out Kremlin propaganda and lies. It is in RT’s best interests for McKew to lose credibility and followers, not gain them. Thus we see these sustained attacks on her.
Knowing this, anyone who attacks McKew’s credibility is helping the Kremlin. It is one thing to disagree with another person’s opinion. This happens all the time, but it is an entirely different attack to use Kremlin talking points to disparage someone you don’t happen to like. That’s exactly what Dustin Giebel is up to here.
The “experts” Dusty uses as sources for his attacks.
Dustin Giebel took issue with Molly McKew saying there is a clear organized effort to discredit her work. Why? Because Dustin is part of that organized effort. There is a large group of self-styled experts who continuously attack the people they disagree with on almost anything pertaining to Russia. The problem with their brand of “opposition” is they consistently downplay the threat the Kremlin’s information warfare tactics pose. They’d rather the focus be on nearly anything else.
I’ve compiled statements from some of the people Dustin has cited to discredit Molly McKew and Dr. John Schindler, among others. I believe these to be a solid benchmark for what true Kremlin opponents are up against. Conveniently, Dusty has admitted his stated goal with his attacks. We don’t need to speculate. He said it himself. He loves Russia, and he wants to “shut up Molly McKew.” Who else would like that? The Kremlin.
Here are the people Dustin Giebel suggests you follow instead.
Dusty claims his work is about truth, but the real truth is Schindler and McKew understand the Kremlin’s cyber warfare game better than perhaps anyone else in the West. How? Because the Kremlin didn’t start their operations because of the 2015–16 US election. They’ve been deploying these tactics against their neighbors for years.
One of Putin’s primary goals is to sow division and chaos amongst Russia’s enemies. Hackers, leaks, fake news and bots are some of the many ways he accomplishes this. Whether we call it the Gerasimov Doctrine or nothing at all, the points laid out in 2013 by Russia’s chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, are the tactics the Kremlin currently deploys against their Western adversaries every single day. Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic States, Poland are at the forefront of this fight, but while Russia’s primary targets are NATO allies and Five Eyes countries, their reach is truly global. The internet makes this possible, and it makes it relatively cheap, especially considering the impact.
There is one common thread among the people Dusty cites as “experts” and suggested follows. These are the people he reads and listens to. These are the people who inform his opinions. They are, like him, academics who call themselves opponents of the Kremlin, but they consistently downplay Putin’s hybrid warfare. This group distorts arguments of how to combat disinformation. They lay the blame on the countries or people under attack. They also consistently work to discredit the same group of experts that Kremlin owned and operated RT and Sputnik work to discredit by amplifying the same arguments.
On September 25, 2017, Nina Jankowicz wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. In it, she questioned Molly McKew’s credentials as an information warfare expert. Jankowicz points out, “Ms. McKew would have us ‘develop a rapid response capability for irregular information warfare’ to ‘secure our information space.’ She also recommended more regulation for social media.”
These recommendations are, for some reason or another she expands on at length, worth condemning in an opinion piece. The attacks by Ms. Jankowciz didn’t stop there, however.
Ms. Jankowicz claims her employer, The Kennan Institute, has been “highly critical of the Kremlin,” but upon closer inspection, it’s hard to see how that’s true.
Why is that? Because The Kennan Institute partners with the oligarchs from Alfa Group.
This connection may appear insignificant to some, but according to staunch Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov and his associates, “ we believe through our analysis of open-source data that oligarchs from Alfa Group are Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest oligarchs and we have no doubt that these people remain under consideration for sanctions.”
How Ms. Jankowicz can work for Vladimir Putin’s closest allies and also be “highly critical of the Kremlin” is a bit of a mystery. Regardless, this group of friends is often highly critical.
The collective friend of Dusty, Nina and others in this group is Natalia Antonova, the last editor-in-chief of The Moscow News before it was shut down in 2014. A quick Google search shows that several dozen of Antonova’s articles were published by the Kremlin propaganda outlet Sputnik News and remain on the site today. Here’s the collection.
When Masha Gessen wrote an article for the New Yorker which was critical of McKew, this same group was ready to criticize McKew for her response to Gessen. Remember, the Alt-Left “hates” Putin, but they also want to blame what’s wrong in the world on racism, sexism, bigotry, anti-Semitism and many of the other common themes. These things most certainly do exist. These things are certainly very real problems, but ignoring the fact that the Kremlin is to blame for inflaming these problems is a mistake. That’s how Putin’s form of hybrid warfare works. It also involves attacking someone and then attacking them again when they choose to respond to a specific criticism.
Leonid Bershidsky is a journalist for Bloomberg who published an article downplaying Donald Trump’s connection to Russia’s Alfa Bank in the days before the 2016 election. More recently, Bershidsky is seen (above) agreeing with Masha’s Gessen’s New Yorker article which was yet another highly critical take of Molly McKew’s credentials and opinions on information warfare. Whether you agree with Gessen’s article or not, it’s worth pointing out that this group of purported liberal opposition — Bershidsky included — all seem to agree that the US government made a mistake in forcing RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents of the Russian government.
What was their reasoning? It was an assault on the free press. The problem with that argument is that RT and Sputnik aren’t really news, and they certainly aren’t platforms to share their unfiltered opinions. Russian state-owned organizations like RT and Sputnik are propaganda outlets working on behalf of the Kremlin. They are advancing the interests of a foreign government. Forcing them to act as such simply is not an assault on press freedom. It is a way to fight back against lies.
In what was not an assault on press freedom but diplomatic immunity and security, the same Leonid Bershidsky recently advocated for former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, to be handed over to the Russian government for questioning.
When the White House recently refused to rule out turning over McFaul to the Russians, one current U.S. diplomat was quoted by the Daily Beast as being “at a fucking loss” over the Trump administration’s stance. He went on to say:
It’s beyond disgraceful. It’s fundamentally ignorant with regard to how we conduct diplomacy or what that means. It really puts in jeopardy the professional independence of diplomats anywhere in the world, if the consequence of their actions is going to be potentially being turned over to a foreign government
These comments did nothing to convince Leonid Bershidsky that handing Ambassador McFaul over to the Russians was a bad idea. It even led to a heated exchange on Twitter between the two men.
The conversation ended here, with Bershidsky accusing McFaul of spreading lies.
Beware the gaslighters
Another of Dustin Giebel’s suggested follows, Michael Colborne, took offense to a list of the Kremlin’s “useful idiots” put out by the European Values think-tank. Colborne’s thread on October 21, 2017 was picked up and turned into an article published by RT.com the next day.
If you go on RT, you are in fact a useful idiot. RT is not a news organization. It is a weapon in Putin’s hybrid warfare. The term “useful idiot” is used for someone who unknowingly spreads or amplifies propaganda they may not fully understand. To be clear, “useful idiots” are people who advance the Kremlin’s interests, but it doesn’t mean they have any idea that’s what they’re doing. Does that excuse them? No, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything more than they were duped.
On the other hand, having your attacks turned into an article on RT may not make you more than a “useful idiot,” but it certainly means the Kremlin approves of your attacks. While the idea that the Kremlin recruits Americans may seem an entirely ludicrous premise to outside observers, this really did happen. The KGB’s how-to manual for recruiting Americans and other Westerners can be read here. What reason is there to believe Vladimir Putin, the KGB man who once said, “There are no former Chekists” would suddenly stop?
Another of the Dusty’s sources is the Twitter user @Russiawithoutbs, and he’s described this way by Dusty, “Jim is a sarcastic troll. Not a Kremlin one. He has a quality blog.” Whatever else Jim is, he certainly is a troll.
“Jim” demands you agree with him, and if you don’t, he issues threats. We dealt with this personally on Twitter. There was no rational discussion. That was not the intention.
Jim would also have you believe the Kremlin only targets people on the left for their disinformation campaigns. That’s a quite convenient conclusion, given the source, but it’s one that can be proven to be categorically false by one Google search. See the list of Americans listed in the Venona papers, for instance.
Julius Rosenberg, who was tried, convicted and executed by the U.S. government for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union was a devoted communist. His codename, given to him by the KGB, was “LIBERAL.”
Anyone can be targeted. Anyone can be influenced.
Here’s another of Dusty’s experts, Seva Gunitsky, He’s an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a native of St. Petersburg, Russia. Gunitsky gets quoted in Trump Russia articles from time to time, consistently downplaying stories linking Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.
When news broke in May that Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg paid Trump fixer Michael Cohen $500,000 through Vekselberg’s American affiliate, Gunitsky was quick to hit the brakes. “This should not be taken as a signal that the Kremlin is involved,” Gunitsky told Vox at the time.
Gunitsky also penned this op-ed in April in New Republic, warning us of the dangers of punishing Putin, another classic propaganda technique. “Don’t poke the Russian bear.”
His argument states that punishing Putin won’t do any good. It will likely even make things worse. According to Gunitsky:
It’s hard to understate this psychological dimension of Russia’s geopolitical insecurity — the deep sense of humiliation, the dread of arrogant Westerners, the fear of NATO encirclement. They don’t show up in economic figures and military metrics, but they shape decision-making just as much as arms sales and trade deals.
Russians may grumble at Putin’s policies, but even his domestic opponents praise his pursuit of Russian derzhavnost, and chafe at Western attempts to ignore this pursuit. It’s partly why Russian officials bristle at Western talk of “punishing” Russia. You don’t punish your partners, after all, you punish disobedient children.
Yet Gunitsky’s take on how to respond to Russia shares a striking resemblance with messaging from Putin sycophants on the far right.
In truth, Gunitsky isn’t lying about the state of Russia’s economy. Its people are suffering. None of this is fair. Something should be done about it, but Vladimir Putin has been in power for 18 years now. He is almost certainly the richest man on the planet, and it is his insatiable greed that has a stranglehold on Russia. As long as Putin is in power, Russia must be punished for his behavior. Otherwise, why would he change? Appeasement does not work, and Putin is no victim. He is an aggressor.
Dusty‘s liberal credentials.
Dusty likes to talk about his wife a lot on Twitter, especially the fact that she’s a lawyer.
We saw that Dusty and his wife decided to go to Moscow in June, 2018. That seemed a bit odd. Relations are certainly strained between the US and Russia right now. Yet Dusty laughs off those concerns.
With all the talk of Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, it was no surprise to see Dusty weighing in with his wife’s thoughts. Dusty’s a liberal. His wife loves the very liberal Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), so the assumption for those following along on Twitter is that Valery Giebel, a liberal lawyer, is endorsing Trump’s conservative nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
There’s a problem with Dusty weighing in on Judge Kavanaugh, however. Dusty has failed to mention his wife’s employer. Valery Giebel works for the Trump administration’s Interior Department.
Ryan Zinke, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, has been described as “Waging a War” on the Interior Department, and Zinke believes the Interior Department should partner with big oil. Basically, he’s turned out to be exactly what everyone, including Dusty, thought he would be.
Ryan Zinke is selling off our federal land to the highest bidder. It’s curious to see such a liberal family with an oil and gas title attorney working for an Interior Department that’s dedicated to profit margins, not protecting the environment. How does a “Resistor” like Dustin Giebel continue writing anti-Trump material while his wife works for the Trump administration?
But Trump’s administration hired Dusty’s wife, didn’t they? So, maybe she hasn’t been critical of Trump the same way Dusty has, or maybe Dusty’s criticism of Trump is so benign, it’s not even a problem? These are all possibilities, but maybe it’s even simpler than all of those. Maybe Dusty’s wife got hired by Team Trump because they’re on the same team. She did apparently travel to Moscow with her husband while holding a job in the Trump administration. If it was for vacation, Moscow seems an odd choice.
The damage done.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, was described by British-American historian Robert Conquest this way more than forty years ago:
By this standard, the objections to Yevtushenko are powerful. Especially of late, there is very little sign of this good influence. In fact, his most recent interventions have been to the detriment of the liberal writers. His advocacy of the Soviet political line in the West has been extravagant beyond the call of duty — unless, indeed, it be urged that he is consciously trying to bring it into disrepute by such tactics. And, above all, his active denigration of, and passive failure to do anything to help, the real victims of literary oppression, goes farther than could be justified on any grounds of the sort put forward.
Yevtushenko was a man who sold his soul for safety and fame. He was the controlled opposition of his day and a known KGB collaborator. Maybe Dustin Giebel is nothing more than a “useful idiot,” but his actions closely mirror those of his mentor these days. Perhaps he realized this was his way to get ahead in life.
In the end, it appears Dusty took his mentor’s advice, and in doing so, he’s proven he really was Yevtushenko’s best student.
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