US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin
A former Soviet intelligence officer has claimed Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov”.
The bombshell allegation was made by Alnur Mussayev, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, in a Facebook post. The 71-year-old, who previously headed Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, said he had served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy.
One of the directorate’s primary objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.” According to Mussayev, Trump, then a 40-year-old New York real estate developer, was one of those recruits. "In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov,” he wrote.
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Alnur Mussayev, former Chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee ( Image: Getty)
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Mussayev’s post did not include evidence to support his claim, but in a further comment he made another shocking allegation. “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates,” he alleged. His allegations come amid years of speculation over Trump’s ties to Russia, dating back to his first visit to Moscow in 1987.
At the time, Trump, then a rising star in the New York property market, travelled to the Soviet Union to explore the possibility of building a hotel in the capital. Soviet officials reportedly facilitated the trip, raising questions among intelligence analysts about whether it was a routine business opportunity or something more scandalous.
Several years ago a report highlighted how, in 1985, the KGB had updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed among its officers, detailing how to identify and recruit Western figures. The document, according to intelligence sources, instructed agents to target “prominent figures in the West” with the aim of “drawing them into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”
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Mussayev’s claim appears to suggest that Trump may have been one such target. Despite years of scrutiny, Trump has vehemently denied having any improper ties to Russia or colluding with President Vladimir Putin.
However, some US officials have repeatedly raised concerns about his close relationship with the Kremlin leader, particularly during his first term in office. Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, added to the intrigue during a recent episode of The Rest Is Politics: US podcast.
He suggested that Trump’s deference to Putin has puzzled many of his former senior officials. “I think there is a mysterious ‘hold’ on the president,” he said. Scaramucci did not elaborate on what that ‘hold’ might be but suggested that several former Trump administration officials, including H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, and John Kelly— had also struggled to understand Trump’s affinity for Putin. “I don’t know why it’s like this,” he said. “McMaster couldn’t figure it out, Mattis couldn’t figure it out, Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”
