Covering Trump, Russia, Brexit - Another Way

Announcing a new project - and warning - it is epic.

It’s been over 11 years since I started covering Vladimir Putin’s war against the West, ever since I visited Kyiv and talked to those involved in the Maidan ‘Revolution of Dignity’ a few months after the violent events that led to the overthrow of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

As a teenager of the Cold War, until that moment I had always thought the threat from Russia was over-exaggerated. But thanks partly to my Polish connections with the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, I had already learned of the excesses of Russian Imperialism since the late 90s. The events in the Maidan had only reignited that concern. And then came Brexit and Trump.

Here is not the place to go into my extensive coverage of Russian hybrid warfare, influence and information operations in London in the intervening 9 years. But apart from regular articles, and my podcast series with Carole Cadwalladr and the whistleblower Sergei Christo, I have struggled with a format to express the global covert financial, economic, ideological battle that runs through the barricades of Kyiv, through Londongrad to Trump’s White House.

Putin's Brexit Coup

Two years ago, with my co-writer, the director and author Steven Unwin, I attempted to put this into an epic stage play. But the requirements of drama, the Ibsenite emphasis on individual psychology and the confines of character always struggled to contain this epic and still evolving story. And as soon as we’d finished one draft, it was already out of date.

So I have decided on something else - The Trojan Horse: Trump, Russia, Brexit. An epic poem, in the mode of The Aeneid, Paradise Lost, and The Divine Comedy, but filled with real news and facts. Real people and places. History meets tragedy and investigative journalism.

Expect to meet - beyond the obvious figures like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump - the spies Alexander Udod and Sergei Nalobin, Russian influencers like Wadislaw Surkov and Konstantin Rykov, media owners like the Ledebevs, oligarchs like Deripaska and Abramovich, or more whistleblowers like Steve Lacey, journalists like the epic Cassandra of our times, Carole Cadwalladr.

Having been through so many alternative versions and iterations of this story, I realised the only way I can do this in the way I know best is in the form of an epic poem. The prologue is below.

Though it may seem abstruse, the epic poetic form allows me to move across space and time, from ideologies to yachts, peripheral and main characters, all under the narrative imperative of the Trojan Horse story, in which a weaker force overwhelmed a stronger one by deception.

By publishing regular chapters of this epic story, I hope not to just engage financial support, but your comments, criticisms and insights. (I did this during the phone hacking trial when supporters funded my coverage and crowd-sourced my book Beyond Contempt.)

This will be an epic journey. It may take several years. But I’d love to have you join me on it, to tell the story of our times. And I guarantee whether it’s just a book, party or internment in the gulag - there will be something at the end of it.

If you subscribe, expect regular new updates, background notes, discussions and adaptations as we progress. Below is the first draft of the prologue, and happy to answer any questions and add explanatory notes.

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The Trojan Horse: Prologue

The Presidential Hall on Cape Idokapas

They all fell silent. In the main hall of Putin’s Palace

On Cape Idokapas, under white stucco and coloured friezes

(Newly painted to hide the smell of fungus)

The table of guests turned their eyes to the Ambassador,

Just returned from London. Yakovenko glanced at his medal

The Order of Alexander Nevsky, famed in battle,

And raised his glass at the President:

“Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Your excellency asks how from your design and command

We brought our Cold War enemy to heel, and eventually

Britannia to its knees. Many played a part,

Players big and small, witting, and unwitting,

Wilful, wise, piteous, fools and useful idiots.

The story is long, so fill your glasses deep.

Our plans took years to reach fruition –

Too many to be honoured in just one night –

Except to say, the greatest actor in its decay

Was the United Kingdom itself. We never tried

To subvert what had not already been corrupted:

To hurt, except to open old unaddressed wounds

Of hubris, envy, empire and empty status

We were lucky. Like the Greeks, wasted by

A decade besieging the fortress of Troy,

We could never have surmounted those walls

Or even undermined them, alone. We needed the Brits

To aid us, to make them willing agents of their own

Decline, to welcome our charge like a gift from the gods,

And bring destruction in. As you surmised,

Just as Priam’s men hauled in that wooden horse

In whose belly hid Ulysses and his ragtag team

To open the floodgates, our victory was in the mind:

To be remembered not for force of arms

But relentless cunning, deception, lies and guile.

[Section below might need some kind of break before it.]

There were many ports of disembarkation. The first

Were those islands our enemy once occupied. You know

Them well: Grand Cayman, Cyprus, Virgin Islands

Bermuda, Malta, Gibraltar, Turks and Caicos,

That dark archipelago of offshore accounts

Where the murky deals of shadow banks

Eddy around beaches, shoals and shallows.

It happened almost by accident. Where else could they

Cleanse dirty cash in the Eurodollars?

British nabobs started it. A tax man in Panama.

A shell company. A lawyer in Kitts and Nevis.

Nominee accounts. The press of a button.

Layer upon layer of avoidance and evasion.

We just honoured the tradition, Pirates of the Caribbean,

Following the path carved by English privateers,

Centuries beforehand, now managed by a concierge class

Of white shoe law firms, reputation launderers,

Media columnists, PR agents, white collar criminals,

Until we breached the citadel. The credit crunch

Accelerated the pace, until, by the time you announced

Your Eurasian plan and war came to rebellious Ukraine,

Like dark matter, these elements had gravitational force

Dark money, Comrades, helped build our Trojan horse.”

Cut to: a Conference in Cambridge

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