[throwaway5752]

The backchannels were Manafort/Kilimnik, Michael Flynn/Kislyak, and more. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-... is a digestible background. That is just the US - most European countries have analogues, as do key Asian, African, and South American countries.

The are not separate phenomenon at different stages, they are a global, coordinated group. They were coordinated by the massive cash flows coordinated by a small group in Russia. The use coordinated tactics, in concert with each other.

[pohl]

Yes, it's the same trans-national crime syndicate. It's the same war, even – it's just recently became kinetic. Amazing the ROI that Vlad got from TFG.

[areyousure]

In case anyone is curious, it appears that ROI = "return on investment", Vlad = Vladimir Putin, and TFG = "the former guy" = Donald Trump. It appears to be the ~4th time the latter abbreviation has been used on this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27920739

[koshergweilo]

Thanks for the translation. I'm pretty new to HN, is mentioning Putin or Trump by name a surefire way to get banned or something?

[nix23]

>surefire way to get banned or something

No, but people like to self-censor sometimes ;)