Russia could have easily hidden its meddling in the 2016 presidential election, but instead chose to make sure the United States was aware of it, according to an upcoming book which predicts Russian President Vladimir Putin is headed for failure.
"Had they wanted to remain invisible, they would have," writes leading Russia expert Richard Lourie in "Putin: His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash," to be published July 18 by Thomas Dunne Books.
"But sometimes they prefer to send a message as in Soviet times, when after a surreptitious search of an apartment, a KGB agent would leave a cigarette butt in the toilet, as if to say: 'We were here.'"
But Lourie says Putin's Russia is destined to collapse just as Imperial Russia did in 1917 and as Soviet Russia did in 1991 as a result of the authoritarian strongman's iron-fisted rule and excesses.
"When and with how much suffering is anybody's guess," he writes.
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