The “rise and dramatic fall” of former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos and the latter’s relations with controversial Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos were the focus of an article this week by the Washington Post.
The highly respected US daily describes Kammenos as a “pro-Russian Greek nationalist who bragged often of his insider Moscow connections,” while detailing what it claims were the events of the day when Vladimir Putin arrived in Greece last year.
The Post said Kammenos “would receive a second key visitor that day, but with considerably less fanfare … Not yet 30 years old, George Papadopoulos had been unknown in Greece — and everywhere else — only two months before.
“But suddenly, just as Putin arrived, he was in Athens, quietly holding meetings across town and confiding in hushed tones that he was there on a sensitive mission on behalf of his boss, Donald Trump.”
Kammenos is the founder and leader of a small rightist-populist party (the Independent Greeks) that serves as the “strange bedfellows” junior partner in the current coalition government dominated by radical leftist SYRIZA party.
In October, the Post reminds, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about "his efforts to connect Trump’s presidential campaign with senior Russian officials."
