To offer Trump $12 billion (the market value of 19.5 percent of Rosneft shares), in an act of near madness, would wipe out the cash that Putin desperately needed for military spending and budget deficits, all in return for a promise to lift sanctions if (and what a big “if”) Trump were elected. Rosneft, as a public company, would have to hide that the US president, who received his shares as a bribe, was a major shareholder of Russia’s largest oil company. This remarkable secret-of-secrets seems to be bandied about to an Orbis “trusted compatriot, a senior member of Sechin’s staff, and disclosed by Sechin himself. I guess there are a lot of loose lips in Rosneft offices.

The story of the purported multi-billion-dollar bribe was picked up by the Russian liberal press directly from the Orbis report without comment but with a big question marks in the title “A 10.5 billion Euro bribe? Putin and Sechin gifted Trump 19.5% of Rosneft shares? This story has given Putin’s weak opposition the chance to accuse him of wasting national treasure on a stupid bribe.

The $12 billion for (perhaps) lifting the sanctions makes Nikita Khrushchev’s hare-brained schemes (for which he was fired) look eminently reasonable.