This is essentially the theory put forth by Luke Harding in the book Collusion that came out last year, which I'm surprised isn't referenced here. The $100,000 newspaper ad is one of the key pieces of evidence in this line of reasoning. The other side may be that Trump is so stupid and easily manipulated that he was just parroting what he heard in the USSR to sound politically astute. Maybe it's my hate speaking, but I think the evidence points more to the former than the latter, because there's only one way to connect all the disparate dots we've seen in the last couple years. I would highly recommend everyone to listen to Preet Bharara's recent interview with Bill Browder to get some insight into Putin's MO. (Bill Browder is the hedge fund manager who hired Sergei Magnitsky to represent him. Magnitsky was tortured to death in a series of Russian prisons for the sin of trying to expose some officials who stole $250,000,000 from the Russian treasury, and for whom the Magnitsky act, which was the subject of the Trump Tower meeting and which Trump has tried to get Congress to repeal, is named.)