Former head of the presidential campaign headquarters of U.S. President Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, helped former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to conduct a media campaign in the West directed against Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday with reference to its own data.

In 2011 Manafort approved a clandestine strategy to discredit Tymoshenko abroad. Alan Friedman, a former Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reporter, based in Italy, masterminded this project. Friedman has previously been accused of concealing his work as a paid lobbyist. Also involved were Rick Gates, Manafort's then deputy, and Konstantin Kilimnik, another senior Manafort associate who the FBI believes has links to Russian military intelligence.

In July 2011 Friedman sent Manafort a confidential six-page document entitled "Ukraine - the digital road map", which contained a plan for "destruction" of Tymoshenko, which the Guardian calls Viktor Yanukovych's "key opponent," using video, articles and social networks. The plan included creating a website, posting on the Internet, and sending out e-mails to "the target audience in Europe and the U.S." It was also proposed to edit the page of Yulia Tymoshenko in Wikipedia in order to emphasize the "corruption and legal proceedings" related to the politician.

Friedman himself told the Guardian that from the end of 2011 his company FBC Media had cooperated with Ukraine "on the project on public relations and the formation of the portrait of the country," and its goal was to promote Ukraine's policy of rapprochement with the EU. He stressed that "this was not a secret or concealed plan."

Manafort, as well as the former electoral campaign adviser Robert Gates, became the first accused in the investigation of the so-called "Russian case" of the special prosecutor Robert Mueller; they were charged in late October.

Gates and Manafort are accused of preparing false tax declarations, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, money laundering, non disclosure of income from foreign sources, collusion against U.S. interests and misrepresentation of U.S. authorities regarding their cooperation with Yanukovych and the Ukrainian Party of Regions.