Russian Spies Attempting Targeted Assassinations On US Soil

ANALYSIS – A ‘game-changer' or business as usual? This began well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. According to newly released information, the Russians have been more active in the assassination game on U.S. soil than many previously thought.

Russian clandestine operations overseas are usually run by the SVR, which succeeded the KGB, or the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.

But the FSB, Russia's internal security service is also known to conduct ops outside Russia.

While the Russian intelligence and security services were known to pursue and assassinate double agents or critics of the regime, elsewhere, including Western capitals – recall the big case from 2018, when Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England – the Russians were thought to be more circumspect about outright killings (or ‘wetwork') in the United States.

Previously, the U.S. intelligence community (IC) assessed that while Moscow has intimidated Russians who help the U.S., the threat level against assets inside America was believed to be fairly low.

Still, the London incident, writes The New York Times, set off alarm bells inside the CIA, where officials worried that former spies who had relocated to the United States would soon be targets.

However, this week, the Times revealed what is being called an unprecedented 2020 attempt by Moscow to track down and kill Aleksandr Poteyev, a former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer turned informant for the CIA who was living in Miami.

In this case, the FSB was reportedly behind the failed assassination attempt.

This, according to the British edition of a new book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West,” to be published on June 29 and by Simon & Schuster. The author is Calder Walton, a national security and intelligence scholar at Harvard.

The Times adds that according to the book, a Kremlin official asserted that a hit man, or a ‘Mercader,' would be sent to hunt down Poteyev. And this name has a deadly history.

Ramón Mercader, the infamous hit man for Joseph Stalin, killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940 with an ice axe to his head. American intelligence officials hinted to Walton that this operation was the beginning of “a modern-day Mercader” sent to murder Poteyev.

Fortunately, this Mercader failed, and his lackeys were arrested.

Some argue this willingness to kill U.S. assets on U.S. soil is totally new. I believe they have been doing it for a while.

Either way, it is an extremely concerning development.

Rebekah Koffler, a Russian-born former intelligence officer with my old outfit, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who worked with the CIA's National Clandestine Service on operations involving defectors, says the Kremlin going after a U.S. asset on American soil is “a game changer.”

Koffler, who is also the author of “Putin's Playbook,” told Fox News Digital: “We have many people working for us who risk their lives… in Russia providing really highly sensitive information. In certain cases, we exfiltrate them when their life is in danger when their cover is blown.”

The IC promises to ensure the safety and protection of foreign informants, or assets, brought to the United States, who were forced to flee their homeland. Most consider themselves very safe here.

So, when foreign intelligence operatives actively try to kill these protected assets on U.S. soil, it's a very big deal.

“If they attempted to kill this guy, they're going to attempt to kill our other guys that we have here,” she explained. “It's a very alarming development,” she added, according to Fox News. “We just realized none of these people are safe anymore, and that's very disturbing.”

Expect the Russians to be even more aggressive now with their campaign of targeted assassinations as Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine continues going badly. “The red lines are long gone for Putin,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia, according to the Times. 

“He wants all these guys dead.”

But, as Fox News reported:

Koffler pointed out that the failure of Russia's assassination attempt demonstrated that security procedures the U.S. intelligence community has in place to keep defectors safe are working.

“We may need to invest more resources now that we know the Russians will be conducting ‘wet deeds' covert operations on U.S. soil, but so far what we've done has worked in terms of keeping these guys alive,” she said in reference to operational tactics used by Russia in assassination attempts like poisonings.

“Going forward, U.S. intelligence will likely assess the risk to Russian defectors higher than the current baseline, which is already very high. We will probably augment our security procedures to keep them safe,” she continued. “This case demonstrated that Russian defectors should not have a false sense of security, just because they are in the U.S.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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