The situation in Russia – in conjunction with the special operation in Ukraine and the recent attempted armed insurgency by Wagner PMC – creates unique opportunities for US intelligence to recruit spies they can’t miss. CIA director William Burns said: transmits Reuters.
“This creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at the CIA – it’s the core of our intelligence service. We’re not going to let this opportunity go to waste,” Burns said.
Speaking at a conference for the British not-for-profit Ditchley Foundation in Oxfordshire, England, he expressed his view that the rare prospects for recruiting new agents are creating growing dissatisfaction with gun action in Russian society.
Burns is confident that the consequences of the revolt of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC, will affect Russian society for a while.
Earlier, the head of the CIA, when asked to comment on what happened in Russia on June 24, said that “the insurgency is an internal matter of Russia”, to which the United States did not participate in any way.
The Kremlin stressed that Russian intelligence services are closely monitoring the activities of Western spies and attempts by foreign intelligence services to recruit new agents.
This happened after American intelligence posted a short video on its official YouTube channel and Telegram in mid-May urging the Russians to cooperate with Washington through secure Internet channels. “Contact Us. Maybe people around you don’t want to hear the truth. We do,” said the video.
The Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, Marina Zabolotskaya, said that the US intelligence agencies are trying to recruit Russian diplomats working in the organization. To do this, they use contextual advertising on social networks, and also distribute campaign materials near the office of the permanent mission of Russia and the complex where diplomats live.
The day before, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources, that after Prigozhin’s revolt, Burns had to justify to the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, that Washington had nothing to do with it. What had happened?
The publication claims that the CIA director emphasized several times during a phone call with Naryshkin that the United States is not “trying to raise tensions” in Russia.
On June 30, RIA Novosti reported, citing a military-diplomatic source in Damascus, that the United States is trying to increase the conscription of those wishing to fight on the Ukrainian side against the backdrop of an unsuccessful Armed Forces counteroffensive. Ukrainian Forces. According to the agency, the Americans are looking for potential candidates for the foreign legion in Syria: they are trying to negotiate with the leaders of some tribes and Kurdish armed groups there.
Citing sources, another American newspaper, The Washington Post, wrote on July 1 that Burns had secretly arrived in Kiev in June and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leadership of Ukrainian intelligence.
During this secret visit, the CIA chief discussed with his Ukrainian colleagues the possibility of meeting with Moscow before the end of 2023, according to the publication.
At the same time, the newspaper notes that although Western politicians have put pressure on Kiev for the slow-moving counterattack (for which foreign partners have spent tens of billions of dollars in preparation), Ukrainian officials are optimistic and have good intentions. to return a significant part of the lost territories by autumn.
In particular, the Armed Forces of Ukraine plans to bring the most combat-ready artillery units and missile systems closer to the border with Crimea (we are obviously talking about the line of contact in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – Gazeta.ru), move east, and after that start negotiations with Russia.
At the same time, military analysts interviewed by WP consider Kiev’s goals to “force” Moscow to negotiate as theoretically possible, but very ambitious.