FBI operation seeks anti-Putin Russians 'who might be willing to spy' on Moscow: report

20 April 2023

Some of President Vladimir Putin's most scathing critics can be Russian exiles living in North America or Europe. They might be in Marbella, Spain or Brighton Beach, Brooklyn — or perhaps the Bustleton area of Northeast Philadelphia. And one thing they have in common is an intense disdain for Putin's policies, especially the invasion of Ukraine.

Some Putin critics were once Putin supporters — a fact that obviously isn't lost on the FBI. Journalist Shannon Vavra, in an article published by The Daily Beast on April 20, describes an FBI "social media operation" seeking Russians who "might be willing to spy" on Moscow "for the Biden Administration."

"The spy-hunting operation relies on a promotional video that depicts potential paths that an employee at the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., might take through the city to reach the FBI at the J. Edgar Hoover Building," Vavra explains. "The video, roughly two minutes long, features music from Chopin’s haunting 'Nocturne No. 1,' with various shots of buses and trains that can be taken to FBI headquarters, as well as footage of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the streets of Georgetown. The video is circulating on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google, according to ads seen by The Daily Beast and ad repositories maintained by the social media platforms."

Vavra reports that the FBI's operation "is particularly aimed at Russians who have access to classified information" and is "meant to lay out a vision for potential informants for how they can go about spilling Russian government secrets to the United States safely."

"The FBI timed the release of the video ad with the one-year mark of Putin’s invasion in Ukraine," Vavra notes. "Previous ads have used images and text to try to persuade would-be Russian traitors to share information with the United States."

But according to former FBI special agent Robin Dreeke, some Russians in the U.S. might think that the FBI's ad isn't really an FBI ad, but rather, a trap from Putin allies and the Kremlin designed to test who is and isn't loyal.

Dreeke told the Beast, "People are always going to trust a person more than trust something cyber that you don't know. Because they (Russians) do counter operations against their own people to test them all the time."

Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

From Your Site Articles