CIA launches social media campaign to recruit spies among Russians: Report

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a campaign on social media platforms to recruit Russian nationals disaffected by the military operation in Ukraine as spies and agents, a US media report says. 

According to a recent report by CNN, the CIA first released the Russian-language video on the popular social messaging service Telegram, calling on Russians to come forward with important intelligence information and share secrets.

“The CIA wants to know the truth about Russia, and we are looking for reliable people who can tell us that truth,” the agency said in the two-minute video. “Your information may be more valuable than you know.”

The video has also appeared on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

James Olson, former chief of counterintelligence at CIA, said that the Ukraine war has created an “unprecedented opportunity” for Russians to share information with the US.

“There are a lot of disaffected Russians out there now,” he claimed, adding, “Today is probably the best period of recruiting Russians that we’ve had.”

The video also details how information can be sent using the Tor browser, a confidential internet browser for encrypted communications.

“Our goal is to provide them with as safe a way as possible to contact us,” another US official said.

CIA officials involved in the project told CNN that the video avoids inflammatory content concerning President Vladimir Putin. Instead, it is meant to appeal to people who are unhappy with Russian policies by “demystifying” the process of contacting the CIA, they added.

The agency is seeking all types of information, including political and economic data, the officials said, adding that they hope to convince hesitant Russians to leak information on the dark web by showing them simple ways to do so.

A “spy vs. spy competition” between the US and Russian security services and intelligence agencies is underway, they said.

Before the war in Ukraine, the FBI launched a similar project aimed at Russians in the US, with the agency specifically targeting the phones of people coming and going from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Last March, the Washington Post reported that the CIA was attempting to recruit employees of the Russian embassy in Washington by means of sending social media ads to smartphones.  

Also in November last year, a report by the Wall Street Journal said that the US spy agency has been seeking to recruit Russian nationals frustrated with the course of war in Ukraine.

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine in late February 2022, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

CIA secretly training Ukrainian forces to ‘push back against Russians’: Report

The CIA is reportedly overseeing an undercover training program for Ukrainian forces in the United States.

At the time, President Putin said one of the goals of what he called a “special military operation” was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

Since the onset of the war, the West has supplied Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including rocket systems, drones, armored vehicles, tanks, and communication systems despite Russia's repeated warnings that the Western military assistance will only prolong the conflict. 

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