The Russia connectionEnemies of the state: Russia tracked Russian émigrés in the U.S.

Published 26 April 2018

Last month the United States expelled 60 Russian diplomats in solidarity with the United Kingdom,. after Russian intelligence operatives poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England in March. Among those expelled were intelligence operatives who were tracking Russian defectors and their families in the United States, probably setting the stage for killing some of them as “enemies of the state.”

Last month the United States expelled 60 Russian diplomats in solidarity with the United Kingdom,. after Russian intelligence operatives poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England in March.

CNN reports that among those expelled were intelligence operatives who were tracking Russian defectors and their families in the United States, probably setting the stage for killing some of them as “enemies of the state.”

In at least one instance, suspected Russian spies were believed to be casing someone who was part of a CIA program that provided new identities to protect resettled Russians, the officials said.

That episode and other U.S. intelligence raised concerns that the Russians were preparing to target Russian émigrés in the U.S. labeled by the Kremlin as traitors or enemies, law enforcement and intelligence officials said.

(…)

Officials in both the U.S. and U.K. have warned that the Russian government appears emboldened to carry out assassinations in western Democracies. 

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee produced a report earlier this year raised the issue of the suspicious deaths of more than two dozen critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin during his time in power. The Russian security services are suspected in many of the deaths, the report said, noting a Russian law passed “in July 2006 that permits the assassination of ‘enemies of the Russian regime’ who live abroad.”

The trail of mysterious deaths, all of which happened to people who possessed information that the Kremlin did not want made public, should not be ignored by Western countries on the assumption that they are safe from these extreme measures,” said the Senate Democrats in their report.

Vladimir Putin intelligence operatives have killed several domestic critics of Putin – opposition politicians, journalists, investigative reporters, academics, artists – and more than a dozen Russian defectors, like Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 (the attempt on Sergei Skripal and his daughter belongs in this category of assassinations).