Amy Knight: Will the CIA’s Former Top Spy Fall Prey to Putin’s Murderous Mole Hunt?
....Beginning in the late 1990s, the man profiled in Kommersant worked in the monetary and financial department of the Russian Foreign Ministry and later was transferred to the ministry’s second European department under Alexander Udaltsov (currently, the Russian ambassador to Lithuania). In the mid-2000s, he served as second secretary at the Russian Embassy in Washington. At that time, Yury Ushakov, the current assistant to the Russian president for international affairs, was Russia’s ambassador to the United States. According to Kommersant, the man in question continued to work directly under Ushakov, who enjoys the close trust of the Russian president, after they both returned to Moscow in 2008. From 2008 to May 2012 (when Putin was prime minister), Ushakov was deputy chief of the government staff of the Russian Federation. Since then he has been an aide to the president of the Russian Federation responsible for international affairs.
As one of Putin’s top advisers, Ushakov clearly has been deeply involved with Kremlin policy toward the U.S. for years, and his trusted aide would have known details about all aspects of the decision-making process involving the United States and Putin. According to the New York Times: “The Moscow informant was instrumental to the CIA’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself.” The news media began speculating about possible CIA assets highly placed in the Kremlin after U.S. intelligence officials released a declassified version of their assessment of Russia’s election interference in early January 2017. This was published, significantly, as a response to constant public criticism and doubts expressed by then-President-elect Donald Trump about the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian influence operations that helped him get elected.
It was also around this time that the Russians began hunting very aggressively for moles within their government and security services, who might have been passing information to the Americans. In December, according to news that broke a few weeks later, the FSB arrested two of its top cyber officials on treason charges for collaborating with the CIA. One of them was dragged out of a meeting with a bag over his head—according to accounts apparently leaked by the Kremlin itself.
At about the same time FSB General Oleg Erovinkin, the right-hand man of the powerful Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, was found dead in his car in Moscow. Sechin has long been rumored to have been a key participant in the Kremlin’s efforts to get Trump elected. ... read more:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/will-the-cias-former-top-spy-fall-prey-to-putins-murderous-mole-hunt?ref=home
As one of Putin’s top advisers, Ushakov clearly has been deeply involved with Kremlin policy toward the U.S. for years, and his trusted aide would have known details about all aspects of the decision-making process involving the United States and Putin. According to the New York Times: “The Moscow informant was instrumental to the CIA’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself.” The news media began speculating about possible CIA assets highly placed in the Kremlin after U.S. intelligence officials released a declassified version of their assessment of Russia’s election interference in early January 2017. This was published, significantly, as a response to constant public criticism and doubts expressed by then-President-elect Donald Trump about the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian influence operations that helped him get elected.
It was also around this time that the Russians began hunting very aggressively for moles within their government and security services, who might have been passing information to the Americans. In December, according to news that broke a few weeks later, the FSB arrested two of its top cyber officials on treason charges for collaborating with the CIA. One of them was dragged out of a meeting with a bag over his head—according to accounts apparently leaked by the Kremlin itself.
At about the same time FSB General Oleg Erovinkin, the right-hand man of the powerful Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, was found dead in his car in Moscow. Sechin has long been rumored to have been a key participant in the Kremlin’s efforts to get Trump elected. ... read more:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/will-the-cias-former-top-spy-fall-prey-to-putins-murderous-mole-hunt?ref=home
