The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has released a video in Russian to try to persuade Russian intelligence officials to switch sides and work as double agents for Washington.
CIA Director William Burns said in July that some Russian discontent with the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies, and that the CIA was not passing up the chance.
The video, released on the CIA's official X channel, attempts to appeal to what it suggests are patriotic Russians working in the intelligence community who may feel betrayed by what it called corruption in elite circles and the poor handling of the military. Russians are equipped and supplied.
“The people around you may not want to hear the truth. But we want to. You are not powerless,” says the video, the latest in a series of recruitment videos aimed at Russia, before detailing ways to contact the CIA.
Accompanied by melancholic classical music, the video's main fictional character is an unnamed 35-year-old employee of Russia's military intelligence agency who presents himself as a Russia-loving patriot who once served as a paratrooper.
“Do I have enough courage to face this betrayal?” he says in the video, before stating that he realized that the real enemy is within Russia, in the form of a corrupt leadership and elite.
“The top leadership sold the country in exchange for palaces and yachts at a time when our soldiers are chewing rotten potatoes and shooting prehistoric weapons. Our people are forced to give bribes to simply find work,” the man says, as video clips of a bleak Russian winter are interspersed with images of high-end official limousines and wealthy Russians making toasts.
The fictional character claims that his patriotism spurred him to action and work with the CIA, and the video's final scene shows a well-dressed man contacting the CIA via cell phone in a snow-covered courtyard.
Kremlin downplays video
The Kremlin says everything is done to ensure the Russian military has the equipment it needs to succeed in what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The Russian government dismissed several allegations of corruption as false and shrugged off the video.
“You know, this practice is quite common, intelligence agencies around the world often use the media and social networks to recruit new employees. And they do it all the time, the CIA does it every year,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday (23).
Peskov suggested that the CIA made a mistake in releasing the video on X, formerly known as Twitter, which is banned in Russia and can only be accessed through a virtual private network, many of which are also banned.
“Someone needs to tell the CIA that in our country (the Russian social network) VKontakte is much more popular than the banned X. And that VKontakte's audience is much larger,” Peskov said.
Source: CNN Brasil
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