NYT: Russia Tried To Assassinate Defector In Miami

The New York Times reports:

As President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil. The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations.

It also signaled a dangerous low point even between intelligence services that have long had a strained history. The assassination failed, but the aftermath in part spiraled into tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia, according to three former senior American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss aspects of a plot meant to be secret and its consequences.

Read the full article.

An operation by Russia to kill a CIA informant, a former Russian intelligence officer, in Miami in 2020, was a brazen expansion of President Vladimir Putin’s campaign of assassinations. The failed plot spiraled into tit-for-tat retaliation.https://t.co/n5vNz08UCU

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 19, 2023