Following the news that the CIA is interested in recruiting disaffected Russians as potential future assets, Russia’s embassy in the United States on Thursday condemned the spy agency’s statements, adding that these attempts would not succeed.
Commenting on remarks made by David Marlowe, CIA’s deputy director of operations who announced the agency is “open for business” and expressed interest in recruiting Russians, Russia’s diplomatic mission noted it is common knowledge that the United States intelligence community is trying to destabilize Russia.
The public statement the embassy issued said that the CIA’s bid to recruit Russian citizens- military officers, diplomats, and oligarchs impacted by Western sanctions on Russia, above all – only confirms Washington’s hostile policies and efforts to undermine Russia.
The embassy said that Marlowe’s remarks only confirm the US hostile course aimed at weakening Moscow from within through sophisticated subversive methods, pointing out that Russia had no illusions about the CIA’s anti-Russian activities.
It claimed that most Russian citizens support Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and declared ‘doomed to fail’ any attempts to sow discord in the country.
The mission described Marlowe’s words as a trivial desire to make Congress increase the intelligence agency budget and get public attention, explaining the CIA’s Russophobic zeal as a wish to compensate for reputational costs stemming from the fiasco with the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, which has denounced CIA attempts to suborn Russian diplomats as very impudent behavior and unacceptable, the US intelligence operatives tried to approach Russian diplomats in the Netherlands at least twice.
Last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to Moscow to protest against Western intelligence agencies’ attempts to recruit Russian personnel after reports that a British spy had tried to recruit a Russian military attache in The Hague.