Russian Fifth Column – (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin has said.
Mere weeks ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Russia, the United States intends to ramp up efforts to recruit Russian graduates of US exchange programs in order to form a “fifth column” in Russia and to meddle in Russia’s internal affairs, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin has said.
Commenting on this development, retired US Air Force Lt. Col and former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik that “all participants and graduates of military and state department exchange programs have always been targets for this kind of recruitment.”
According to her, the expansion of this recruitment approach to a “wider range of high school student exchanges, academic scholarships to ostensibly private universities, and civilian travel speaks to three things.”
- “One, the return to human intelligence (HUMINT) within the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
- Two, expected available future funding for HUMINT, which has been weak for years in the US and is less costly and more easily hidden within the larger budget,” Kwiatkowski said. “
- And three, the expanded and pervasive nature of the US surveillance state, and its ability to not only track and identify but surreptitiously engage these young people among Americans (who are surveilled usually without FISA warrants).”
Reported widely in Russian media today, this made me think of Catherine A Fitts, who said that the US is coming to rescue their dollar. We have Latin American destabilization growing stronger as well.