Such warnings have been issued by US and Ukrainian intelligence officials, Poland’s dorzeczy.pl website reported on Friday.
According to one US intelligence source, who was not authorised to speak to the media, the “reach” of the operations carried by Russia’s spy agencies is “vast and global,” the VICE website reported.
Moreover, “Russian-aligned entities with the capacity to undertake lethal operations are thought to be present on U.S. soil,” the intelligence official warned.
Threat of Kremlin-ordered assassinations in Europe
However, the source noted that “a stateside Kremlin-sanctioned hit on a dissident or an American would be an escalatory and bold move,” according to the VICE.
The intelligence official, as well as an expert on Russian intelligence consulted by the VICE, both stated that Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, likely doesn’t “have the bandwidth right now” for planning an “elaborate and complicated covert action” in the US.“
However, “past plots in the U.K. and Germany show they do have the appetite for operations in Europe writ-large,” the website reported.
Russia’s suspected covert operations in UK
In the past, Britain twice accused Moscow of assassinating former Russian intelligence officers on UK soil, dorzeczy.pl noted.
British investigators uncovered a Russian connection in the killing of ex-Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with Polonium-210 in London in 2006, dorzeczy.pl wrote.
Britain also accused Russia of attempting to assassinate former colonel of the foreign-intelligence agency GRU Sergei Skripal and his daughter, with a Russian-developed Novichok nerve agent in the southern city of Salisbury in 2018, according to dorzeczy.pl.
Growing risk of Russian assassinations
Moreover, according to the investigative group Bellingcat, Russian intelligence officers arranged the poisoning of several Russian opposition activists, including Alexei Navalny, Dmitry Bykov and Vladimir Kara-Murza, dorzeczy.pl noted.
According to sources in Ukraine’s security service, the Kremlin is also planning to carry out assassinations of foreign fighters who had volunteered to battle on the side of Ukraine against the Russian invasion, dorzeczy.pl wrote.
Such a move would be intended to intimidate those willing to support Ukraine’s war effort, according to dorzeczy.pl.
Friday is day 352 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Source: dorzeczy.pl, VICE