Disrupting the Russian presidential election and creating an atmosphere of weakness around Putin is precisely what the U.S. intelligence agency would seek to engender.
Russian President Vladimir Putin after take a flight in a military aircraft, Feb. 22. (Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant)
By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News
In the days leading to the Russian presidential election that concluded on Sunday, a network of three Russian paramilitary organizations working under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or GUR, launched a series of attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.
The purpose of the attacks was clear — to disrupt the three-day Russian presidential election by creating an atmosphere of weakness and impotence around President Vladimir Putin designed to undermine his authority, legitimacy and appeal at the voting booth.
The operation was months in the planning, and involved the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the Freedom of Russian Legion (LSR), and the Siberia Battalion. All three of these organizations are controlled by the GUR, whose spokesman announced the attacks.
Left unsaid is the degree to which the C.I.A. was involved in what amounts to an invasion of the territory of the Russian Federation by forces operating under the umbrella of what is openly acknowledged to be a proxy war between the United States and its NATO allies against Russia.
While Ukraine maintains the attacks by the RDK, LSR, and Siberia Battalion are the actions of “patriotic Russians” opposed to Putin, the involvement of the GUR in organizing, training, equipping, and directing these forces makes their attack on Russian soil a direct extension of the proxy war between Russia and the West.
Given the extensive involvement of the C.I.A. in the work of the GUR, it is highly unlikely that an action of this scope and scale could have been executed without the knowledge of the C.I.A. and in the attacks, including its goals and objectives.
Indeed, the presence of high-end U.S. military equipment, including M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), in the order of battle in the attack by Russian insurgent forces points to a direct U.S. role, as does the political nature of the mission of election disruption, which has been a long-term objective of the C.I.A. in Russia stretching back decades.
2014
Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in Kiev, 2013. (Dmitry Trikutko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The C.I.A.’s relationship with the GUR is well-established, dating back to 2014, according to The Washington Post, when the C.I.A. worked with the GUR to establish a network of bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border from which to conduct intelligence operations against Russia, including missions that involved operations on Russian soil.
The C.I.A. intercepted Russian communications, captured Russian drones for follow-on technical exploitation, and oversaw the recruitment and operation of spy rings operating on Russian soil.
In the lead up to Russia’s initiation of the Special Military Operation (SMO) against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the C.I.A. expanded its relationship with the GUR to include specialized training provided by members of the Ground Division of the C.I.A.’s Special Activities Group, responsible for covert paramilitary operations.
[C.I.A. first began secret operations using fascists against Moscow in 1948 with the CARTEL and later AERODYNAMIC programs. See: On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine.]
The training was focused on unconventional and guerrilla warfare skills that would help facilitate the creation and sustainment of anti-Russian insurgencies carried out by “stay behind” teams operating on any Ukrainian territory that was occupied by Russian forces.
After the SMO began, ethnic Russians who had served since 2014 within the ranks of the neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalist, paramilitary organization known as the Azov Regiment organized themselves into a separate organization known as the Russian Volunteer Corps, or RDK.
Members of the Russian Volunteer Corps on 24 May 2023. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
The RDK modeled itself after the Russian Liberation Army, an entity organized, trained, and equipped by the Nazi Germans during World War Two which was comprised of Russian prisoners of war. Russians today often refer to the RDK members as “Vlassovites,” after Russian General Andrei Vlasov, who was captured by the Germans and later defected to their cause.
Vlasov recruited Russian prisoners of war into what was known as the Russian Liberation Army, which eventually consisted of two divisions comprising some 30,000 troops. Most of Vlasov’s “army” were either killed in combat, or taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, where they were treated as traitors and punished accordingly (the enlisted sentenced to lengthy terms in the Gulag, and the leaders hung.) The RDK was able to attract several hundred former Azov fighters and new recruits into its ranks.
A second ethnic Russian military unit, created in the aftermath of the SMO, is comprised primarily of Russian military defectors and prisoners of war. Known as the Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR), it consists of several hundred soldiers organized into two battalions. The LSR operates as part of the International Legion of the Ukrainian Territorial Army.
However, it is controlled by the GUR, according to GUR chief Kyrylo Budanov, as opposed to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
The third ethnic Russian military unit operating with Ukraine is the so-called Siberian Battalion, composed of ethnic Russians and non-Russian ethnicities from the Siberian territories of the Russian Federation.
The members of this formation are volunteers from Russian Siberia who are opposed to Putin’s government. Like the LSR, the Siberian Battalion operated as a GUR-controlled part of the Ukrainian Territorial Army and is said to consist of around 300 men, according to a report in Euronews.
The incursion over the weekend by the GUR-controlled, anti-Putin, Russian forces is not the first instance of its kind. In March and April 2023, several small cross-border attacks were carried out by forces affiliated with the Russian Volunteer Corps RDK.
More telling was a larger attack made on May 22, 2023. The timing of this attack, which lasted less than a day, seemed to coincide with the fall of the hotly contested city of to the Russian private military company Wagner.
The capture of Bakhmut by Wagner signaled the beginning of a rapid deterioration in relations between the head of the Wagner Group, the one-time Putin loyalist, insider Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the Russian military leadership, in particular Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff General Valeri Gerasimov.
From left: Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov during a 2019 military exercise. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
On June 23, 2023, Prigozhin led thousands of his Wagner fighters in a rebellion which saw him occupy the Russian headquarters of the SMO in Rostov-on-Don, and march on Moscow. While the rebellion was quashed within 24 hours, many of the Wagner fighters said that they had participated only because they were told they would be deploying on to Russian soil, where Wagner was prohibited by law from operating, to defend against further incursions from the RDK.
Information that emerged after Prigozhin’s abortive rebellion showed that the Wagner leader had been in frequent contact with the Ukrainian GUR in the months leading up to his insurrection, and that the RDK attacks were part of a coordinated effort orchestrated by the GUR, designed to weaken and perhaps bring down Putin’s government.
The Biden administration acknowledged having detailed intelligence beforehand about Prigozhin’s revolt, and yet did not provide any warning to the Russian government, suggesting that the C.I.A. was at a minimum cognizant of the GUR operation and tacitly supported it.
A crowd in Rostov-on-Don watching a tank with flowers sticking out of its muzzle during the so-called Wagner Rebellion, June 24, 2023. (Fargoh, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)
The presence of U.S. weapons, including Humvee vehicles, in the possession of the RDK fighters on the weekend likewise hinted at a broader U.S. involvement in their training and equipping, involvement which, given the prohibition on the deployment of U.S. military forces in a training capacity on Ukrainian soil since the initiation of the SMO, pointed to the C.I.A.’s Ground Division as the facilitating unit.
The Russian government has assessed that the total strength of the GUR-controlled forces that attacked Russia in the leadup to the presidential election completed on Sunday numbered around 2,500 men, supported by at least 35 tanks and scores of armored vehicles, including a significant number of U.S.-supplied M-2 Bradley IFVs.
The scope and scale of the military operation, which included helicopter-borne forces inserted behind Russian lines, is such that it could not have been accomplished without the knowledge of the C.I.A. Moreover, the tactics and equipment used (helicopter raids, M-2 Bradley vehicles) strongly suggest a more direct role by the C.I.A. in both the planning and training of the mission and the troops involved.
The C.I.A.’s Ground Division is composed of veterans of the C.I.A.’s secret wars in both Syria and Afghanistan, where the C.I.A. trained secret armies to carry out their own secret wars in support of C.I.A. objectives.
Ukrainian special forces unit in Kabul during the 2021 Kabul airlift. (Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
The discrediting of Putin’s government with an eye to his removal from power has been a goal of the C.I.A. since 2005, when the C.I.A., together with British intelligence, began actively working to create viable political opposition movements inside Russia.
While these efforts have largely failed (the recent death in a Russian prison of Alexei Navalny, believed to have been a creation of the C.I.A., underscores the scope and scale of this failure), the C.I.A.’s covert political warriors in the Political Action Group of the Special Activities Center continue to try to undermine Putin through various means.
Given the Russian government’s stated goal of producing a large turnout in the election as a way to certify Putin’s legitimacy, disrupting voter turnout by creating instability and a lack of confidence would be precisely the kind of cause and effect relationship the C.I.A. would seek to engender.
The fact that the RDK leadership openly bragged that their ongoing attacks were a) designed to disrupt the Russian presidential election and b) were planned months before the attack, is a strong indicator that, given the intimate nature of the C.I.A.-GUR relationship, that the C.I.A. was at a minimum knowledgeable of, and most likely a facilitator, of the GUR-led attacks using Ukrainian-controlled Russian insurgents.
To understand the gravity that surrounds the possibility — indeed, probability — that the C.I.A. was involved, however peripherally, in an attack on Russian soil designed to disrupt a Russian presidential election, one only need reflect on how the United States would react if Russian intelligence services collaborated with Mexican drug cartels to create a well-armed insurgent army composed of Mexican-Americans who attacked U.S. territory from across the U.S.-Mexican border in order to influence the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election.
The United States would view it as an act of war and respond accordingly.
Manifest Danger of Nuclear Conflagration
The Biden administration is overseeing a Ukrainian policy that is rapidly collapsing around it.
America’s NATO allies, concerned by the lack of leadership from the Biden administration when it comes to Ukraine, are threatening to dispatch troops to Ukraine to bolster a flagging Ukrainian military. The Russian government has warned that any such move would be construed as an attack on Russia, and potentially create the conditions for a general nuclear war between Russia and the collective West.
Now, amid such a tense environment, it appears the C.I.A. has not only green-lighted an actual invasion of the Russian Federation, but more than likely was involved in its planning, preparation and execution.
Never in the history of the nuclear era has such danger of nuclear war been so manifest.
That the American people have allowed their government to create the conditions where foreign governments can determine their fate and the C.I.A. can carry out a secret war which could trigger a nuclear conflict, eviscerates the notion of democracy.
Government of the people, by the people, and for the people seems like a distant dream. In its stead the future of America appears to be in the hands of a rogue intelligence agency that long ago abandoned any pretense of accountability and operating under the rule of law.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
We in the U.S. do this because we think we ourselves are immune from retaliation but imagine the horror if Russia or Iran decided to arm the Mexican cartels. Fortunately, I do not believe either one would do this but we are tempting fate by encouraging proxies against those countries.
I guess the one positive thing that can be said at this point must be directed at Scott Ritter.
Thanks to Scott for reporting what has seemed obvious to many from day one. Scott has not lost his edge. In fact he seems more determined to get the truth out.
Question does everyone here realize what happened January 25, 1993? Let me through the work of another relay a chilling story. My hat is off to this man.
From Jeff Morley’s THE SCORPION DANCE , Chapter 24, GASTLY , pages,235, last paragraph to top page 236, see note #14 in notes section page 305.
Note #14 reads “Letter from Edmund McBride to James Hastings, January 25, 1993; Declaration of Mr. Edmund McBride, November 11, 1997, National Archives, Record Group 541 Records of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, Ronald G Haron’s Files.”
Seems that Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to destroy their files also. JCS meetings had been recorded and transcribed ever since the creation of the JCS were created in 1947. This happened after Nixon left the White House, the day after in fact.
Those records, according to the story were considered not to be ,”official minutes of the meeting but rather reporter’s version of events and thus did not have to be preserved under federal records laws.” p235, last paragraph to top of page 236. They same as Richard Helms desired to not end up like Nixon.
They destroyed everything. Maybe most importantly to me and many others all records of their conversations about the JFK assassination.
Seems Nixon’s question to Helms about the Bay of Pigs thing and who shot John had places everyone on that side of the coin in dire jeopardy.
So if we all live through this debacle in Ukraine and Russia thingy we know shat needs to be prevented in order to get the information that documents this history.
Thanks again Scott for this information, & thanks t0 CN & Co.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
The French philosopher Pascal lived from 1623 – 1662. The first 25 years of his life overlapped with the Thirty Years war. Powerful men unhappy with borders, diminished influence over neighbors, commercial “imbalances”, religious dissent. Etc etc etc.
We never learn.
I’m deeply embarrassed to be an Australian but ashamed to be a bitch of this Empire of Lies.
That the American people have allowed their government??? The American people have not had a say in what the government does in many decades. The elections are a joke with a choice given between a Democrat warmonger or a Republican warmonger both of whom answer to someone other than the electorate. 2020 was the most obvious example of the fact that we are not allowed to choose outside of the control parameters. I realize some people still ignorantly believe 2020 was a legitimate election but I can’t help people who refuse to see the truth. 2016 ONLY happened because the electorate surprised the powers that be and overwhelmed their ability to counter. They fixed that in 2020 but only by being very obvious in the cheat, days of extra time counting ballots trucked in from who knows where with no signature verification or chain of custody, kicking out ballot watchers, utilizing ballot harvesters, ballot dumps with 100% going to Biden (a literal statistical impossibility), and on and on. No, the American people do not have a say in what the government does.
If Russia were knowledgeable on the typical CIA tactic they would create stings just to get CIA funds and supplies. The world at large may be getting very clever in how to counter-use our CIA. Super powers have been known to be super gullible too.
Thank You Mr. Ritter. I’ve so embarrassed to be an American for over 30 years and even more so the last 20. Thank you for being here.
While the military and intelligence analysis provided by Mr. Ritter is excellent, his insistence on repeating the official WWII bullshit narrative is disconcerting. I grew up in the 50s and 60s with kids whose parents fled Ukraine in the 1920s. They had been caught up in the Russian Civil War that expanded into the territories ceded to the USSR under the Treaty of Versailles. Some fought with the White Russians against the COMMUNISTS. There has always been a nationalist faction in the Ukraine going back to the mid 19th century. Their spiritual leader was Taras Shevchenko. These crazies were among the first Ukrainians to emigrate to Canada in the 1890s, and they still exist today. I saw “Slava Ukraina” t-shirts almost 50 years ago. Even Putin, in Tucker Carlson’s interview admitted that Bandera was just another in a line of these people. Putin claimed it was “Austrianation”. It wasn’t. The Austrians had difficulties with these nut jobs. Putin also stated that Bandera collaborated with Germany, because they thought they would gain independence. First, Bandera never claimed to be a “Nazi”, and second, collaboration, by definition, does not require anything other than an agreement on an objective. By the way, why would anyone be surprised that people who opposed being part of the USSR in the first place, then had millions intentionally starved to death by the COMMUNISTS, would collaborate with an invader to gain liberation. By the way, when Bandera didn’t get the Ukraine he wanted, he broke the collaboration. As for the Russian Liberation Army, they weren’t “organized” by Germany. P.O.W. General Vlasov came up with the idea, which, at first, was not well received. When it did form, it was as much a facilitation by Germany as organization. Finally, Mr. Ritter buys into the “Russians fighting NAZIS” narrative, but not Germans (and thousands of volunteers from across Europe) fighting COMMUNISTS. Does he really believe the 186 Divisions of the Soviet military massed at the “Polish” border were there for defense? This isn’t a defense of National Socialism. It, like every other political philosophy, is flawed. I fully understand why Russia is doing what it is doing, and support their efforts, but let’s stop with the bullshit WWII narrative and trying to connect the current crop of Ukrainian crazies to “Nazis”. No self respecting “Nazi” would be interested in a government run by the international banking cartel.
” By the way, when Bandera didn’t get the Ukraine he wanted, he broke the collaboration. ” The trigger of this break was lack of Nazi approval of a massive action aiming to exterminate Poles in areas with Ukrainian majority. Thousands of hitherto loyal Ukrainian policemen joined that massacre against German orders. On one hand, “resistance to Nazis”, on the other, simply a “Ukrainian flavor” added to a fascist brew. German Nazis had no consensus how to treat what they viewed as nationalistic subhumans who wanted to be loyal to the Third Reich.
That Russian Liberation Army was not organized by Germany, is even more ridiculous. As I wrote above, Nazis had internal disputes how to respond to such ideas, but the whole action gained Nazi approval, clearly necessary to recruit in the camps of war prisoners that had conditions bordering death camps.
The Ukrainian crazies associate themselves with the Nazi’s. Or am I misreading all the sieg heiling, nazi emblems and tatoos?
Leninism was a right wing deviation of the socialist movement. To gain power, he just lied about being socialist. Like a politician does.
Socialism is the workers control over the means of production.
When Lenin took power, the first thing he did was destroy the organs of workers control. He and Trotsky thought what you needed was a “Labor Army”, which would be submissive to the control of a single leader. Which had nothing to do with Socialism. In other words the first thing he did was destroy Socialism, and reconstruct Czarist forms of oppression, often more efficiently (KGB). This was a precursor to Stalin’s Totalitarianism.
The Soviets called the destruction of Socialism, Socialism, because they wanted to exploit the moral force of Socialism. All revolutions since the 17th century have been more or less socialistic in nature.
The West called the destruction of Socialism, Socialism, for the opposite reason. they called the destruction of Socialism, Socialism to equate it with the brutality of the Soviet state.
So the two main propaganda agencies, the US and Russia called the destruction of
Socialism, Socialism, for different reasons.
That’s not me talking, that’s me paraphrasing Noam Chomsky. Type in “chomsky university of wisconsin 1989 what was leninism” on the youtube search line, and listen yourself. I’m too lazy to transcribe this morning.
Your friends were fleeing Stalin’s Totalitarianism. Not “COMMUNISM”
Socialism is being kind to your neighbor. What Lenin and Trotsky did was not being kind to your neighbor, if your neighbor worked for a living.
Communism is from each according to ability, to each according to need. What Stalin did, killing millions of people that didn’t agree with him doesn’t seem to sink with that either.
“There has therefore never been a communist state. They were merely old-fashioned, inefficient but authoritarian dictatorships.”
-John Ralston Saul “Voltaire’s Bastards”
The Soviets at the end of World War II were no prize, I get that. My mother is from Germany. My Grandfather refused command of an East German town and died in a threshing machine “accident” working in the fields.
There are no “self respecting” Nazis. One of my Mom’s Uncles was in the SS, the family never mentioned his name.
And the joining of corporation and state is the basic tenet of Fascism. Fascism is a sub-species of Nazism.
I’ll leave it to others to correct you on a few points, such as the truth about the Holodomor, but I will point out that your anti-COMMUNIST bias is obvious to the point that it sounds as if you’re giving the Nazis a pass for fighting THEM… which after all is no more or less than the US elite did in the early stages of the War – and after, when they parachuted people like Reinhard Gehlen in to help out the CIA, FBI, and Hollywood.
I’m sure Robert Parry would be very pleased and proud to see such great articles posted here. Thank you Scott Ritter and CN – keeping up the tradition of independent journalism, despite the attacks and difficulties from the TechnoTotalitarian narrative managers.
Thank you for your inside picture of the USA CIA shadow. It’s the wild malevolent demon care free of the wake it conjures that is injurious- ultimately – to USA citizens.
Meanwhile, with the abject failure of the Russian exercise we hear of American forces, the green berets, stationed less than 10km from the Chinese mainland on the Kinmen islands. Echoes of the Cuban Crisis comes to mind. The mad dogs won’t be happy until they get their war.
“until they get there war” mad dogs
not there war
all our war
madness
We all know that attacks on Iran and China are on the agenda. These fools won ‘t be happy until there is no Earth or humans left. All in the name of power and profit.
At the Duran, hXXps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNe8OfB58o, Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou discuss the Ukrainia attacks in Russia which are described by Scott Ritter. Apparently, the attempt was a collosal failure. The invading forces, which included some of the best trained and motivated Ukraine’stroops were wiped out. Every part of the plan failed and the top of the line hardware that was used was destroyed. The result, no surprise, was only to shore up support for Putin.
Speculation is that this was part of Nuland’s promised coming “surprise” that she announced before she left (or was fired). Much like the failed Ukrainian counter offensive which has been dubbed “Vickie’s counter-offensive,” she has always been a legend in her own mind. In the real world, everything she touches turns to mud, as it should. At least she is consistent.
OMG the outrage here over claims that Russia might have meddled in our 2016 election, which, despite the corporate/corrupt Democrat’s desperate attempts to promote Russiagate, has been completely debunked. Nonetheless, here is the “world’s leading democracy” at work wholeheartedly meddling, again, in a foreign soverign nation’s internal election and affairs. I guess that must be the international rules-based, not law-based, order in action. Makes you proud doesn’t it..?
I will not accept that the CIA is a rogue agency. The CIA is the obedient, covert enforcement arm of the State Department that wields foreign policy. Rest assured that if our foreign policy was friendly toward Russia, the CIA would not be involved in this kind of thuggery.
The NSC, Atlantic Council, CFR, CIA, NSA etc. and the academic/”think tanks” and the MassMedia are all part of the MICIMATT. They all work together. They all reflect the interests of the oligarchy behind the thin curtain..
The Cia needs wAR
we don’t
no one does
get rid of the cIA
The CIA is directly responsible for the conditions in South and Central America. If not for their interventions there would be stable Socialist Governments and our so called Immigration problem would be much smaller.
“The CIA is the obedient, covert enforcement arm of the State Department”
The JFK story seems to imply differently, and that the tail wags the dog, not the other way around !
JFK expressed his desire to smash the CIA into pieces and scatter it to the winds. Would that he could have gotten his wish. The world would be a much better place.
The CIA got its wish
it offed
JFK
And Harry Truman said that creating the CIA was the biggest regret of his presidency.
He screwed with the Military and CIA and their policies. That is why he and his brother were shot. That is what happens when you challenge the ruling class as in MalcolmX MLK.Nasser,Rabin etc.
Excellent Scott! God bless you!
Thanx, Scott, it is as I feared.
Scott hosted Michail Khazin on his show at one point. Khazin been expressing a strong opinion regarding the british involvement in all matters meddling in the US – China conflict, by distracting the US in other places. (we all remember 2015 lavish royal family entertainment of the head of China, with expressions of “We celebrate the ties between our two countries and prepare to take them to ambitious new heights. Mr. President, Prince Philip and I are delighted to welcome you and Madame Peng to Buckingham Palace this evening. “). To this end, Khazin points out british involvement in Hamaz training pre-October 7. He claims the brits had a similar designs with these “russian resistance” – to take a village with hostages. One can estimate what events would follow. A thought on a grand scale?..
Excellent article, Scott!
Today, I saw no less than five articles via MSM propaganda regarding Ukraine and Russia. All packed full of LIES and gaslight.
It is truly unfortunate that we have people in this country, whose ability for intellectual curiosity is numbed by an endless sea of social media platforms and an education system more interestdd in DEI/CRT and gender issues than true education .
We shall all pay a heavy price due to the dumbing down of Americans by a Zionist billionaire and political elite
BTW, I can’t find Ask the Inspector on YouTube? Has it been removed?
great comment
Kay
I think the more exact word for the education you refer to, is the exact opposite of what kids of all ages are actually being fed these days, and that word is, ‘indoctrucation’, a neologism, I recently stumbled across.
How can so few destroy so much?
“Ay, there’s the rub”
(Hamlet Act III, Scene 1.)
“How can so few destroy so much?”
the miracle of concentrations of capital
Our collective power owned by
our puppet masters
Thank you Scott. The diagnosis is accurate. We understand the prognosis. What treatments exist and how may US citizens administer them? November / January are far away. Electoral democracy is impotent. The war machine will mutiny against a new Commander in Chief. Is war / defeat / collapse / renewal the only pathway out? Could collapse occur without war? Thank you. Mik