Like a Spy Novel: Expelled Russian Diplomats May Have Been Assassins

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto at Kultaranta summer residence in Naantali, Finland, Friday, July 1, 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting Finland on his first trip to the European Union since the British vote to leave the bloc. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

I’m sure this has been written into a spy novel, somewhere.

A 2006 Russian law that allows for the assassination of Russia’s enemies abroad, and the attempted poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in the U.K. has heightened concerns for western democracies.

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With that in mind, when the U.S. stood with the U.K. and expelled 60 Russian diplomats last month, you could just about guess there was something “more.”

CNN is reporting that of those 60 diplomats, some were believed to be actual spies, tracking Russian defectors and their families, now living in the U.S.

In at least one instance, suspected Russian spies were believed to be casing someone who was part of a CIA program that provided new identities to protect resettled Russians, the officials said.

That episode and other US intelligence raised concerns that the Russians were preparing to target Russian émigrés in the US labeled by the Kremlin as traitors or enemies, law enforcement and intelligence officials said.

Yikes!

Earlier this year, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee brought up around 2 dozen suspicious deaths of critics of Putin.

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“The trail of mysterious deaths, all of which happened to people who possessed information that the Kremlin did not want made public, should not be ignored by Western countries on the assumption that they are safe from these extreme measures,” said the Senate Democrats in their report.

None of this is new for Russia. This is just what they do.

Nowhere has it been reported, as yet, but I wonder if they actually located any of the Russian émigrés, or if our government has warned them about the threat moving around our nation, under the banner of “diplomat”?

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