Vladimir Putin attempted to assassinate a Kremlin intelligence officer turned US spy, sparking a series of retaliatory crackdowns between US and Russian intelligence agencies, a new report found on Monday.
Putin tried — and failed — to take out Aleksandr Poteyev, who had been a senior Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, in Miami in 2018.
It was part of Putin’s larger plan to eliminate defectors and defectors. Poteyev’s betrayal was particularly poignant as it led the United States to arrest 11 spies living undercover in cities across America, including red-headed Russian honeypot Anna Chapman.
Putin’s assassination attempt failed, but led to a series of sanctions and expulsions in both Washington and Moscow. New York Times reported.
Aleksandr Poteyev, circled in red, in an undated photo from his time in Kabul
Poteyev was part of Russia’s foreign intelligence service and he oversaw a US spy network that played the long game. It would eventually be the inspiration for the popular FX series ‘The Americans’.
The Russian agents lived in the US under false identities and posed as married couples. The plan was for them to move up through suburban homes and day jobs with the ultimate goal of recruiting Americans as Russian agents.
One of them was Anna Chapman, who posed as the CEO of a real estate agency and cheated on her British husband with a wealthy, well-connected New York businessman.
Based on Poteyev’s information, Chapman and 11 others were arrested, tried, and sentenced to US prisons. In the end it was her and the others traded for four men imprisoned in Russia who allegedly spied for MI6 and the CIA. Chapman used her fame to become a national hero in the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, as part of that exchange, one of the prisoners released by Russia was Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence colonel who was convicted in 2006 of selling secrets to British intelligence.
Skripal moved to the UK where he was poisoned in 2018 by Russian agents in Salisbury, UK.
Aleksandr Poteyev’s information led the US to arrest 11 Russian sleeper agents, including Anna Chapman (above)
Vladimir Putin is known to hate traitors
Sergei V. Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who was a British spy, was poisoned in the UK
Putin is known to hate traitors. The attack on Skripal raised concerns among US intelligence agencies that the Russian president would take steps against defectors living in the US
Enraged by Poteyev’s betrayal and arrest of his agents, Putin targeted him, as outlined in the forthcoming book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West,” by Carlder Walton and published June 29.
Poteyev, meanwhile, had fled Russia.
As FBI agents closed in on Chapman and the other embedded Russians in 2010, Poteyev escaped to the United States, where the CIA resettled him in an effort to protect him.
In 2011, a Russian court sentenced Poteyev to decades in prison in absentia.
Then, in July 2016, Russian news agencies reported that Poteyev died in the United States – but this was believed to be a ploy by Putin to flush him out.
Meanwhile, Poteyev lived in Florida, where he got a fishing license and registered as a Republican so he could vote, all under his real name.
In 2018, Russia began an extensive operation to find Poteyev, forcing Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help.
Fuentes studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later obtained his PhD on the subject at the University of Giessen in Germany, according to the Time.
He had two wives: a Russian who lived in Germany and another in Mexico. Putin would use them as leverage against Fuentes.
In 2019, the Russian woman and her two daughters were not allowed to leave Russia because they tried to return to Germany.
Russia forced Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help them find Poteyev
When Fuentes went to visit them, a Russian official contacted him and asked to see him in Moscow. The official reminded Fuentes that his family was trapped in Russia and that “maybe we can help each other.”
Fuentes was instructed to rent an apartment in Miami, just north of Miami Beach, where Poteyev lived, but not in his name. He was later given a description of Poteyev’s car and told to find it and note its location. He was told not to take pictures of it.
Fuentes drove into Poteyev’s complex and attempted to evade security by following another car inside, only to be stopped by security. While talking to officials, his wife photographed Poteyev’s license plate number.
The incident was captured on camera. When Fuentes tried to fly to Mexico two years later, he was stopped by US Customs and Border Protection agents, who searched his phone and found the photo.
After being arrested, Fuentes spoke up and gave details of the plan to US officials.
The US government responded by imposing sanctions and expelling 10 Russian diplomats, including the chief of the SVR station, the Russian spy agency.
In return, Russia banned 10 American diplomats, including the CIA chief in Moscow.