FBI is using social media to recruit Russian spies

New Delhi: As the battle in Ukraine rages on with no end in sight, the FBI has resorted to social media to help it increase its Russian recruitment and intelligence collecting. Russia analysts have mixed opinions of this action.

A speaker speaking in Russian informs the viewer in a video that the FBI can change their future if they can give the U.S. intelligence in exchange for scenes from the Russian embassy and the U.S. capital.

The FBI, according to the narrator, is searching for spies, expatriates, and anyone with knowledge about how to undermine the Kremlin.

“Do you want to change your future?” Alan Kohler from the FBI’s counterintelligence division questions while speaking in English directly to the camera.

“The FBI values you. The FBI can help you, but only you have the power to take the first step.”

After more than a year of the Ukraine War and increased geopolitical tensions with the West, the FBI appears to have started its social media programme in February in an effort to persuade Russians to reject the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

The social media statement, according to Dan Hoffman, a former head of the CIA’s Moscow station, was “sharp” and “smart,” and it may “help the FBI and the country prevail against that Russian aggression”.

Rebekah Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer for Russian Doctrine & Strategy and a native Russian speaker, told Fox News Digital that the video itself was flawed and that the narrator’s commentary did not always make sense. She claimed that this “undermines the credibility of the FBI.”

Koffler also questioned the FBI’s ability to allocate the resources necessary to thoroughly screen each and every caller it will likely get going forward.

“The FBI is putting this new approach into practise for a number of reasons. First of all, finding Russian assets is really challenging, she said. “Russia is a very challenging environment because it has one of the most efficient and vicious counterintelligence services in the world.

“The FBI is responding to the current day, when young people are on social media constantly. It’s attempting to reach a wider audience and obtain more for your money, luring more prospective spies for the US,” Koffler stated.

However, the former DIA intelligence officer has little confidence in the government’s ability to implement such a programme successfully.

Koffler remarked, “I wish them well, but I have almost no faith that this programme will succeed.

Anyone who possesses sensitive information about Russian intelligence or defence issues is asked to contact the FBI’s Washington field office.

The intelligence branch of the Bureau has also made an effort to reassure anyone thinking about coming forward that they will not only be heard but will also be helped to secure their safety and secrecy.

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