It was an actual smokeshow-and-mirrors ploy.
A “too sizzling” girlfriend of a Russian spy helped cautious Ukrainian volunteers sniff out a Moscow intelligence scheme, based on a journalist.
The incongruous couple raised purple flags, based on journalist Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian journalist with investigative outlet Bellingcat.
“It took me about 5 minutes to find that the pilot’s ‘lover’ (waaay too sizzling for him, FSB) was an FSB asset,” Grozev wrote on Twitter, utilizing the acronym for Russia’s Federal Safety Service.
“The Ukrainians figured that out too,” he added.
Grozev mentioned he’d been following a crew of Ukrainian “maverick ex-operatives” operating an unofficial operation making an attempt to get Russian pilots to defect.
Some pilots apparently responded, sending the Ukrainians movies of their cockpits to show their veracity.
However after some back-and-forth, Grozev mentioned, the pilots’ “tone modified rapidly, suggesting the pilots have been not speaking on their very own behalf however have been ‘coached’ – possible by FSB army counter-intelligence officers.”
The sudden look of “Maria,” a stunning brunette with suspected ties to Russian intelligence, additional raised suspicions, he added.
If correct, it might not be the primary time Russian intelligence gave the sport away by questionable tradecraft: In April, an FSB lackey apparently confused “SIM playing cards” with the online game “the SIMS” when purportedly planting proof at a staged raid.
Grozev, who's making a documentary movie concerning the operation, mentioned the invention kicked off a cat-and-mouse recreation, with the Ukrainian crew luring the spouse of a Russian pilot to Minsk in neighboring Belarus so as to establish Russian FSB brokers — who in flip have been making an attempt to establish Ukrainian operatives.
The FSB waited for 4 days earlier than realizing they’d been arrange, Grozev mentioned.
“Either side have been making an attempt to extract most data from the opposite, whereas feeding them most disinfo,” the journalist mentioned.
Finally, he mentioned, the FSB realized they hadn’t fooled the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians realized they weren’t going to lure a pilot into defecting, and the operation ended.
Grozev mentioned the Ukrainian operation wasn’t official, however run by “volunteers” who have been recognized to Bellingcat by its reporting on an identical sting effort in opposition to Russian Wagner Group mercenaries final yr.
The FSB — Russia’s main counterintelligence company — mentioned in an announcement Monday that it had foiled a Ukrainian try and recruit Russian pilots.
The FSB mentioned the ploy was an official Ukrainian intelligence operation that “tried to recruit Russian army pilots for a financial reward and ensures of acquiring citizenship of one of many EU nations,” in an effort to influence them “to fly and land plane on airfields managed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“In the midst of the operational recreation, Russian counterintelligence officers obtained data that helped our Armed Forces inflict fireplace harm on quite a few Ukrainian army amenities,” the FSB claimed, based on a report by Russia’s Interfax information company.
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