Day: October 29, 2023

-Analysis-

WARSAW — For Moscow to finally let go of its imperial ambitions, it must lose the war it has been waging in Ukraine. As the history of the last few hundred years shows, this is the only way Russia will change.

The idealogue at the head of Putinist Russia, Vladislav Surkov, has made his vision of an ideal Russia very clear. In his view, Russia is a country that “having stopped falling, has begun to rebuild itself and returned to the natural and only possible state of a great, growing and land-collecting community of nations.”

Surkov says that Russia makes “no promise” of peace. “The immodest role given to our country by universal history does not allow us to leave the stage or remain silent in the crowd,” he declared.

Published: 21:44 GMT, 28 October 2023 | Updated: 01:06 GMT, 29 October 2023

• The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components: 1) It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics. 2) It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection. 3) It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.

• There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump’s entire time in office.

• Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan’s government when U.S. troops were withdrawn.

• A little more than a week prior to the Hamas attack, Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East… “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

• He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive…

• The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats — often spurious — while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known “gotaways” and an unknown number of unknown “gotaways.”

• The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.

• To go just after Hamas is like targeting crime syndicate, but ignoring Al Capone. Hamas needs to be dealt with first – along with the realization that any humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza supplies Hamas, not the people for whom it was well-meaningly intended. As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, the trucks are not inspected. They might be bringing in food and water – or weapons. Sadly, even if the contents are food and water, Hamas keeps them, then sparingly doles them out to whomever they want.

• Moving forward, we once again need to examine how we do intelligence across the West. Perhaps Congress or a special commission can be established to identify the exact strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence community… and to discard the biased and flawed analytical tradecraft standards that have led us to where we are today.

© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

LEWISTON, Maine, Oct 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. Army reservist accused of spraying a bowling alley and bar with gunfire in Lewiston, Maine, killing 18 people, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a recycling plant trailer after a 48-hour manhunt, police said on Saturday.

The body of Robert R. Card, 40, was discovered on Friday night at a recycling plant in Lisbon Falls where he worked at one point, less than a mile from where police had found his abandoned getaway vehicle shortly after his shooting spree on Wednesday night.

A Maine State Police tactical team discovered Card’s body in an unlocked trailer in an overflow parking lot of the recycling plant, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told reporters on Saturday.

Officers had cleared the plant twice in the course of their search, Sauschuck said, as they believed Card had some “employment relation” to the business, but had missed the extra parking lot, where about 60 box trailers full of crushed plastic and metal were parked, he said.

The body was found in an unlocked trailer, dressed in what appeared to be the same brown sweatshirt the suspect was wearing the night of the attack. Investigators would not comment on how long they believed it had been there.

Officials said they recovered a long rifle in Card’s abandoned white Subaru and two guns on his body, without confirming the makes and models. All the weapons were apparently purchased by Card legally, a representative for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said.

A total of 18 people were killed and 13 others were wounded in Wednesday night’s carnage, which began when the gunman opened fire with a rifle inside the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, then launched another attack minutes later at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant a few miles away.

Three people were still in critical condition, Sauschuck said on Saturday.

MOTIVE INVESTIGATION

Officials have not confirmed a possible motive for the violence, and were digging through cell phone records, following up on hundreds of tips and going through about a dozen search warrants this weekend to learn more, Sauschuck said.

Based on the investigation so far, Sauschuck said there was “a mental health component” to the tragedy. He said there was evidence Card was paranoid and “felt like people were talking about him,” which might have led him to target those specific venues.

A Maine law enforcement bulletin circulated earlier this week identified Card as a trained firearms instructor at the U.S. Army Reserve base in Saco, Maine. It said he had been hearing voices and had other mental health issues.

He threatened to shoot up the National Guard base in Saco and was “reported to have been committed to mental health facility for two weeks during summer 2023 and subsequently released,” according to the bulletin from the Maine Information & Analysis Center, a unit of Maine State Police.

However, Sauschuck said on Saturday that officials had no evidence so far that Card had been “forcibly committed” for mental illness treatment, and were still looking into any voluntary treatment Card might have received.

Sauschuck said police found a note left at Card’s house, addressed to a loved one, which listed the passcode to his phone and bank account information.

“I wouldn’t describe it as an explicit suicide note, but the tone and tenor was that the individual was not going to be around,” he said.

The shootings and prolonged manhunt terrorized the normally bustling but serene community of Lewiston, a former textile hub and the second-most populous city in Maine. It lies on the banks of the Androscoggin River, about 35 miles (56 km) north of the state’s largest city, Portland.

Many business owners in Lewiston and adjacent communities closed shop in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, while authorities shuttered schools and ordered some 40,000 area residents to shelter in place as a precaution.

Within hours of Wednesday night’s bloodshed, police circulated surveillance camera photos from one of the crime scenes of a bearded man wearing a brown, hooded sweatshirt and jeans and carrying what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle.

The initial trail of clues led to Lisbon, about 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast of Lewiston, where Maine State Police found a white SUV they believed Card had abandoned at a boat launch on the river. Lisbon Falls, where Card was found dead, is the next town along the river.

As part of their search for Card, police trawled the waters of the Androscoggin River with divers and sonar on Friday, and sent teams of officers door-to-door in neighborhood canvasses seeking additional clues and possible eyewitnesses.

The slain victims included four deaf people who had been competing in a beanbag-tossing tournament at the bar and grill, a father-and-son pair of bowlers, a part-time bowling alley worker who tried to confront the shooter with a knife, and an elderly couple aged 76 and 73.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

From Ukraine with Love: Hollywood’s favorite British spy, James Bond, was inspired by the great Odessa born adventurer.

 
Everyone knows the world’s most famous secret agent, James Bond. British author Ian Fleming’s hero has been a box office star for more than half a century. Bond is celebrated around the globe for his brilliant mind, wild adventures, and debonair charm. “Women want him, and men want to be him”. What most people don’t know is that James Bond has his origins in Odessa, Ukraine.

James Bond is a fictitious character, but he was inspired by real people. Before writing the first James Bond book, author Ian Fleming had a successful career in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). This work gave Fleming the background he needed to write the Bond series of novels. Many of the plot devices and personalities featured in the series closely mirror Fleming’s personal experiences. However, the primary inspiration for the character of James Bond actually came from an era before Fleming’s own. James Bond was inspired by the incredible life story of a man born in Odessa on March 24, 1874, under the name Sigmund Rosenblum.

Rosenblum, who would later assume the more English-sounding name of Sidney Reilly, lived a life shrouded in intrigue and mystery. In fact, it is still difficult to discern which parts of Reilly’s life are historical fact, and which parts are mere legend. There is broad agreement over some of his most audacious escapades: observers generally believe he really did deliver the Persian oil fields to the British crown. He is credited with stealing Germany’s top naval secrets, and came within a whisker of assassinating Vladimir Lenin in 1918 as part of the Lockhart Plot.

Officially, Sigmund Rosenblum (aka Sidney Reilly) was born the son of Grigory, who was a wealthy Jewish contractor in Odessa. However, in later life Reilly would claim his real father was Grigory’s first cousin, a medical doctor named Mikhail Rosenblum. Only Reilly’s mother Polina, who was a professional pianist (and possibly a distant cousin of Russian nobility), knew for sure. What is more certain is that his family’s home was located at 15 Aleksandrovskiy Prospect near Greek Square (Grecheskaya Ploshcha) in the city.

Reilly began his political and espionage work in Odessa on behalf of the Friends of Enlightenment, a Jewish emancipation movement that sought the right of the Jewish community to fully integrate into society. Working as a messenger for this secret group led to his arrest by the tsarist secret police, known as the Okhrana, in 1892. Having already been arrested by the age of 18, Reilly understood his future in Russian Empire would be limited. Shortly thereafter, Reilly faked his own death by staging a drowning in Odessa harbor. He then caught a British ship sailing to Brazil. Apparently, Reilly befriended some British explorers on the ship, and he started working as their cook. Once in Brazil, Reilly claims to have saved the explorers from cannibals. Following this act of heroism, the leader of the group awarded Reilly with a British passport and 1500 pounds – a substantial sum at the time. However, in another version of the story, after faking his death in Odessa, Reilly robbed a pair of French couriers (or murdered a pair of Italian anarchists in another version) and used their money and passports to eventually arrive in Britain.

Once in London, Reilly established Rosenblum and Company, a pharmaceutical company. He quickly became a fixture in London’s Russian émigré community and developed a taste for lavish living. Reilly’s prominence in the Russian community caught the attention of Scotland Yard, who began paying him as an informant. Like James Bond, the charismatic Reilly proved irresistible to women. He aided by making connections in the Russian community through his romantic relationship with Ethel Voynich, the wife of the Polish revolutionary Wilfred Voynich (owner of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript). Reilly would later confess to Ethel about his life of espionage and intrigue, which gave the famous Victorian writer an idea for her novel “The Gadfly”, which was loosely based on Reilly’s real life exploits. By 1896, Reilly’s value as an informant had increased dramatically. He was recommended to British intelligence for overseas work.

In 1897, Reilly began a secret affair with the 24-year-old wife of Reverend Hugh Thomas. Reverend Thomas, age 63, regularly purchased medicine from Reilly’s pharmacy to treat a kidney disease. When the reverend suddenly died, Reilly married Margaret Thomas, his young widow in August 1898. Margaret Thomas inherited a substantial fortune, helping to pay for Reilly’s increasingly expensive lifestyle. A year after his marriage to Margaret, he decided to change his name from Rosenblum to his wife’s maiden name “Reilly”. Reilly’s rationale for the name change was, “in Europe, only the British hate the Irish, but everyone hates the Jews”. Though he never divorced Margaret, Reilly would have numerous romances with women on three continents. In addition to Margaret, Reilly maintained a romantic lifelong relationship with a distant cousin from Grodno (modern-day Belarus) named Felitsia. One colleague in British intelligence said of Reilly’s womanizing ways, “he has eleven passports, and a wife to match each one.”

With his new wealth, knowledge of six languages, and proven record with Scotland Yard, Reilly was tasked with greater responsibilities. The same year as he changed his name, Reilly was in Holland disguised as a Russian arms dealer who reported to London about Dutch weapon supplies to South Africa during the Second Boer War. During the Russo-Japanese War, Reilly popped up in Port Arthur, Manchuria (China) as a timber salesman in early 1904. In Port Arthur, Reilly may have worked as a double (and some say even quadruple) agent for the British and Japanese. What is clear is that Reilly co-opted a Chinese spy to give the Japanese (and British) the Russian plans for defense of the harbor. This led to a surprise attack at night by the Japanese navy and the deaths of 31,000 Russian soldiers.

Reilly rose to prominence in the ranks of British intelligence for his work in the D’Arcy Affair. Having previously visited Baku, Azerbaijan (then part of Persia) in 1902 to investigate the oil sector, Reilly was aware of the vast energy resources of the country. The British Board of the Admiralty had made a decision in 1904 to change the main fuel supply for the Royal Navy from coal to oil, making steady oil supplies a strategic priority. Reilly had learned from his contacts close to the Persian Shah that the country’s oil field concessions had been granted to an Australian named William Knox D’Arcy. D’Arcy then traveled to France to negotiate a sale and/or lease of the concessions to the wealthy Rothschild family. During negotiations on Lord de Rothschild’s yacht near Cote d’Azur on the French Riviera, Reilly disguised himself as a Catholic priest collecting charitable donations in order to gain entry to the boat. Interrupting the dinner between Rothschild and D’Arcy, Reilly was able to lure D’Arcy away privately for a few minutes. During those tense minutes, Reilly revealed his true cover and, using his great charm and charisma, he persuaded D’Arcy that the British would offer more than the Rothschild family. The daring gamble worked. With D’Arcy’s concessions on the Persian oil fields, the British obtained the oil supplies they needed to fuel their famous Royal Navy. As a result of having a reliable purchaser, Azerbaijan would be the world’s largest oil producer for the next two decades.

Reilly’s career would continue to benefit the British. In 1909, he appeared as a Baltic welder at the Krupp factory in Essen, Germany. Using his access to the factory and lock-picking skills, he discovered the company’s top secret weapon designs and made copies for his bosses in London. This information would be vital at the onset of World War I five years later. The same year, Reilly had an affair with Eve Lavalliere, the wife of the Director of the Parisian Theatre de Varieties.

Reilly continued to help the British against the Germans. In 1911, he traveled to Russia and infiltrated a delegation from the German Blohm and Voss shipbuilding firm who were trying to negotiate the sale of German naval vessels to Russia. Having already seduced the wife of the Russian Minister of Marine, Reilly used his access to the minister’s home to persuade the gullible minister to award the contract for rebuilding the Russian fleet to Blohm and Voss. This deal not only made Reilly a huge commission, but it also gave him access to the secret German naval designs, which he shared with the British. Using part of his commission, Reilly then paid the Russian minister to divorce his wife Nadezhda Zalessky, so that he could marry her himself. The same year he amicably divorced Nadezhda, and then started an affair with 18-year-old Caryll Houselander. However, in 1923 he married Pepita Bobadilla, a Latin actress he had met in Berlin.

Reilly next pops up in New York in 1914, where he opened an office at 120 Broadway Street. In the Big Apple, Reilly countered German attempts to sabotage American supplies to France and Britain. He also orchestrated the lucrative purchase and supply of American goods to support the Russian army against Germany. It was in New York that Sidney started a relationship with model Beatrice Tremaine. The same year, in 1916, Reilly ran the British underground in German-occupied Poland while based out of the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw. In October 1917, Reilly moved to Canada to join the British Royal Flying Corps. Reilly then parachuted behind German lines to conduct acts of sabotage and espionage in order to support the Allied war effort. According to popular legend, he even managed to disguise himself as a German officer and infiltrate a meeting attended by Kaiser Wilhelm himself.

With the murder of Tsar Nicholas by the Bolsheviks, the British government worried that the new Communist government would sign a separate peace treaty with Germany. Reilly was sent to Russia in February 1918 with the Herculean task of keeping Russia in the war against Germany. Reilly and fellow secret agent Robert Lockhart began orchestrating British government financial support for an army of anti-Bolsheviks led by Boris Savinkov, a former official in the Russian provisional government. Reilly, this time posing as a Turkish merchant, began systematically bribing the Latvian bodyguards that protected Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Reilly’s plan was to have the Latvian guards turn the two Communist leaders over to him in exchange for money. Reilly either planned to kill Lenin himself, or to parade the two revolutionaries naked through the streets of Moscow, in order to humiliate and discredit them in the eyes of the Russian public. Simultaneously, Savinkov and his army of counter-revolutionaries would seize power to replace Lenin and Trotsky, and Reilly would play the role of grey cardinal.

The scheme was foiled at the eleventh hour. A French journalist betrayed the plot to the Bolsheviks, while a failed assassination attempt against Lenin by Dora Kaplan further upset Reilly’s plans. “I was a millimeter from being able to become the ruler of Russia,” said Reilly about the events. To avoid arrest, Reilly first disguised himself as a Cheka officer (Bolshevik secret police), and later as a legal clerk traveling on a forged German passport, which allowed him to escape via Finland. Neither Lockhart nor two of Reilly’s mistresses (one of whom, Olga Starzhevskaya, was a mole inside the Cheka) were quite as fortunate. Lockhart was arrested and held in prison before being swapped for a Russian spy. The mistresses were also arrested and disappeared from history (likely killed). Though Reilly was the ringleader, the events became known as the Lockhart Plot, which resulted in a Red Terror of arrests and executions of suspected conspirators. Reilly was sentenced to death in absentia by a Bolshevik court in November 1918.

This setback did not prevent Reilly from returning to his native Odessa. The legendary spy spent February to April of 1919 in his hometown, living in disguise as a British diplomat. While in Odessa, Reilly published several anonymous anti-Bolshevik letters to the editors of local newspapers and recruited agents among the Odessa elites. He also met Odessan Grigoriy Kotovskiy (a former underworld ‘thief in-law’ companion of Misha Yaponchik) who would later become a Red Army General. Naturally, Reilly’s love of women continued, and he was seen meeting with actress Vera Holodnaya in the bar of the Londonskaya Hotel on Primorskiy Boulevard. Reilly also spent time with his aging mother, who was living on Trinity Street next to the British Consulate by this time (perpendicular to Aleksandrovskiy Prospect).

Upon his return to the UK, Reilly became an adviser on Russian affairs to Winston Churchill. The two men found common ideological ground in their opposition to Bolshevism. Around this time, Reilly published an article in which he branded Bolshevism, “a cancer that affects the foundations of civilization…an arch enemy of the human race…the power of the Anti-Christ. At any cost, this abomination…must be destroyed…there is only one enemy. Humanity must unite against this midnight terror.” In 1921, Reilly was ‘officially’ dismissed as a British agent, although that may have been a legend to protect both Reilly and the British government.

Using his wealth (and likely British government funding), Reilly began supporting several anti-Bolshevik groups inside Russia. One of the groups, known as The Trust, was successful in raising money from White Russians in Europe, because it claimed to have high-ranking officials embedded within the Bolshevik government. However, The Trust was a cover operation for the OGPU, the successor of the Cheka and the forerunner of the NKVD (Russian intelligence). The Trust invited Boris Savinkov to Russia to meet with the counter-revolutionaries. Upon his arrival in Russia, he was arrested by the OGPU. Savinkov was soon executed.

To get revenge, Reilly penned the Zinoviev Letter. At the time, Britain’s Labour Party government had just recognized the Soviet Union and was about to provide them with huge financial loans. Reilly’s forged a letter from high-ranking Soviet official Grigoriy Zinoviev to the British Communist Party calling for, “the revolutionizing of the British proletariat.” The Zinoviev Letter caused uproar after it was leaked to the media. The scandal led to the defeat of the Labour Party government in the October 1924 elections. A month later, the new Conservative-led government canceled the unratified treaty with the Soviets, and the United States subsequently postponed recognition of the Soviet Union by several years. Having become a true mover of world events, Reilly said, “it is a fake, but it is the result that counts.”

In September 1925, despite the murder of his friend Savinkov, Reilly surprisingly accepted an invitation from The Trust to visit the Soviet Union. He mailed a postcard from Moscow on 27 September to a colleague in British intelligence stating merely “all is fine” before disappearing. Reilly’s disappearance became front-page news in Britain and there was wild speculation about his whereabouts. The Soviets claimed Reilly had been killed trying to escape to Finland. For years, there were alleged sightings of Reilly in different parts of Europe. British intelligence worried that Reilly may have switched sides and made a deal with the Soviets. Finally, in 2002, a former OGPU colonel confessed to the murder of Reilly. The killing took place in November 1925. The self-confessed executioner claimed to have been acting under direct orders from Joseph Stalin who wanted retaliation for the Lockhart Plot.

Why was Ian Fleming so captivated by the legend of Sidney Reilly? He could hardly have had a better introduction to the colorful world of Sidney Reilly. Lockhart himself shared his personal experiences and knowledge of Reilly with Ian Fleming. As a fellow British agent, Fleming was already well aware of Reilly’s reputation for daring adventures. He used the first-hand accounts provided by Lockhart to create the character of James Bond for his novels. Once, when asked about his inspiration for the wild plots in the Bond novels, Fleming responded, “James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He’s not a Sidney Reilly you know!”

It is quite fitting that an Odessa native should be the inspiration behind James Bond. After all, Odessa has produced a range of flamboyant fictional characters and literary legends such as Ostap Bender, Benya Krik, and Rabinovich. For centuries, Odessa has fired the imagination. It is only natural to learn that the city’s cosmopolitan climate helped inspire some of the greatest spy stories ever told. James Bond may be a global figure, but his charisma, cunning, aristocratic tastes, and appetite for danger are quintessential Odessa traits.

I hope this article has left you shaken and not stirred. The next time you watch a James Bond movie, you now may find it difficult to forget that the debonair hero was actually inspired by an Odessa adventurer. In reply to the character’s legendary “Bond, James Bond” introduction, Ukrainian viewers might even be excused for answering, “Mama, Odessa Mama.”

Brian Mefford is a political analyst and consultant based in Kyiv since 1999. A former Director of the International Republican Institute (IRI). He was an adviser to President Viktor Yushchenko. He is currently a Senior Non-Resident Fellow for the Atlantic Council.

The suspect in the mass shootings that killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, 40-year-old Robert Card, has been found dead, the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday.

The body of the suspect was found by law enforcement near a recycling plant in the Lisbon area, multiple law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Mike Sauschuck, commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, said in a news conference Friday night. 

Sauchuck said the body was located at about 7:45 p.m. local time near the Androscoggin River in Lisbon, a town about 8 miles southwest of Lewiston. The suspect’s vehicle, a white Subaru Outback, had earlier been found abandoned by a boat launch on the river.  

Maine Gov. Janet Mills told reporters that she called President Biden to inform him of the suspect’s death. 

“Like many people, I’m breathing a sigh of relief that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone,” Mills said. 

In his own statement late Friday night, President Biden called it “a tragic two days – not just for Lewiston, Maine, but for our entire country.” 

“Americans should not have to live like this,” Mr. Biden said. “I once again call on Republicans in Congress to fulfill their obligation to keep the American people safe. Until that day comes, I will continue to do everything in my power to end this gun violence epidemic. The Lewiston community – and all Americans – deserve nothing less.”

Hundreds of state and local police and federal agents had been involved in the manhunt since the shootings Wednesday night. 

For several hours Thursday night, heavily armed police had surrounded a house in Bowdoin, a small town where the suspect was from, about 35 minutes from Lewiston, but they completed their search there without finding him. 

On Friday, police announced divers were conducting underwater searches near the location where his vehicle was found abandoned. 

Authorities had recovered a weapon from the suspect’s abandoned vehicle, law enforcement sources told CBS News’ Pat Milton and Robert Legare earlier Friday. The firearm was legally purchased, a law enforcement source confirmed. It wasn’t clear if the recovered weapon was used in the shooting.

CBS News had also learned that investigators had located the suspect’s cellphone and were trying to crack it and pore over his online activity, including text messages and emails, hoping to find clues as to his motive in the shootings.

The deadly rampage began a little before 7 p.m. Wednesday night when police received a 911 call about a shooting at Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley in Lewiston. Police later said six men and one woman there died of apparent gunshot wounds. 

Just over 10 minutes later, at 7:08 p.m., police were called to the scene of another shooting a few miles away, at Schemengees Bar and Grille. Eight people there were killed, police said. Three other people died at area hospitals.

Police said the gunman fled in the aftermath of the shootings and they warned that he “should be considered armed and dangerous.”

The suspect, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, had recently reported experiencing mental health issues, including hearing voices, and threatened to shoot up a military base in Saco, a law enforcement bulletin seen by CBS News said. In July, he started “behaving erratically,” a New York Army National Guard spokesperson told CBS News, and he was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks.

Several communities in the area spent the days since the shooting under shelter-in-place warnings, with schools canceled and residents urged to stay indoors. The shelter-in-place orders were lifted earlier Friday.

“For me it was incomprehensible that this can happen in Lewiston, Maine,” Mayor Carl Sheline told CBS News Boston.

“Our city is facing this incredible loss and I am completely broken for our city, and my heart really goes out to the victims and their families right now,” Sheline said.

Investigators were looking into whether the suspect may have been targeting a specific individual, who is believed to be a current or former girlfriend, two U.S. officials and a former high-ranking official told CBS News. It wasn’t clear if she was at either of the two locations that were attacked.

The victims of the mass shooting ranged in age from 14 to 76, the medical examiner said. They included a bar manager who tried to stop the gunman; a bowling instructor who was teaching kids; a beloved father; a 14-year-old and his dad; and several people taking part in a cornhole tournament for deaf athletes.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that “although we are grateful that the suspect in this case no longer poses a threat, we know that nothing can bring back the lives he stole or undo the terror he inflicted.”   

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine issued a statement thanking “the brave first responders who worked night and day to find this killer.”

— Julia Kimani, Jeff Pegues, Andres Triay, Robert Legare and Matthew Mosk contributed to this report. 

Updated Oct. 27, 12:00 p.m.

The arrival of a Hamas delegation in Moscow on Thursday has sparked prompt criticism from both Israel and the United States. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat condemned the Russian government for inviting the envoys, led by senior Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzook, calling it an “act of support of terrorism” that “legitimizes the atrocities of Hamas terrorists.”

When U.S. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby was asked about the Moscow meeting Thursday, he responded that “this is not a time to be supporting Hamas’ ability to continue to kill Israelis.”

Hamas released a statement after the arrival, saying that it “highly appreciated the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the efforts of active Russian diplomacy.”

According to several sources, Abu Marzook, who is believed to be based in Qatar, is currently the No. 2 official of Hamas.

Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas is also set to visit Moscow in the coming days, according to Russian news agency TASS, although Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to specify the exact date.

TASS also reported that the Russian Ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, mentioned that three people with both Russian and Israeli citizenship may have been taken hostage by Hamas militants.

Meanwhile Putin on Wednesday warned that Israel’s war in Gaza could spread beyond the Middle East, criticizing Israel for the rising numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza.

“Our task today, our main task, is to stop the bloodshed and violence,” Putin said at a Kremlin meeting with Russian religious leaders, according to a Kremlin transcript.

Russia has ties to both Israel and the various Palestinian factions, though Putin has previously blamed that the current crisis on “the failure of United States policy in the Middle East,” and that American leaders have neglected the Palestinians and their wish for an independent state.

Russia has criticized the United States’ decision to veto a United Nations Security Council Resolution last week which aimed for a humanitarian pause in the fighting.

Meanwhile, Russia’s own war in Eastern Ukraine rages on, as the Kremlin’s counterparts in Kyiv have staunchly backed Israel.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has offered Israel unconditional support, according to Spanish Daily El País. Zelensky, many analysts note, is hoping to prevent the world’s attention from shifting towards Israel, and neglecting his country’s war against Russia.

Israel has remained ambiguous on the Russia-Ukraine War however, as roughly 30% of Israelis are of Russian origin. Israel also maintains a strategic relationship with Russia to retain access to Syrian airspace, which is largely under Russian control, in order to launch air-strikes on Iranian militias in the country. While Israel condemned the initial Russian invasion, it has refused to enact sanctions on Russia or supply weapons to Kyiv.

Screenshot of a video posted by the IDF showing a ground incursion into Gaza

Israel Defense Forces

Israeli troops conducted “targeted raids” inside Gaza for a second consecutive night before withdrawing, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in statement Friday.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the ground raids into Gaza will continue in the coming days to prepare for the next stages of war. He said the IDF continues its strikes against Gaza from air and sea, and is focusing on killing senior Hamas commanders and destroying Hamas infrastructure.

“There will be more,” vowed Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at a news briefing Thursday. Gallant’s comments echoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address on Wednesday, during which he said Israel is “raining down hellfire on Hamas” and “preparing for a ground incursion.”

Israeli troops carried out another “targeted raid” early Thursday with tanks rolling into northern Gaza, before withdrawing hours later from the enclave.

A video published by the Israel Defense Forces showed tanks and armored vehicles, including a bulldozer, moving on a road near a fence. The tanks fired artillery, and some destruction could be seen nearby.

In a statement, the IDF said the operation was “preparation for the next stages of combat.”

Meanwhile, a report by local radio described the raid as a “relatively large” ground incursion, suggesting it was the biggest since Israel started massing forces on the border of Gaza in preparation for a full-scale ground invasion.

Indeed on Wednesday night, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed for the first time that Israel was “preparing a ground invasion” of Gaza that would be aimed at destroying Hamas.

Netanyahu’s statement and Thursday’s incursion come amid rising debate in Israel over the timing of the ground war.

Earlier this week, Daniel Hagari told reporters that the military was “ready and determined” for the next stage in the war, and was awaiting political instruction.

But according to The Times of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces believes that in order to attain the government’s objectives in the war against Hamas, the military must begin its ground offensive in Gaza “sooner rather than later.”

Israel’s allies including the U.S. have urged Israel to delay the ground offensive in order to allow humanitarian aid to pass into Gaza and provide time to win the release of the more than 200 hostages Hamas is holding.

Raphael Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE, says one possible factor delaying the ground offensive is the fact that Israel has mobilized 350,000 reservists without them being trained. “It is important to know that that mobilization has tripled the size of the Israeli Defense Forces,” Cohen told Al Arabiya. “Now if you’re going to do that, so … you want to get them retrained.”

The army has brushed off such concerns, insisting that the ground offensive is ready to be launched, questioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to hold off the assault.

According to French daily Les Echos, an Israeli government minister quoted anonymously by several media described Netanyahu as a “coward” for postponing the ground offensive.

Hagari, the army spokesman, stressed that the army had completed its preparations and was ready for action as soon as the government gave the order. IDF has told the government that it is fully prepared to enter Gaza, even at the risk of heavy casualties to soldiers, and amid ongoing attacks by Hezbollah in northern Israel that risk expanding the war to another front. The IDF has already heavily reinforced the Lebanon border, but most forces remain near Gaza, ahead of the expected ground offensive.

One of Netanyahu’s closest confidants, retired army general Itzhak Brik, is openly opposed to an invasion of Gaza, which he deems ultimately pointless and dangerous. He advocates destroying Hamas’s network of dozens of kilometers of tunnels by aerial bombardment, rather than endangering the lives of soldiers.

According to a poll this week, Israelis are fully behind the soldiers and reservists: 87% say they have confidence in the army, which is 2% more than before the war. The government’s credibility, on the other hand, has hit an unprecedented low score of 18%, compared with 43% in June.

All acknowledge the weight of the decision to take the war to the next level with a ground invasion. As one senior government official told NBC News, Netanyahu has not settled on an exit plan for how and when Israelis would leave Gaza after the invasion, which could shape the state of the region for the foreseeable future.

“That’s a huge added dose of anxiety and tension into what is already a tense and anxious, and what is a politically fraught, moment,” said Robert Satloff, the Howard P. Berkowitz chair in U.S. Middle East policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies “Add it all up and they haven’t made a decision to go in yet.”

Netanyahu’s statement and Thursday’s incursion come amid rising debate in Israel over the timing of the ground war.

Earlier this week, Daniel Hagari told reporters that the military was “ready and determined” for the next stage in the war, and was awaiting political instruction.

But according to The Times of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces believes that in order to attain the government’s objectives in the war against Hamas, the military must begin its ground offensive in Gaza “sooner rather than later.”

Israel’s allies including the U.S. have urged Israel to delay the ground offensive in order to allow humanitarian aid to pass into Gaza and provide time to win the release of the more than 200 hostages Hamas is holding.

Raphael Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE, says one possible factor delaying the ground offensive is the fact that Israel has mobilized 350,000 reservists without them being trained. “It is important to know that that mobilization has tripled the size of the Israeli Defense Forces,” Cohen told Al Arabiya. “Now if you’re going to do that, so … you want to get them retrained.”

“I’m not going to Israel,” titles Istanbul-based daily Hürriyet, quoting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who called off a planned visit to Israel and lambasted Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza. The leader condemned the “inhumane” war in Gaza and said he viewed Hamas as “liberators” fighting for their own land.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the Security Council open debate on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine

Xie E/Xinhua/Zuma

Israel has lashed at UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ harsh criticism of its attacks on Gaza, demanding his resignation Wednesday and refusing a visa to UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths.

On Tuesday, Guterres said that the “appalling attacks” by Hamas against Israel on October 7 cannot justify the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

The UN chief demanded an immediate cease-fire, and called out “the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.”

Guterres added: “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets. All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions.”

Addressing the UN, the secretary-general then went on to say the attack on Israel did not happen “in a vacuum” and followed “56 years of suffocating occupation” for the Palestinian people by Israel.

“They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence,” Guterres said of the Palestinian people. They’ve seen “their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said Guterres should resign, calling the speech “shocking”, saying that the secretary general “views the massacre committed by Nazi Hamas terrorists in a distorted and immoral manner.”

Read more on Guterres’ statement from Die Welt’s editor in chief, translated from German by Worldcrunch.

A survey has revealed that the Ukrainian President is facing a drastic drop in approval ratings. The survey was commissioned by the International Republican Institute and funded by USAID. The results said that only 42 percent Ukrainains “strongly approve” of Zelensky as President. While 40 percent Ukrainians “somewhat approve” Zelensky as president of the nation. These figures are down from 58% and 33%, respectively, in a poll conducted in April. Watch for more.

The Israel-Hamas war has forced Russia into a delicate balancing act, with Moscow urging a quick end to the fighting without apportioning blame.

The careful stand is due to Russia’s long ties to Israel, the Palestinians and other regional players, and it reflects the Kremlin’s hope to expand its clout in the Middle East by playing peacemaker.

Russia also tried to cast the hostilities as a failure of U.S. policy, and it hopes they will be a distraction for Washington and its allies from keeping up military support for Ukraine.

A look at the Kremlin’s messaging about the war and its relations with those in the region:

What is Russia saying about the war?

President Vladimir Putin said the war was rooted in the inability to create a sovereign Palestinian state in line with U.N. resolutions that he called a “gross injustice.” He noted that Israel’s settlement policies have exacerbated the situation.

Putin called it a reflection of what he called a glaring failure of the Washington’s peacemaking efforts, charging the U.S. has focused on offering economic “handouts” to Palestinians while paying little attention to their fundamental issues related to statehood.

He urged the Israeli government and Hamas not to target civilians and emphasized that every effort must be made to quickly end the war, saying an escalation would raise grave risks.

The carefully calibrated statements by Putin and his lieutenants reflect an effort by Moscow to maintain good ties with both Israel and the Palestinians. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that Moscow must maintain a “balanced approach” and talk to both parties, noting that it should allow Russia to help broker a settlement.

While jockeying as a potential peacemaker, Moscow also hopes the fighting will distract Washington and its allies from the war in Ukraine and eventually erode Western support for Kyiv.

Peskov even taunted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he must feel jealous about how the U.S. is now forced to focus on military assistance to Israel.

How has Moscow’s Mideast policy evolved?

Throughout the Cold War, Moscow strongly backed the Palestinians and other allies in the Arab world against Israel, giving them military and political support.

The Soviet Union broke diplomatic ties with Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Moscow’s policies began to shift as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reshaped foreign policy and relations with Israel were restored shortly before the 1991 collapse of the USSR.

In the decade after the Soviet breakup, Russia’s global influence ebbed amid an economic meltdown and political turmoil that forced the Kremlin to turn inward.

After Putin took power, he sought to revive old Middle Eastern alliances while maintaining warm ties with Israel. Russia joined a quartet of Middle East peacemakers along with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, but it played a minor role in efforts, compared with the U.S.

In 2015, Moscow sent its warplanes and troops to its old ally, Syria, teaming with Iran to shore up President Bashar Assad’s regime amid a civil war. The Russian intervention allowed Assad to reclaim control over most of the country and helped expand Moscow’s clout in the Middle East.

How close are Russia and Israel?

After the Soviet breakup, Russia and Israel have steadily expanded trade and other contacts and strengthened their security ties.

More than 1 million people from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union have moved to Israel, a development that Russian and Israeli officials described as a major factor in cementing ties.

Moscow’s relations with Israel remained strong amid Russia’s operations in Syria even as the Israeli military frequently attacked Iranian forces that had teamed up with Russian troops in the country.

Even though Russian and Israeli militaries maintained deconfliction channels amid the fighting in Syria, a Russian reconnaissance aircraft was shot down in 2018 by Assad’s forces responding to an Israeli airstrike, killing all 15 people aboard, an incident that briefly strained ties.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has posed a major test for Russian-Israeli relations. Israeli authorities have walked a fine line, voicing support for Kyiv but refusing to provide it with weapons. Many Israelis were angered by Putin’s claim that Zelenskyy, a Jew, was actually a neo-Nazi. The Russian president also has praised Israeli mediation efforts early in the fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained his government’s reluctance to send military equipment to Kyiv by emphasizing the need to maintain security contacts with Moscow in Syria and voicing concern the weapons supplied to Ukraine could end up in Iranian hands, a statement that angered Ukrainian officials.

How did Russian-Palestinian ties evolve?

During the Cold War, Moscow was the Palestinians’ main backer, offering them political, economic and military support. The Soviet Union provided generous subsidies, helped train Palestinian forces and provided them with weapons.

While those ties weakened after the Soviet Union’s collapse as the Kremlin focused on domestic challenges, Putin has moved to revive them.

Moscow has repeatedly hosted Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, but also has reached out to Hamas. Several Hamas leaders have visited Moscow, including Ismail Haniyeh, who held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in September 2022.

Where do Russia and Iran cooperate?

The leaders of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution denounced the Soviet Union as a “lesser Satan” as opposed to “the great Satan” — the United States. But after the the Soviet collapse, Russia and Iran forged close ties. Moscow built Iran’s first nuclear power plant and deepened ties with Tehran as its tensions with the West soared.

Relations with Iran grew even closer amid the Syrian war when they teamed up to back Assad’s government.

Amid the war in Ukraine, Iran has provided Moscow with hundreds of Shahed exploding drone s that the Russian military has used against Ukraine’s energy facilities and other key infrastructure. Iran also has reportedly shared its drone technology with Russia, which built a facility to produce them.

In return, Moscow is expected to offer Iran advanced fighter jets and other modern weapons.

What other alliances has Moscow sought?

As part of efforts to expand its global clout, Russia has moved to bolster ties with Iran’s main regional rival, Saudi Arabia.

Even though Russia backed Syria’s Assad while the Saudis were backing his foes, Moscow and Riyadh have managed to narrow their differences on Syria and expand cooperation on other issues.

Putin has forged strong personal ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the two edged closer as U.S.-Saudi relations became mired in disputes in recent years.

Putin’s ties with bin Salman paved the way for an OPEC+ deal to cut oil output that was spearheaded by Moscow and Riyadh and helped bolster sagging oil prices to the benefit of oil producing countries.

Story Continues

Four weeks later, the device detonated just outside Moscow in an SUV being driven by the daughter of a Russian nationalist who had urged his country to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians, an explosion signaling that the heart of Russia would not be spared the carnage of war.

The operation was orchestrated by Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU, according to officials who provided details, including the use of the pet crate, that have not been previously disclosed. The August 2022 attack is part of a raging shadow war in which Ukraine’s spy services have also twice bombed the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea, piloted drones into the roof of the Kremlin and blown holes in the hulls of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea.

These operations have been cast as extreme measures Ukraine was forced to adopt in response to Russia’s invasion last year. In reality, they represent capabilities that Ukraine’s spy agencies have developed over nearly a decade — since Russia first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014 — a period during which the services also forged deep new bonds with the CIA.

The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said. The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and shared intelligence on a scale that would have been unimaginable before Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. The CIA maintains a significant presence in Kyiv, officials said.

The extent of the CIA’s involvement with Ukraine’s security services has not previously been disclosed. U.S. intelligence officials stressed that the agency has had no involvement in targeted killing operations by Ukrainian agencies, and that its work has focused on bolstering those services’ abilities to gather intelligence on a dangerous adversary. A senior intelligence official said that “any potential operational concerns have been conveyed clearly to the Ukrainian services.”

Many of Ukraine’s clandestine operations have had clear military objectives and contributed to the country’s defense. The car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, however, underscored Ukraine’s embrace of what officials in Kyiv refer to as “liquidations” as a weapon of war. Over the past 20 months, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia. Those killed include a former Russian submarine commander jogging in a park in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and a militant blogger at a cafe in St. Petersburg, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.

Ukraine’s affinity for lethal operations has complicated its collaboration with the CIA, raising concerns about agency complicity and creating unease among some officials in Kyiv and Washington.

Even those who see such lethal missions as defensible in wartime question the utility of certain strikes and decisions that led to the targeting of civilians including Dugina or her father, Alexander Dugin — who officials acknowledge was the intended mark — rather than Russians more directly linked to the war.

“We have too many enemies who are more important to neutralize,” said a high-ranking Ukraine security official. “People who launch missiles. People who committed atrocities in Bucha.” Killing the daughter of a pro-war firebrand is “very cynical,” the official said.

Others cited broader concerns about Ukraine’s cutthroat tactics that may seem justified now — especially against a country accused of widespread war atrocities — but could later prove difficult to rein in.

“We are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services that are like Mossad in the 1970s,” said a former senior CIA official, referring to the Israeli spy service long accused of carrying out assassinations in other countries. Ukraine’s proficiency at such operations “has risks for Russia,” the official said, “but it carries broader risks as well.”

“If Ukraine’s intelligence operations become even bolder — targeting Russians in third countries, for example — you could imagine how that might cause rifts with partners and come into serious tension with Ukraine’s broader strategic goals,” the official said. Among those goals is membership in NATO and the European Union.

This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, U.S. and Western intelligence and security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing security concerns as well as the sensitivity of the subject. The pressure on Kyiv to score victories against Russia and find ways to deter further aggression create incentives to exaggerate the record and capabilities of Ukraine’s services. The Post vetted key details with multiple sources including Western officials with access to independent streams of intelligence.

The CIA declined to comment.

SBU and GUR officials describe their expanding operational roles as the result of extraordinary circumstances. “All targets hit by the SBU are completely legal,” the agency’s director, Vasyl Malyuk, said in a statement provided to The Post. The statement did not specifically address targeted killings but Malyuk, who met with top CIA and other U.S. officials in Washington last month, said Ukraine “does everything to ensure that fair punishment will ‘catch up’ with all traitors, war criminals and collaborators.”

Current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials said both sides have sought to maintain a careful distance between the CIA and the lethal operations carried out by its partners in Kyiv. CIA officials have voiced objections after some operations, officials said, but the agency has not withdrawn support.

“We never involved our international partners in covert operations, especially behind the front lines,” a former senior Ukrainian security official said. SBU and GUR operatives were not accompanied by CIA counterparts. Ukraine avoided using weapons or equipment that could be traced to U.S. sources, and even covert funding streams were segregated.

“We had a lot of restrictions about working with the Ukrainians operationally,” said a former U.S. intelligence official. The emphasis was “more on secure communications and tradecraft,” and pursuing new streams of intelligence inside Russia “rather than ‘here’s how you blow up a mayor.’ I never got the sense that we were that involved in designing their ops.”

Even so, officials acknowledged that boundaries were occasionally blurred. CIA officers in Kyiv were made aware of some of Ukraine’s more ambitious plans for strikes. In some cases, including the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, U.S. officials registered concerns.

Ukraine’s spies developed their own lines about which operations to discuss and which to keep under wraps. “There were some things that maybe we wouldn’t talk about” with CIA counterparts, said a second Ukraine security official involved in such missions. He said crossing those boundaries would lead to a terse reply from Americans: “We don’t want any part of that.”

The CIA’s deep partnership with Ukraine, which persisted even when the country became embroiled in the impeachment scandal surrounding President Donald Trump, represents a dramatic turn for agencies that spent decades on opposing sides of the Cold War. In part because of that legacy, officials said, it was only last year that the CIA removed Ukraine from the agency’s “non-fraternization” list of countries regarded as such security risks that contact with their nationals for agency employees is forbidden without advance permission.

The CIA-Ukraine collaboration took root in the aftermath of 2014 political protests that prompted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its arming of separatists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The initial phases of cooperation were tentative, officials said, given concerns on both sides that Ukraine’s services were still heavily penetrated by the FSB — the Russian agency that is the main successor to the KGB. To manage that security risk, the CIA worked with the SBU to create an entirely new directorate, officials said, one that would focus on so-called “active measures” operations against Russia and be insulated from other SBU departments.

The new unit was prosaically dubbed the “Fifth Directorate” to distinguish it from the four long-standing units of the SBU. A sixth directorate has since been added, officials said, to work with Britain’s MI6 spy agency.

Training sites were located outside Kyiv where handpicked recruits were instructed by CIA personnel, officials said. The plan was to form units “capable of operating behind front lines and working as covert groups,” said a Ukrainian official involved in the effort.

The agency provided secure communications gear, eavesdropping equipment that allowed Ukraine to intercept Russian phone calls and emails, and even furnished disguises and separatist uniforms enabling operatives to more easily slip into occupied towns.

The early missions focused on recruiting informants among Russia’s proxy forces as well as cyber and electronic eavesdropping measures, officials said. The SBU also began mounting sabotage operations and missions to capture separatist leaders and Ukrainian collaborators, some of whom were taken to secret detention sites.

But the operations soon took a lethal turn. Over one three-year stretch, at least half a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking separatist commanders or collaborators were killed in violence that was often attributed to internal score-settling but in reality was the work of the SBU, Ukraine officials said.

Among those killed was Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of a pro-Russian militant group in eastern Ukraine, who was gunned down in 2016 in a Moscow restaurant. A year later, a rebel commander known as ‘Givi’ was killed in Donetsk as part of an operation in which a woman who accused him of rape was enlisted to plant a bomb at his side, according to a former official involved in the mission.

Ukrainian officials said the country’s turn to more lethal methods was driven by Russian aggression, atrocities attributed to its proxies and desperation to find ways to weaken a more powerful adversary. Many also cited Russia’s own alleged history of conducting assassinations in Kyiv.

“Because of this hybrid war we faced an absolutely new reality,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who served as SBU director in 2015, when the Fifth Directorate was created. “We were forced to train our people in a different way.”

He declined to elaborate.

Even while helping to build the SBU’s new directorate, the CIA embarked on a far more ambitious project with Ukraine’s military intelligence service.

With fewer than 5,000 employees, the GUR was a fraction of the size of the SBU and had a narrower focus on espionage and active measures operations against Russia. It also had a younger workforce with fewer holdovers from Soviet times, while the SBU was still perceived as penetrated by Russian intelligence.

“We calculated that GUR was a smaller and more nimble organization where we could have more impact,” said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked in Ukraine. “GUR was our little baby. We gave them all new equipment and training.” GUR officers “were young guys not Soviet-era KGB generals,” the official said, “while the SBU was too big to reform.”

Even recent developments have seemed to validate such concerns. Former SBU director Ivan Bakanov was forced out of the job last year amid criticism that the agency wasn’t moving aggressively enough against internal traitors. The SBU also discovered last year that Russian-made modems were still being used in the agency’s networks, prompting a scramble to unplug them.

From 2015 on, the CIA embarked on such an extensive transformation of the GUR that within several years “we had kind of rebuilt it from scratch,” the former U.S. intelligence official said. One of the main architects of the effort, who served as CIA station chief in Kyiv, now runs the Ukraine Task Force at CIA headquarters.

The GUR began recruiting operatives for its own new active measures department, officials said. At sites in Ukraine and, later, the United States, GUR operatives were trained on skills ranging from clandestine maneuvers behind enemy lines to weapons platforms and explosives. U.S. officials said the training was aimed at helping Ukrainian operatives protect themselves in dangerous Russian-controlled environments rather than inflicting harm on Russian targets.

Some of the GUR’s newest recruits were transfers from the SBU, officials said, drawn to a rival service flush with new authorities and resources. Among them was Vasyl Burba, who had managed SBU Fifth Directorate operations before joining the GUR and serving as agency director from 2016 to 2020. Burba became such a close ally of the CIA — and perceived Moscow target — that when he was forced from his job after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s election the agency provided him an armored vehicle, officials said. Burba declined to comment for this article.

The CIA helped the GUR acquire state-of-the-art surveillance and electronic eavesdropping systems, officials said. They included mobile equipment that could be placed along Russian-controlled lines in eastern Ukraine, but also software tools used to exploit the cellphones of Kremlin officials visiting occupied territory from Moscow. Ukrainian officers operated the systems, officials said, but everything gleaned was shared with the Americans.

Concerned that the GUR’s aging facilities were likely compromised by Russian intelligence, the CIA paid for new headquarters buildings for the GUR’s “spetsnaz” paramilitary division and a separate directorate responsible for electronic espionage.

The new capabilities were transformative, officials said.

“In one day we could intercept 250,000 to 300,000 separate communications” from Russian military and FSB units, said a former senior GUR official. “There was so much information that we couldn’t manage it ourselves.”

Troves of data were relayed through the new CIA-built facility back to Washington, where they were scrutinized by CIA and NSA analysts, officials said.

“We were giving them the ability — through us — to collect on” Russian targets, the former GUR official said. Asked about the magnitude of the CIA investments, the official said: “It was millions of dollars.”

In time, the GUR had also developed networks of sources in Russia’s security apparatus, including the FSB unit responsible for operations in Ukraine. In a measure of U.S.-Ukraine trust, officials said, the CIA was permitted to have direct contact with agents recruited and run by Ukrainian intelligence.

The resulting intelligence windfall was largely hidden from public view, with intermittent exceptions. The SBU began posting incriminating or embarrassing communications intercepts, including one in which Russian commanders were captured discussing their country’s culpability in the 2014 shoot-down of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet.

Even so, officials said the intelligence obtained through the U.S.-Ukraine cooperation had its limits. The Biden administration’s prescient warnings about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determination to topple the Kyiv government, for example, were based primarily on separate streams of intelligence Ukraine wasn’t privy to initially.

In some ways, officials said, Ukraine’s own collection efforts fed the skepticism that Zelensky and others had about Putin’s plans because they were eavesdropping on military and FSB units that themselves were not informed until the eve of the war. “They were getting an accurate picture from people who were also in the dark,” one U.S. official said.

Russian forces never succeeded in taking Kyiv. But both GUR structures that the CIA funded were among dozens of key installations targeted in Russian strikes in the war’s first days, according to officials who said the facilities survived and continue to function.

Ukraine’s new intelligence capabilities proved valuable from the start of the war. The SBU, for example, obtained intelligence on high-value Russian targets, enabling strikes that killed several commanders and narrowly missed Russia’s top-ranked officer, Valery Gerasimov.

Over the past year, the security services’ missions have increasingly centered on targets not only behind enemy lines but well into Russia.

For the SBU, no target has been a higher priority than the Kerch Bridge that connects the Russian mainland to the annexed Crimean Peninsula. The bridge is a key military corridor and also carries such symbolic significance to Putin that he presided over its inauguration in 2018.

The SBU has hit the bridge twice over the past year, including an October 2022 bombing that killed five people and put a gaping hole in westbound traffic lanes.

Zelensky initially denied Ukrainian responsibility. But SBU director Malyuk described the operation in extraordinary detail in an interview earlier this year, acknowledging that his service had placed a powerful explosive inside a truck hauling industrial-size rolls of cellophane.

Like other SBU plots, the operation involved unwitting accomplices, including the truck driver killed in the explosion. “We went through seven circles of hell keeping so many people in the dark,” Malyuk said in an interview about the operation, which he said hinged on the susceptibility of “ordinary Russian smugglers.”

U.S. officials who had been notified in advance raised concerns about the attack, officials said, fearing Russian escalation. Those misgivings had presumably dissipated by the time the SBU launched a second strike on the bridge nine months later using naval drones that were developed as part of a top secret operation involving the CIA and other Western intelligence services.

Malyuk’s highly public account of the operation defies typical intelligence tradecraft but serves Kyiv’s need to claim successes and reflects an emerging rivalry with the GUR. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, has made a habit of touting his agency’s achievements and taunting Moscow.

The two services overlap operationally to some degree, though officials said the SBU tends to pursue more complex missions with longer lead-times while the GUR tends to work at a faster tempo. Ukraine officials denied that either agency was directly involved in the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, though U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have concluded that Ukraine was linked to the plot.

The GUR has used its own fleet of drones to launch dozens of attacks on Russian soil, including strikes that have penetrated Russian air defenses to hit buildings in Moscow. Among them was a May 2023 operation that briefly set fire to a section of roof in the Kremlin.

Those strikes have involved both long-range drones launched from Ukrainian territory, as well as teams of operatives and partisans working inside Russia, officials said. Motors for some drones were purchased from Chinese suppliers with private funding that couldn’t be traced to Ukrainian sources, according to an official who said he was involved in the transactions.

GUR has also ventured into assassinations, officials said.

In July, a former Russian submarine commander, Stanislav Rzhitsky, was shot four times in the chest and back in Krasnodar where he reportedly worked as a military recruiting officer. Rzhitsky, 42, was known to use the fitness app Strava to record his daily running routes, a practice that may have exposed his location.

The GUR issued a coy statement deflecting responsibility but citing precise details about the circumstances of Rzhitsky’s death, noting that “due to heavy rain the park was deserted” and there were no witnesses. Officials in Kyiv confirmed the GUR was responsible.

Even while acknowledging responsibility for such actions, Ukrainian officials claim the moral high ground against Russia. The SBU and GUR have sought to avoid harm to innocent bystanders even in lethal operations, officials said, while Russia’s scorched-earth raids and indiscriminate strikes have killed or injured thousands of civilians.

Security officials said that no major operation by the SBU or GUR proceeds without clearance — tacit or otherwise — from Zelensky. A spokesperson for Zelensky did not respond to requests for comment.

Skeptics nevertheless worry Ukraine’s use of targeted killings and drone strikes on Moscow high-rises help neither its cause against Russia nor its longer-term aspirations to join NATO and the E.U.

A senior Ukrainian official who worked closely with Western governments coordinating support for Ukraine said that attacks on noncombatants and bombings of Moscow buildings feed Putin’s false narrative that Ukraine posed a growing danger to ordinary Russians. “It plays into his lies that Ukrainians are coming for them,” the official said.

That view appears to be in the minority. Others see the attacks as boosting morale among besieged Ukrainians and achieving a degree of vigilante accountability for alleged Russian war crimes that many Ukrainians are skeptical will ever lead to adequate sanctions from the United Nations and international courts.

The car bombing that killed Dugina last year continues to stand out as one of the more extreme cases of lethal revenge — one that not only targeted noncombatants but involved a Ukrainian woman and a presumably unwitting pre-teenage girl.

Russian authorities had barely finished clearing the debris when the FSB identified Natalia Vovk, 42, as the principal suspect. She had entered Russia from Estonia in July, according to the FSB, took an apartment in the same complex as Dugina, and spent weeks conducting surveillance before slipping back into Estonia with her daughter after the explosion occurred.

The FSB also identified an alleged accomplice who Russia alleged had provided Kazakh license plates for Vovk to use on her vehicle, a Mini Cooper, while traveling in Russia; helped assemble the explosive; and fled to Estonia before the attack.

Ukraine authorities said Vovk was motivated in part by Russia’s siege of her home city, Mariupol. They declined to comment on the nature of her relationship to the SBU or her current whereabouts.

The attack was intended to kill Dugin as he and his daughter departed a cultural festival where the pro-war ideologue, sometimes branded as “Putin’s brain,” had delivered a lecture. The two were expected to travel together, but Dugin stepped into a different vehicle. Vovk also attended the festival, according to the FSB.

At the time, Ukraine vigorously denounced involvement in the attack. “Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state like Russia, or a terrorist one at that,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky.

Officials acknowledged in recent interviews in Kyiv, however, that those denials were false. They confirmed that the SBU planned and executed the operation, and said that while Dugin may have been the principal target, his daughter — also a vocal supporter of the invasion — was no innocent victim.

“She is the daughter of the father of Russian propaganda,” a security official said. The car bombing and other operations inside Russia are “about narrative,” showing enemies of Ukraine that “punishment is imminent even for those who think they are untouchable.”

Shane Harris in Washington and Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.

• How Russia learned from mistakes to slow Ukraine’s counteroffensive

  How Russia learned from mistakes to slow Ukraine’s counteroffensive

• Before Prigozhin plane crash, Russia was preparing for life after Wagner

  Before Prigozhin plane crash, Russia was preparing for life after Wagner

• Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help

  Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help

MOSCOW, Oct 26 (Reuters) – A delegation from Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that controls Gaza, is currently visiting Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a weekly briefing on Thursday, without providing any further details.

Russia’s state-run RIA news agency, quoting a source from the Palestinian delegation, said senior Hamas member Abu Marzook was among those visiting Moscow.

Russia has ties to all key players in the Middle East, including Israel, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Moscow has repeatedly blamed the current crisis on the failure of U.S. diplomacy, and called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the resumption of talks aimed at finding a peace settlement.

Separately, Zakharova also said that Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Baghiri Kani was also currently visiting Moscow and had held talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin. Baghiri Kani is Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The case against the New Jersey senator has the potential to reshape how America deals with foreign agents.

Stephanie Scarbrough / AP

Even before Bob Menendez was charged earlier this month with conspiring to act as a foreign agent, dozens of his fellow Democrats were calling on him to resign. Prosecutors say Menendez used his political office to influence American policy at the behest of the Egyptian government. He remains a senator—for now—but the latest indictment, coming after corruption charges last month, further complicates his fate. Last week, Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty to all counts, missed an all-senators classified hearing on Israel—no small indignity for a former chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.

According to the indictment, the senator from New Jersey passed along sensitive information to Egypt, acted as a ghostwriter for its officials, and accepted “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes.” While researching my next book, a history of the foreign-lobbying industry in the United States, I didn’t come across anything quite like these allegations. They appear to be the first time that an elected federal official has been formally accused of acting as an agent of a foreign government.

Menendez has repeatedly professed his innocence and his loyalty to America. After his arraignment earlier this week, he released a statement calling the foreign-agent charge “as outrageous as it is absurd.” His trial is set for May, when Menendez says he’ll be shown to have done nothing wrong.

Read: Why this time is different for Bob Menendez

Even if the allegations are disproved, however, they could reshape how America prosecutes and punishes the kind of misconduct that Menendez is charged with. Until recently, the U.S. has largely ignored its best tool for deterring covert foreign agents. The case against Menendez signals an overdue willingness to use it.

Menendez’s alleged behavior might be novel, but we were warned of its possibility centuries ago. The Founding Fathers recognized that, in some ways, America is particularly vulnerable to foreign influence. “One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers. The danger may be greater today: Underpaid and overworked, U.S. officials are ripe for targeting by foreign powers eager to sway decisions in Washington. History, Hamilton noted, “furnishes us with so many mortifying examples of the prevalence of foreign corruption in republican governments.” Why would the U.S. be any different?

For years, these concerns appeared overblown. (Though not entirely: James Wilkinson, who served as the highest-ranking officer of the U.S. Army under each of the first four presidents, was revealed after his death to be an agent of the Spanish monarchy.) Then came the 19th century’s greatest foreign-corruption scandal.

In the late 1860s, Russia’s czarist regime was broke and desperate to sell Alaska, its easternmost province. So the Russian ambassador, Edouard de Stoeckl, secretly hired former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Walker to persuade Washington to buy it. Walker quickly obliged, publicly endorsing the purchase, planting articles in influential newspapers, and allegedly—no hard proof ever emerged—bribing legislators. Within a matter of months, Congress voted to back the purchase. When the details of Stoeckl’s gambit later spilled out, one critic described it as the “biggest lobby swindle ever put up in Washington.”

Walker’s offenses were shocking, but at least he had the decency to leave office before committing them. This sets him apart from the precedent that Menendez has now allegedly established. A more recent case, however, comes close.

In 1999, nearly 50 years after his death, Representative Samuel Dickstein of New York was revealed to have been a Soviet agent. KGB archives showed that Dickstein used his office to grant Soviets access to U.S. passports and, in one instance, to pass information about a Soviet defector who was later found dead in a hotel room.

Unlike other Americans recruited by the Soviet Union, Dickstein did not appear to have communist sympathies. Rather, Dickstein—whom Soviet officials nicknamed “Crook”—seemed interested only in money. “‘Crook’ is completely justifying his code name,” Soviet officials wrote. “This is an unscrupulous type, greedy for money … a very cunning swindler.” The Soviets eventually cut him loose, complaining that he wasn’t worth the price he demanded. Dickstein was never found out and spent the rest of his life in public office.

Read: How the Manafort indictment gave bite to a toothless law

The revelations were all the more surprising because Dickstein played an instrumental role in passing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, America’s best safeguard against people like himself.

In the 1930s, he led a committee that found that Ivy Lee—sometimes called the “father of public relations,” whose clients included the Rockefellers, Woodrow Wilson, and Charles Schwab—covertly advised the Nazis, helping them launder their image in America. At one point, Lee encouraged Joseph Goebbels to cultivate foreign reporters; he told other Nazis to publicly insist that Hitler’s storm troopers were “not armed, not prepared for war.” (One unsigned memo I found in Lee’s archive described Hitler as “an industrious, honest and sincere hard-working individual.”)

Thanks to these and other revelations, Dickstein and the committee played a key role in persuading legislators to pass FARA in 1938, which required anyone representing foreign governments, especially lobbyists, to disclose what they were doing on behalf of their clients. Dickstein is the only known member of Congress to violate the law he helped enshrine.

According to prosecutors, Menendez largely followed Dickstein’s playbook—passing along sensitive information, steering American policy for the benefit of foreign patrons, and accepting staggering amounts of money for his efforts, including in the form of gold bars.

The fact that prosecutors employed FARA to charge Menendez is a welcome development. The legislation was underused for decades, as foreign-lobbying networks—including those targeting sitting officials—flourished. To cite one statistic: Only three FARA-related convictions were secured from 1966 to 2015.

That wasn’t for lack of rule-breaking. A decade ago, Azerbaijan’s dictatorship and its proxies recruited American lobbyists, scholars, nonprofits, and others to promote Azeri interests without disclosing any of their campaigns. Other dictatorships and budding autocracies followed suit. As one 1990 government report found, barely half of registered foreign agents disclosed all of their activities.

When Donald Trump emerged as a political force, FARA experienced something of a renaissance. Although the former president was never accused in court of acting as a foreign agent, some of his closest allies—including his campaign manager Paul Manafort and National Security Adviser Mike Flynn—were convicted on related charges. (Trump later pardoned them both.) But those prosecutions never targeted a sitting official. That honor belongs to Menendez alone.

The renewed interest in FARA has highlighted the ways in which the legislation can be improved. The legal definition of foreign lobbying needs clarifying, and the Department of Justice should be empowered to use civil fines (rather than just criminal penalties) to target covert networks. Effective reforms have been proposed, but they’ve stalled in Congress. As Bloomberg Law reported, one legislator in particular was responsible for thwarting them: Menendez.

If proven guilty, Menendez will come to represent the culmination of the Founders’ fears—perhaps the most “mortifying example” of foreign corruption in U.S. history. But whether or not he’s convicted, Congress could use the attention his case has drawn to strengthen FARA, keep foreign lobbying in check, and give would-be offenders more reason to fear concealing their activities. If the charges against Menendez are a black mark, they can be a turning point too.

(Image source: iStock)