Russia reportedly tried to assassinate a high-value CIA asset in Miami

Russia tried unsuccessfully to assassinate a valuable CIA informant in Miami — a former high-ranking Russian intelligence official named Aleksandr Poteyev — in a brazen operation that “spiraled into tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia,” including the expulsions of “top intelligence officials in Moscow and Washington,” The New York Times reported Monday. Poteyev provided information that led to the uncovering and 2010 arrest of 11 Russian spies “living under deep cover in suburbs and cities along the East Coast.”

The incident signaled that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to expand his targeting of his enemies onto U.S. soil. In 2018, Russian operatives tried to fatally poison Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence colonel convicted of selling secrets to Britain, in Salisbury, England. Skripal was one of four prisoners Russia released in 2010 after the U.S. sent 10 of the 11 uncovered Russian spies back to Moscow.

“The red lines are long gone for Putin,” former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos told the Times. “He wants all these guys dead.” The foiled assassination attempt is revealed in the British edition of the book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West” by Harvard national security and intelligence scholar Calder Walton, scheduled to be published June 29. The Times corroborated his reporting and added more information about the fallout. You can read the details that The New York Times.