Russia botched Miami hit on double agent in 2020: report

News

By Josh Christenson

June 19, 2023 | 12:02pm

Russian President Vladimir Putin likely masterminded an assassination attempt against an ex-intelligence official on US soil 10 years after the double agent fled Moscow for Miami — a deed that would have been an extraordinary breach of American sovereignty.

Kremlin officials in early 2020 pressured a Mexican scientist to track down the former spy, Col. Alexander Poteyev, who had served for decades in Russia’s SVR intelligence service before he betrayed a ring of 10 Russian spies — including the notorious Anna Chapman — and defected to the US, the New York Times reported Monday.

But the scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, botched the assassination plot and was caught by US authorities with a picture of Poteyev’s license plate on his phone, which he planned to pass on to Russian intelligence.

The US retaliated by imposing sanctions and expelling 10 Russian diplomats from Washington, DC — including the top intelligence official stationed there.

At the time, President Biden said the penalties were a response to Putin’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and the SolarWinds hack on US federal agencies.

“We cannot allow a foreign power to interfere in our democratic process with impunity,” Biden said at an April 15, 2021, White House press briefing.

Putin retaliated by banishing 10 US diplomats from Moscow, including the local CIA station chief.

The Times reported that the failed assassination of Poteyev has been confirmed by US intelligence officials and is also recounted in historian Calder Walton’s newly published book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West.”

The Kremlin forced Fuentes to participate in the plot by exploiting his double life — which included a bigamist marriage to a Russian woman living in Germany.

Fuentes, who had a clean record and lived in Oaxaca with his Mexican wife, had earned his doctorate from the University of Giessen, where his Russian wife lived with her two daughters.

Following a trip to Russia, however, Fuentes’ wife was prohibited from returning to Germany in 2019.

A Russian official informed Fuentes that he could “help” his family out in exchange for information about Poteyev, who had been convicted in absentia of treason and desertion in 2011.

Fuentes rented a condo north of Miami Beach under an associate’s name and learned in February 2020 during a trip to Moscow where he could find Poteyev’s vehicle, though the Kremlin official discouraged him from taking a photograph.

The scientist and his Mexican wife later tailgated a resident at the complex where Poteyev lived to try to gain entry, but were held up by security. 

Somehow Fuentes’ wife was able to take a picture of Poteyev’s license plate before they left the complex, but the couple was detained by US Customs and Border Protection two days later on their way back to Mexico.

The US officials then searched Fuentes’ phone and discovered the picture of Poteyev’s vehicle, and the scientist later confessed details of the plot to federal investigators.

A former US intelligence official told the Times Fuentes had been unaware of the significance of his mission in trying to obtain the information.

Fuentes pleaded guilty in February 2022 and was later sentenced to four years in federal prison. He will be deported to Mexico upon his release.

In 2018, Russian agent Alexander Petrov poisoned another ex-Kremlin official, Sergei V. Skripal, who was convicted in 2006 for disclosing secrets to British intelligence.

Skripal had been released as part of a prisoner exchange resulting from Poteyev’s defection — and his poisoning also led to diplomatic expulsions.

Poteyev escaped Russia in 2010 through Belarus after having outed 10 Kremlin “moles” who disguised themselves as everyday Americans, including the fiery-haired Chapman.

In 2016, Russian news reports surfaced that Poteyev had died, but the double agent purchased a fishing license and registered as a Republican the same year in Miami.

Two years later, BuzzFeed News shared both facts in a report that revealed Poteyev was still alive and living in Florida.