As Intel news informs, a Clandestine Spy unit, which experts have described as a mysterious “third espionage agency” inside the Russian intelligence apparatus, is said to be behind a “kill/capture list” that Moscow allegedly plans to put to use in Ukraine.
United States government officials insisted that such a list exists, despite strong denials from Russia. American officials claimed that the purpose of the list is to minimize popular resistance by Ukrainians to an invading Russian army, and to destabilize the government in Kyiv, so that a pro-Russian government can eventually replace it.
The alleged list reportedly contains the names of senior Ukrainian politicians, Ukraine-based critics of the Russian and Belarusian governments, journalists and other activists. These individuals are to be captured or killed in the event of an invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, according to Washington.
As the United States government states, the alleged kill/capture list is supported by the foreign intelligence arm of the Russia’s Federal Security Service. Known as FSB, the agency’s key mission is to carry out counterintelligence and counterterrorism tasks inside the borders of the Russian Federation. But the FSB includes a little-known intelligence unit, known as the Service for Operational Information and International Communications—or the Fifth Service, in short.
The Fifth Service was created in 1992 to fill the vacuum left by a host of no-spy agreements signed between Moscow and the governments of former Soviet Republics. These agreements prevent Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) to spy inside the territories of former Soviet states. By 1995, the Fifth Service had become known as the FSB foreign spy wing. It grew in size drastically after 1999, and some claim that it “graduated into [Rusian President Vladimir] Putin’s imperial gendarme”. Today it is headed by Putin’s close ally, Sergei Beseda, the FSB colonel general..
The main task of the Fifth Service is political action of a covert nature, aimed at electoral subversion, political influence campaigns, psychological operations, and the undermining of groups or movements opposing Russia’s continuing influence in the territories of the former Soviet Union. Some Western news sources have recently alleged that the Fifth Service had been tasked with coordinating activities between the Russian government and pro-Russian groups inside a state, as well as “engineering [mini] coups in major cities abroad of Russia”.
Due to the information leak from the Russian Ministry of Defense it is possible to identify individuals linked to this Russian internal intelligence terrorist unit whose members may be involved in conducting subversive operations, especially in the former republics of the Soviet Union, in the interests of Moscow. However, there is a high probability that this very unit may carry out terrorist operations in other countries in Europe and Asia.
