The Kremlin is gearing up to meddle in U.S. presidential election, as its agents seek to infiltrate into this country.
The number of Russian citizens who applied for asylum in the United States rose by 1,500%. The U.S. court system has registered more than 40,000 asylum cases by Russian asylum seekers since the beginning of 2023. We believe nearly 60% of these people are Russian intelligence agents, who have a task to set up work with Russian diaspora in the U.S. to conduct PSYOPs there. Some of these people are from criminal gangs and they have a task to contact with local gangs and drug cartels, regarded as a tool for force operations.
Mexico is the main channel to enter the United States. With Russian intelligence commonly using Latin American cover documents, we cannot exclude that Mexican government facilitates registration for these people.
Moscow is most likely to make attempts to meddle in the voting to promote several candidates, including independent ones, as their black publicity will then target the favorites of presidential race.
Active Russian effort to establish contacts with local criminals is of particular concern. RLI previously highlighted Moscow’s effort to get in touch with British criminals, while information on similar effort by Tehran in Britain is likely to speak about synchronization and coherence. The Sunday Times claims that Iranian agents are stepping up their activity in the UK, and are eager to establish contacts with British criminals, according to the intelligence data voiced by Home Secretary of the United Kingdom Suella Braverman. She says the IRGC people are trying to recruit local criminals for involvement in future attacks on those in UK who oppose the Iranian government.
We believe, however, the operations are targeting not just dissident groups or opposition. That is probably the way to form combat groups, ready to fulfill political and sabotage tasks.
