The closer the US presidential elections approach, the more concerns about the scale of using Russian influence agents and recruiting American citizens to cooperate with Moscow grow. Obviously, the role of these individuals will be to ensure legitimacy of the fake elections in Russia and spread disinformation against the top US leadership in the interests of Russia.
In early January of this year, Russian propaganda informed about a visit of a delegation headed by Scott Ritter, whom the Russians call as a former American intelligence officer, to Chechnya. During the visit, Ritter met with the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and gave the latter a US Marine knife. In addition, Ritter visited annexed Crimea, where he stated that the peninsula belonged to Russia and its return to Ukraine was impossible. These very statements duplicate the Russian propaganda narratives and allow the Russians to interpret Ritter’s words as the position of Washington. Ritter passionately criticizes US policy. He is the one Russian propaganda has been actively relying on since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He prepares journalistic materials for the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today, Russian military intelligence-affiliated media. There are no doubts that Ritter stays in touch with Russian military intelligence, but we doubt that his collaboration is moved by ideological views and beliefs. Although he calls himself as a US patriot, his background and rhetoric pose himself as an ambitious and narcissistic person, a politician who feels offended by the US government, and is ready to betray if someone else satisfies his needs.
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In November 2009, he was arrested for internet chatting with an undercover police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. The fact that Ritter masturbated in front of a webcam after the officer said she was a 15-year-old girl, proves his deviant behavior and sexual problems. In October 2011, Ritter was sentenced to 5.5 years behind the bars.
In September 2014, the period when Moscow increased its activity, he was released on parole. At the trial, an American journalist Seymour Hersh, one more Russian intelligence collaborator, spoke in Ritter’s defense.Hersh became close to Ritter in the 1990s and used to state that Ritter ‘understands the Arab world in a way that few Westerners I know only do’. Thus, we can see interaction between two individuals who are actively-involved in Russian disinformation campaigns. Obviously, the purpose of such activity is to support and strengthen Russia’s information operations. Being well-coordinated Hersh and Ritter were spreading disinformation about US involvement in the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions. Ritter emphasized that Hersh’s (unfounded) accusations should serve as a reason to remove US President Joe Biden, that is one of Russian intelligence tasks within the last 2 years.
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We are convinced that Ritter agreed to cooperate with the Russians because of compromising information and the restrictions imposed by the American court on his employment and life prospects in the US.
Ritter supplied the British foreign intelligence service MI6 with the UNSCOM documents and briefings, one more fact showing his moralities and quick readiness to cooperate with foreign intelligence services. Ritter is unfettered greedy and money-oriented. In 2001 he released his documentary ‘In Shifting Sands’ arguing that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction because of the UN weapons inspection program. According to The Washington Times, Ritter’s documentary was partially financed by Iraqi American businessman Shakir al Khafaji. Al-Khafaji pled guilty to multiple felony charges in 2004 for his involvement with the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal. Both of them discredited US policy in Iraq.
After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ritter’s role as an agent of influence became pretty clear. Thus, he spread Russian propaganda theses that Bucha atrocities were committed by the Ukrainian police.In summary, Russia recruits US citizens either the ones having problems with the law or the individuals expressing anti-American views in order to show an alternative point of view and discredit the US government and government institutions. As the elections approach, the number of individuals willing to cooperate with the Russians will obviously increase, that, in its turn, will have negative consequences for US national security.
