Russia security service FSB ‘ordered to assassinate Prigozhin’
Ukraine intelligence chief says assassination would be a ‘huge operation’ as the CIA assures Moscow US isn’t involved in Russia chaos.
Russia’s security service, the FSB, has been ordered to assassinate Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence chief.
Kyrylo Budanov said any such assassination attempt on the Wagner Group leader would be a “huge operation” and would take time, CNN reports.
“All of such potential assassination attempts will not be fast,” Mr Budanov said.
Separately, a source closely acquainted with Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Moscow Times that “sooner or later,” the nerve agent novichok, used to poison Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, “shall come to (Prigozhin)”.
Mr Budanov spoke as US officials confirmed CIA Director William Burns quietly reached out to his Russian counterpart in the aftermath of Wagner’s failed mutiny, delivering a message that the US had no involvement in Russia’s internal chaos.
Mr Burns’s phone call with Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign-intelligence service, is believed to be the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny. The failed uprising, which ended the day after it began with an agreement brokered by Belarus’s leader, was the most serious threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his 23-year rule.
The outreach by Mr Burns, a former diplomat often tapped to convey sensitive messages to Russia and other nations, is part of a wider White House strategy to signal to Putin and his inner circle that the US had no role in Prigozhin’s move and isn’t seeking to stoke tensions in Russia.
Privately, US officials say they are eager to avoid giving the Kremlin any fodder to blame the mutiny and its aftermath on Russia’s external enemies.
The message from the chief of the Central Intelligence Agency was: “The US wasn’t involved. This is an internal Russian matter,” one official said.
Other details of the conversation, which took place this week after Prigozhin suddenly halted his forces’ march to Moscow on Saturday, couldn’t be determined.
The White House declined to comment. “We’re not going to get into specifics of individual diplomatic discussions,” an official said.
The US and Russia have had only episodic high-level contact since Putin ordered his military to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
Separately, Mr Burns travelled unannounced to Ukraine earlier this month, a US official said, to confer with President Volodomyr Zelensky and Ukrainian intelligence officials.
“As with other trips, the director met with his Ukrainian intelligence counterparts and President Zelensky, reaffirming the US commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression,” the official said, adding that Mr Burns’s trip, earlier reported by the Washington Post, occurred before Prigozhin’s rebellion.
Mr Burns, whose 32-year diplomatic career included a stint as ambassador to Moscow, has frequently been Biden’s preferred interlocutor with Russia. In November 2021, Biden dispatched him to Moscow, where he spoke by a secure phone line with Putin, who was in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. He told the Russian leader that the US believed he was preparing to invade Ukraine and that he would face crippling sanctions if he did.
In November 2022, he met with Naryshkin in Ankara, Turkey, to warn Russia of the consequences should it use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.
Prigozhin, a one-time Putin confidant who became a vociferous critic of how Russia was conducting the war in Ukraine, took over a military base in southern Russia last weekend. Thousands of his Wagner Group troops began marching on Moscow, getting to within about 125 miles of the Russian capital. His apparent goal was to capture Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff.
Putin denounced the actions as treason but agreed to an apparent deal in which Prigozhin would end the mutiny and move himself and his forces to Belarus in exchange for charges against him being dropped.
From the start, senior US officials have stressed that neither Washington nor Kyiv, which the US is backing with billions of dollars in weaponry and other support, had anything to do with the armed uprising.
“We had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse — let me emphasise — we gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO, ” Biden said at the White House on Monday after a weekend video call with leaders of US allies. “We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.” The message was delivered “to the Russians themselves through appropriate diplomatic channels,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Monday.
US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy relayed the message to Russian officials in Moscow on Saturday, the State Department said.
With Dow Jones
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