Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Russian agents reportedly attempted to assassinate a CIA informant on American soil in 2020, a dramatic ploy that has since been blamed for a sudden deterioration of relations between Washington and leaders of the Russian Federation.
Their target was a former Russian agent whose defection to the United States led to a counterintelligence investigation that resulted in the capture and expulsion of nearly a dozen spies embedded along the US eastern seaboard. His attempted murder is just the latest alleged effort by agents of Vladimir Putin, formerly head of the country’s feared intelligence service and now its leader, to get revenge against Russian defectors living abroad.
The event was separately reported in the upcoming book Spies by Calder Walton.
Three former senior US officials told The New York Times that Russian agents targeted Aleksandr Poteyev with an operation in early 2020 that involved an effort to tail Mr Poteyev around his new hometown of Miami. A Mexican scientist, coerced into being the face of the effort after members of his family were prevented from leaving Russia, is reported to have rented an apartment near Mr Poteyev’s residence for the purpose of surveiling the ex-spy.
That scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, would later be instructed by his Russian handlers to tail Mr Poteyev, leading to an incident where he and his wife were spotted by security agents and cameras (apparently at their victim’s apartment complex) photographing Mr Poteyev’s license plate. Realising they had likely just blown their cover, the two fled for Mexico, but were stopped at the US border and arrested.
According to one former official, Mr Fuentes was likely unaware of the eventual goals of the operation and was merely tasked with providing initial intelligence regarding Mr Poteyev’s whereabouts.
While the US government has never publicly acknowledged the operation, the Times reports that it was a leading cause behind the expulsion of nearly a dozen Russian diplomats in April 2021, including a senior member of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
Mr Fuentes’s lawyer declined to comment to the Times on his client’s involvement with the case. He was sentenced to a federal prison term in 2022, with officials at the DoJ describing his crime at that point as acting “as a Russian agent” and loosely explaining how he was accused of photographing Mr Poteyev’s car — while omitting the latter’s name from the news release. The ex-spy was only described as a “US person” in documents made public about Mr Fuentes’s sentencing, and the identity of Mr Fuentes’s wife was left out as well.
“The manner in which Fuentes communicated with the Russian government official and his undertakings in this case are consistent with the tactics of the Russian intelligence services for spotting, assessing, recruiting and handling intelligence assets and sources,” read the DoJ’s sentencing announcement. “Fuentes had not notified the U.S. Attorney General, as required by law, that he was acting in the United States as an agent of the Russian government.”
He is currently serving a four year prison term for failing to register as a Russian agent. Mr Poteyev’s current whereabouts are unknown.
