It seems Ukraine's secret services (whatever they call themselves) have scored one for the home team against their Russian equivalents.
As far as the Russians were concerned, they had got their man.
Denis Kapustin, one of the most prominent anti-Putin Russians fighting on behalf of Ukraine, was reported dead on Dec 27, assassinated by a drone on the southern front.
He had long been hunted by Moscow and the price on his head reflected this: Russian intelligence services had offered $500,000 (£370,000) to anyone who killed him.
Russia paid this out after news broke of the successful hit this week. But what Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services did not know was that they had handed the money directly to Ukraine.
. . .
Mr Kapustin re-emerged – alive and unscathed – in a video posted by Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR).
“Welcome back to life,” Gen Kyrylo Budanov, head of HUR, said with a wry smile. He congratulated Mr Kapustin and his team on a successful operation to deceive their Russian adversaries.
It turns out HUR, along with the RDK, had hatched a plan to fake Mr Kapustin’s death and claim the $500,000 bounty from Russia for themselves, to be used in Ukraine’s war effort.
There's more at the link.
I wonder how many drones Ukraine will buy with that money? Last I heard, I seem to recall that their locally-manufactured FPV drones were about $4,000 per copy. If so, $500,000 will buy 125 of them . . . enough to administer rather a lot of explosive headaches to Russian forces across the front line. I wonder what the soldiers on the receiving end will have to say about their intelligence service's donation to the enemy? If we could hear them, we might learn some interesting new Russian words . . .
Peter
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