From AFIO's The Intelligencer Association of Former Intelligence Officers 7700 Leesburg Pike, Suite 324 Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies Falls Church, Virginia 22043 Web: www.afio.com * E-mail:
[email protected] Volume 26 • Number 2 • Winter-Spring 2021 $15 single copy price and conducting a sub rosa conflict against the West II. CURRENT ISSUES across a broad front. At home, after assuming the presidency in 2000, he quickly subjugated perceived opponents and crit- ics. By 2004 the “freewheeling oligarchs of the 1990s were soon brought to heel.”4 Financial Times Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton, in her new book, states that using “…the ever-present threat of tax fraud charges was part of a process that was gradually turn- ing Yeltsin-era oligarchs into loyal vassals…”5 Assassination was too. Today, the remaining Wet Affairs oligarchs play to the Kremlin’s tune; none are inde- pendent actors; they are extensions of the state. There Part III1 is no better example than Yevgeny Prigozhin’s network of companies. His Internet Research Agency (IRA) Russia’s Assassination Pandemic in St. Petersburg is best described as a troll farm spreading disinformation via social media. And his Wagner Group is a mercenary paramilitary company by Peter C. Oleson providing Russian fighters to the Assad regime in Syria and Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army in Libya, and security forces throughout countries in Africa. ladimir Putin has said that the demise of the Even before the breakup of the Soviet Union, KGB Soviet Union was “one of the greatest tragedies leaders and senior members of the Communist Party of the 20th century.”2 Since assuming power in V of the Soviet Union, concerned about the direction of 2000 he has undertaken a focused, revanchist cam- events, moved to preserve their positions as an orga- paign to restore what he believes should be Russia’s nization.6 The KGB’s foreign intelligence elements7 position in the world.