CIA's Russian recruitment efforts at risk amid Trump's return

In the past three years, the CIA has been particularly bold in recruiting Russians holding high positions in the government or security services, wrote "The Guardian." According to the article's author, they aimed to turn them into double agents and even produced a recruitment film portraying cooperation with the CIA as a patriotic choice for those unhappy with the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's regime.

"We don't know for sure whether recruitment was carried out, and we shouldn't know, but it was definitely a strategy, and moments of crisis like this in the past were a golden opportunity for recruitment campaigns by Western services," said intelligence historian from Harvard’s Kennedy School, Calder Walton, quoted in the text.

As recently as 2023, CIA Director William Burns highlighted that there was a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to recruit Russians. A year earlier, the director of the British MI6 intelligence service, Richard Moore, compared the invasion of Ukraine to the Prague Spring, after which many Russians decided to cooperate with Western services.

In recent months, several European sources from security and intelligence circles have confirmed in anonymous statements that Western intelligence agencies have intensified agent recruitment.

The geopolitical situation may change from January, "The Guardian" forecasts. The author of the article wrote that Donald Trump's return to the White House and Tulsi Gannard's appointment as a candidate for the Director of National Intelligence, who coordinates all U.S. intelligence services, could pose a danger to double agents in Russia.

The British newspaper cautions on its website that those who choose to become double agents must recognize the inherent dangers, including the threat of exposure and potential death.