The United States has launched a campaign targeting a social media network popular in Russia and intending to recruit informants and spies.
A new social media campaign has been launched by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which aims to encourage citizens of Russia to start working as spies for American intelligence.
The campaign is centred around the chat app Telegram, which has reportedly become popular amongst Russians because, unlike other platforms, it isn’t blocked by the government there.
The new recruitment campaign seems to target Russians working within the country’s government and attempts to use the viewers’ sense of Russian patriotism and concern for the future to encourage them to turn, notes the Associated Press.
“The CIA wants to know the truth about #Russia, and we are looking for reliable people who know and can tell us this truth,” one Russian-language post on the campaign’s Telegram channel reads. “Your information may be more valuable than you think.”
Along with media attempting to persuade Russians to betray the Vladimir Putin government, the channel also contains details on how to securely contact the CIA using the likes of VPNs, as well as Tor browser, which allows the user to securely contact and transfer information to other parties.
“Once you contact us, please be patient,” the post on the channel goes on to say. “We thank you for your courage. We carefully review the submitted documents in order to give an appropriate response and at the same time ensure your safety.”
Speaking on the campaign, one official within the CIA said that the purpose of the campaign was both to tell Russians how to get in contact with U.S. intelligence, as well as to show that the organisation understood the struggles of the average citizen in the country.
“We understand you, maybe better than you think,” the operative reportedly said, per CNN.
“We wanted to convey to Russians in their own language we know what they’re going through,” they continued. “There are always individuals in Russia who identify with what we have to say here.”
The danger of defection is evidently one Russia is alive to. As reported in March, Russian government employees — exactly the class of people now being targeted by the CIA — were having their passports confiscated to, an intelligence readout says, to “prevent the flight or defection of increasingly disaffected officials”.