Russia sought to assassinate defector in Florida: report

The U.S. in early 2020 disrupted a plot by Russian President Vladimir Putin to assassinate in Miami a former high-ranking Russian spy turned CIA-informant.

The episode, reported for the first time Monday by The New York Times, illustrates another example of Putin’s hard-line toward perceived enemies that have played out in assassination efforts that take place inside Russia and across the world. 

Putin’s target was Aleksandr Poteyev, a former Russian intelligence official who in 2010 reportedly helped the FBI identify a network of Russian spies living in suburbs and cities along the East Coast, who were living under deep cover with false names and working ordinary jobs in an attempt to establish a larger and more ingrained intelligence network in the U.S. 

Poteyev became a target for assassination, the New York Times reported, verifying an account that is set to publish in the book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West,” by Calder Walton and to be released at the end of the month. 

The plot was said to have involved the Russian government recruiting Mexican citizen Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, who was arrested by the FBI in February 2020 for working on behalf of Moscow. A Justice Department press release at the time provided vague details of his involvement with Moscow. 

The Justice Department said at the time that Russian government officials provided Fuentes “with a physical description of a U.S. Government source’s vehicle and told Fuentes to locate the car, obtain the source’s vehicle license plate number, and note the physical location of the source’s vehicle.” 

Fuentes was then expected to meet with a Russian official in April or May 2020 to pass along the information of the “source’s” vehicle. 

The New York Times report cites the “source” as Poteyev and says that Fuentes screwed up the operation, drawing attention from local security in his attempts to tail Poteyev’s car that raised alarms for U.S. authorities, who found photographs of the former Russian spy’s vehicle on Fuentes’s phone.

When arrested, Fuentes reportedly provided details to American investigators that he believed Russian officials he communicated with were working with Russia’s internal security service, the F.S.B. 

U.S. pushback to Russia’s plot in targeting Poteyev was included in a wide range of penalties President Biden carried out in April 2021.

At the time the U.S. was responding to a series of Russian actions, including interference in the 2020 U.S. election, cyber attacks, reported bounties on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and actions by the Russian government “and intelligence services” that harmed U.S. sovereignty and interests, the White House said in a release at the time.