Dead Drop: April 19

PAYBACKS ARE HELL: Much has been made about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s penchant for making individuals who have defected from Russia or otherwise offended his regime, to pay a price. The 2018 attack on Sergei Skripal is just one example.  But apparently, the Kremlin is not the only outfit that goes after citizens who have opted to change sides.  Recently, we’ve been reading stories about Vasily Prozorov, a former Ukrainian intelligence officer, who defected to Russia back in 2018. Video emerged of Prozorov starting his Toyota Land Cruiser in a Moscow parking lot and the vehicle exploding. Prozorov, 48, was a lieutenant colonel in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) before changing teams for what he described as “ideological reasons.”  A story in the Kyiv Post shows the dramatic explosion which the defector somehow survived with only minor injuries. Prozorov seems pretty lucky. On Tuesday, Moscow officials announced that they arrested a Russian man for allegedly orchestrating the attack.  The Russian Foreign Security Service (FSB) said the man was working on behalf of Ukraine’s SBU. “He arrived in Russia in March this year…. received parts for a radio-controlled explosive device, assembled the explosive device and after carrying out reconnaissance in the area of the address of the ex-SBU employee, carried out the car bombing,” it said in a statement. The bombing seemed to send a strong signal to both sides (and may make a good commercial for Toyota Land Cruisers). Then on Tuesday, The Moscow Times reported that Anton Yakimenko, a Russian-installed official in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, also survived an apparent assassination attempt. Anton reportedly was entering a Russian-run grain operator’s garage when an explosive device detonated. “Anton was lucky, the main direction of the explosion went past him. He was just grazed,” according to another pro-Russian official.

WHO DOESN’T LIKE A HOT CORVETTE?  Well, the Kremlin perhaps – if you are referring to a naval corvette like their ship the Serpukhov, which was stationed at a Baltic naval base in Kaliningrad. Ukraine’s military intelligence director reportedly has claimed responsibility for causing the ship to catch fire – 800 miles away from the main naval zone of conflict in the Black Sea. It is not clear exactly how the fire might have been set – but somehow, they appear to have gotten an incendiary device aboard the ship that caused substantial damage. The current status of the Serpukhov is unclear – but sources told Ukrainian media that it was severely damaged and will take a very long time to repair.