“WILL NO ONE RID ME OF THIS TROUBLESOME PRIEST?” The Wall Street Journal reported on April 27th that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that it is unlikely that Vladimir Putin personally ordered the killing of jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in February. According to the story – while the U.S. and allies still hold Putin accountable for the death, there is no evidence that Putin pulled the figurative trigger. Not everyone is buying the analysis that Putin’s fingerprints are not on the death warrant. Among those who are unconvinced: the Kremlin. According to The Daily Beast, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Russian state TV over the weekend that he didn’t put much stock in the WSJ report. “I would not say that this is high-quality material that deserves any attention. Some very empty reasoning,” Peskov said. Navalny supporters find themselves in the unusual position of agreeing with the Kremlin. One of them, Leonid Volkov, said that those who don’t think Putin was involved “clearly do not understand anything about how modern-day Russia runs” and added that the notion of Putin not being informed and approving of the killing of Navalny in advance “is ridiculous.”
OH, SAY CAN YOU HEAR? We understand that Russian soldiers and their bosses are not too happy about the United States belatedly getting its act together and approving additional aid to Ukraine. Some members of the Ukrainian armed forces were aware of these hard feelings and elected to rub things in on the front lines by blasting a recording of the Star-Spangled Banner in the general vicinity of Putin’s troops. As can be seen from this video posted on social media the Russians blasted back with some gunfire and an RPG round but, as is their wont, they turned out to be ineffective.
MUSIC TO RUSSIAN EARS: Kremlin supporters aren’t down on all music, however. Russian Media Monitor Julia Davis captured Russian state TV talking heads rhapsodizing about a music video they picked up from their “brothers” in North Korea. The ditty is called “Friendly Father” and features ecstatic North Koreans lauding Kim Jong Un with lyrics like “You are our hope and our rock,” “Our father is as wonderful and warm as a mother’s embrace,” Playing their North Korean “Up with People” dreck on Russian State TV must be part of the down payment for the artillery shells and other weapons Moscow is buying from Pyongyang.
SPEAKING OF A MOTHER’S EMBRACE: There is this story about the mother of a Russian soldier who was killed in the war in Ukraine and she used what is called in Russia “coffin money” (a bereavement payment) to buy a new apartment. But Zhanna Polupanova reportedly also wanted to repair an old house in her village and, lacking sufficient funds, sent a second son to the war as well. No word on how number two son is doing and whether he will make the ultimate sacrifice for mom’s fixer upper.
KIN TO KIM? CNN reported recently that publicly available documents from the Defense Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals says that an unnamed woman was denied a U.S. top secret security clearance because she is too closely related to “an extremely bad and dangerous person, a dictator of a country that is hostile to the United States.” The woman was born in this unspecified country but emigrated to the U.S. at a young age, became a U.S. citizen and has changed her name. She has been working for defense contractors for a while but when she applied for a TS clearance it was turned down for fear that her relative might use the familial connection to threaten or retaliate. CNN found a “military sociologist at the RAND Corporation,” Dr. Marek Posard, who speculated that the woman might be Kim Jong Un’s cousin. Language used in the clearance denial about the woman’s country of origin seems to point toward North Korea. CNN notes that the Washington Post reported in 2016 that Kim’s aunt and three children immigrated to the U.S. in 1998. It is unfortunate that the family connection has hampered the woman’s career, but officials decided that being related to a dictator “creates a potential conflict of interest and a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, and coercion.”
KILLING THEM WITH KINDNESS: Reporters from Sky News’ “data and forensics unit” have been analyzing a large increase in social media postings and video coming from inside Iran signaling a big increase in the crackdown on women deemed immodestly dressed. According to a Sky News report a new wrinkle in an uptick in arrests is the use of women in full hijabs working with authorities. These women accost other women who are showing a bit of hair or skin and sometimes wrestling them to the ground until police can swoop in an make arrests. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has a name for their fully covered women’s auxiliary: they refer to them as “Ambassadors of Kindness.” Data analysts are tracking a large increase in terms like “war against women” and “mandatory hijab” being used in social media posts coming out of Iran over the past few weeks. Apparently the “Ambassadors of Kindness” are not winning over too many hearts and minds.
SHAGGY DOG STORY: Former Marine Corps and CIA paramilitary officer Elliot Ackerman is well-known to Cipher Brief readers. He was a National Book Award finalist and co-author of well-received novels 2034 and 2054 among others. Ackerman announced this week having landed a new two-book deal with the publisher Knopf, The first of the series will be called “Sheepdogs” about “two down-on-their-luck ex-CIA operatives turned international repo men (who) get caught up in a shadowy international network working odd jobs for an unknown dispatcher named Sheepdog.”
BRINGING OLD SPIES OUT OF RETIREMENT: The Hollywood Reporter says that Pierce Brosnan, who first played James Bond about thirty years ago, has now been cast in a new movie called “A Spy’s Guide to Survival.” The concept involves “a reclusive, retired spy who is brought out of hiding by his enigmatic new neighbor, digging up both of their secrets in the process.” That’s about all we could dig up about the project so far, though.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
WHAT HAPPENS OUTSIDE OF LAS VEGAS STAYS OUTSIDE OF LAS VEGAS: The tabloid Daily Mail posted a story on Saturday saying that a guy named Joerg Arnu who labels himself an “Area 51 research veteran” claims that his home was raided by federal agents who confiscated four computers, several hard drives, phones, camera and a drone. The article is more than a little fuzzy – so it is not entirely clear - but it appears that the raid (if it is real) happened in November 2022. Arnu runs a website called dreamlandresort.com which claims to reveal the “Secrets of Area 51.” It also says it is “Endorsed by FBI and AF OSI” (by which we guess he means because (he says) they raided it. Eighteen months later he doesn’t seem to have been charged but a search warrant viewed by the Daily Mail indicated he was possibly involved in “conspiracy” and “photographing defense installations.”
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