“The people around you may not want to hear the truth, but we do,” reads the message in the commercial – which is supposed to get Russians to spy on their homeland on behalf of the United States.
In the video, the CIA targets officers, intelligence officers, diplomats and scientists who are frustrated with Russian policy towards, among other things, Ukraine.
The short video aims to connect with Russians who are unhappy with Putin and who may have valuable information. The video alludes to patriotism and Russian culture with quotes from Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
“We easily believe lies, but we know what our reality is. The reality we live in and the reality we whisper about,” says the narrator.
The video was posted on the social media platform Telegram, which is popular in Russia. The narrator in the film is a fictional Russian bureaucrat who is disillusioned with the totalitarian Russian society. The video shows how to go about getting in touch with the CIA. A Russian woman sits in her car and contacts the CIA on her phone.
“We will live with dignity, thanks to my actions,” says the narrator before the CIA logo and contact instructions appear on the screen.
“Given result”
A former CIA director who spoke to CNN praises the campaign and believes that similar messages have yielded results in the past.
– There are many dissatisfied Russians out there now. They are ashamed and disgusted by what Putin is doing to their brothers and sisters in Ukraine. He is destroying Russia. He kills Russian boys. And there are good people in Russia, including intelligence officers, who want to fight back, James Olson told CNN.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary, told the media that he had not seen the video.
– But I am convinced that our special services also monitor this as necessary. Given that, and we all know very well that the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies are hardly reducing their activities on our country’s territory.