Here's a good story in the Washington Examiner, a conservative outlet, about whether or not Russian put bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan:N.E. Brigand wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 6:42 pmOne article today said that the story last year about Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan might have been leaked, despite U.S. intelligence agencies' uncertainty about it, in order to pressure the U.S. not to leave Afghanistan.Sunsilver wrote:N.E. Brigand: LONG overdue IMO!I also saw an announcement yesterday that Biden is planning to invite Putin to the White House. Would LOVE to be a fly on the wall during THAT meeting!A clarification regarding the alleged Russian bounties on U.S. troops: the sanctions and expulsions are not in response to that happening. The U.S. only has moderate confidence in the intelligence on that story, and thus the U.S. response is, via diplomatic channels, to give Russia a chance to explain itself.
So it could be that the sanctions on Russia announced today, which included a comment about that uncertainty, were timed to follow Biden's announcement yesterday that U.S. troops (and NATO troops) will be leaving Afghanistan by September.
Inside the CIA and NSA disagreement over Russian bounties story
The CIA continues to have "moderate" confidence in this claim, based on five different information streams (including evidence of money transferred from the GRU to the Taliban and reports from sensitive sources in Afghanistan). The NSA, based on its own separate sources of information (or the lack thereof: they would expect to have collected communications by GRU officers setting up these payments, and they don't have that), has "low" confidence in the claim.