Inventing a nonexistent Ukrainian assassination attempt against Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian officials have damaged their credibility and Putin’s diplomatic strategy about the war in Ukraine. Past experience makes it improbable that Trump will increase sanctions and other pressure on Russia in relation to this deception. Still, this incident illustrates the risks of the Kremlin’s reflex to use deception to solve any challenge.
Deception is a favorite pastime of Putin’s court and, indeed, of the Russian national security apparatus. Inculcated with the training he received at the KGB’s Red Banner Institute, now the academy for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Putin revels in personal manipulation. Deception plays an especially important role in these efforts, allowing Putin to redirect negative attention onto his adversaries while advancing his own interests under the cover of self-righteous indignation. But Putin has significantly overplayed his hand with the invented Ukraine assassination plot.
The timing was the first indicator of deception. Coming immediately after Sunday’s largely positive meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a failed Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s Moscow suburb residence offered a clear way for the Russian leader to dilute Trump and Zelensky’s improving rapport. This is a key Russian priority. Putin knows that if Trump and Zelensky build trust toward agreeing on a reasonable framework to end the war in Ukraine, Putin will have reduced space to maneuver against that framework. Certainly not without risking new U.S. sanctions on Moscow and/or increased support for Kyiv.
Trump first expressed anger when Putin informed him of the supposed assassination plot. But that didn’t last long. Following a CIA assessment that showed no evidence of a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow — any such attack would have been easy to detect with U.S. radar and satellite systems, necessarily having to be large to have a chance of penetrating Russian air defenses — Trump reposted a New York Post editorial condemning Putin for inventing the assassination plot. The Russians then produced photos of the supposed drone wreckage, failing to convince even amateur internet sleuths who noticed the presence of spare parts typically used in Russian drones.
In a fleeting attempt to salvage some credibility, Igor Kostyukov, the head of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, summoned U.S. military attaches from the embassy in Moscow. Under the gaze of Russian state media cameras, the attaches then received an electronic storage device containing supposed proof of the assassination plot. U.S. Army Col. Michael Wise’s facial expressions at that meeting suggest he did not put much stock in this Russian gift — for good reason. The GRU is about as reliable a trustworthy interlocutor as a pedophile is a trustworthy teacher.
This deception plot has failed. Because it came immediately after Trump’s successful meeting with Zelensky, because it has no credible supporting evidence, and because Putin personally informed Trump about it, this invented plot risks damaging Putin’s relationship with Trump. As an extension, it risks undermining Russia’s maximalist strategy to either win a highly favorable peace agreement or avoid consequences for its continued war.
This incident is only the tip of the iceberg, however. There are innumerable examples of Russia’s deception fetish.
Putin notably leveraged his stroking of Trump’s ego and correct sense of Trump’s affinity for strong leaders to build a manipulative relationship with the president during his first term in office. Putin then convinced Trump that his intelligence briefers had been lying to him and that Russia had not, in fact, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. There is overwhelming evidence showing that Russia did interfere — the only debate is over the ultimate intent of that interference.
Similarly, in the days running up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin and his top officials insisted that they had no plans to invade Ukraine. In late 2021, Putin’s chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, suggested that “Russia has never hatched, is not hatching and will never hatch any plans to attack anyone, Russia is a peaceful country, which is interested in good relations with its neighbors.” On Feb. 4, 2022, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared that Western allegations that Russia planned to invade were “nonsense.” And just six days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin claimed his military deployments along Ukraine’s border were “purely defensive … not a threat to any other country.”
The United States and its allies did not fall for these lies, benefitting from having thoroughly and persistently penetrated the Russian military command and control network prior to the start of the war. As the Washington Examiner reported a month prior to the invasion, the U.S. knew where and how Russia would launch its attack.
Yet, while it is sometimes simplistic to the point of absurdity, deception remains a key element of Russian strategy. When they are caught red-handed, Russian intelligence operatives claim they are simple Cathedral sightseers or victims of Russophobia. And sometimes the deception game pays great dividends.
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Take the so-called Havana Syndrome issue. Here, Russia has redirected its deception strategy to make the U.S. deceive itself. Deploying boutique directed-energy weapon technologies, Russia has harmed hundreds of American diplomats, intelligence officers, and military personnel. And it continues to get away with doing so by using novel technologies to exploit a U.S. intelligence community and political culture that prefers the avoidance of political controversy over harder truths and ensuing confrontation.
So, yes, Russia lost this gambit. But there is no question that another deception is waiting in the wings.