Top Democrats pounced on President Trump on Saturday after the news on Friday night that Russian military intelligence agents secretly offered rewards from Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan in exchange for killing NATO and stationed US troops. there.
The explosive New York Times report revealed that President Trump and the National Security Council were briefed on the undercover operations in late March, as the country plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic. The administration has spent months deliberating on the best way to respond, but has so far taken no action.
“President Trump was approaching Putin and inviting him to the G7, while his administration allegedly knew that Russia was trying to kill US troops in Afghanistan and derail peace talks with the Taliban,” said Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. in a tweet.
On the side of the house, the Democratic-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee also released a statement on its own Twitter account, calling on Trump for several cases of past intimacy with the country.
“Is there something Trump does not do for Putin,” they asked.
The Russian entity responsible for the rewards, known as Unit 29155, is an arm of the country’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, and has developed a notorious reputation for carrying out covert and extralegal actions on behalf of the state. The group was behind the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee in the 2016 US presidential election and the 2018 poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England.
Taliban representatives denied the charges, calling them “unfounded.” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to respond.
It is unclear why the GRU was targeting US and coalition soldiers. Some intelligence officials have speculated that the country may be trying to derail the peace talks between the United States and Afghanistan, while others believe the rewards could have been offered as revenge against a 2018 battle in Syria that killed hundreds of aligned forces. by the government and several Russians. mercenaries
.
