Russia has a long history of dealing with its opponents in a brutal way. The doctrine known as 'Wet Deeds' was developed in the Soviet Union and seeks to wipe out 'enemies of the state.'
Ret. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis and former U.S. Defense Intelligence specialist Rebekah Koffler react to Republican candidates clashing over Ukraine War funding on 'Fox News @ Night.'The most Googled name on Wednesday night in America — other than the 38-year-old GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — was, the Russian warlord who commanded the murderous mercenary squad called The Wagner Group.
Regardless of a specific method, as a Russia watcher who spent my intelligence career investigating Russian intelligence tradecraft and analyzing President Vladimir Putin, my assessment is that Prigozhin’s death was likely a hit job orchestrated by the Russian state. It was probably authorized by Putin himself.
Indeed, there are multiple punishment tools in Putin’s playbook. It is underpinned by an entire doctrine called"Wet Deeds" , which was developed by Soviet intelligence, to eliminate"the enemies of the state.""Wet deeds" — also translated as"wet affairs" or"wet works" — are targeted assassinations, bearing a codename that refers to the spilling of blood.
Putin has renewed the practice of"wet deeds," giving the tactic an innocuous name of"special tasks." He made the practice legal by approving a federal law,"On Countering Extreme Activity," in 2002, two and a half years after he assumed the presidency. Updated in 2006, it legalizes targeted assassinations as punishment for"extremist activity," which is defined very broadly, giving the Kremlin flexibility in its application.
In 1938, Pavel Sudoplatov, who was behind the plot to assassinate Trotsky, killed a Ukrainian nationalist on Stalin’s orders. The murder weapon was a box of chocolates containing a bomb. The most high-profile cases of poisonings conducted likely on Putin’s orders, in addition to those of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, have been those ofand Alexei Navalny, both Putin’s critics. Litvinenko, a former FSB intelligence officer who defected to England and did contract work for British intelligence, was murdered in 2006 by two Russian GRU operatives. They arranged a meeting with their victim in a luxury London hotel and served him a cup of tea laced with the radioactive agent polonium.
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