During an interview on Wednesday, a former spy with the KGB said that the United States should be worried about three Russian warships and a nuclear submarine sent to Cuban waters this week.
Jack Barksy, who was recruited by the KGB and sent to the US to spy for the Soviet Union for a decade before deserting the agency, made his comments while speaking with The Hill on Wednesday.
While the move to send warships closer to the U.S. is being dubbed a military exercise, Barsky warned to fall for any explanation from Russia’s president.
“Vladimir Putin is again up to his own tricks. He likes to scare people,” Barsky said.
Barsky, who lived in the US for decades after leaving the KGB and before being discovered by the FBI, recently wrote a book titled “Deep Undercover: My Secret Life & Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America,” and is now offering his perspective on Russia’s motivations behind its moves.
“You’ve got to be worried about this kind of stuff. You can’t look at this as just a routine exercise. It has to be seen against the background where Putin is stating that he’s actually fighting the West in the Ukraine,” Barsky said.
The Pentagon has said that it is not concerned with Russia’s movements and that the visit is part of routine naval activity from the country.
“We’ve been tracking the Russia’s plans for this,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, told reporters Wednesday.
However, the U.S. isn’t sitting on its hands as the Russian ships were being monitored by six US warships from the US Navy, Canada, and France. The ships included the US Navy destroyers USS Donald Cook, USS Delbert Black, USS Truxton, US Coast Guard Cutter Stone, the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec, and a French Lafayette class frigate.
“This is not a surprise. We’ve seen them do this, these types of port calls before, and these are routine naval visits that we’ve seen under different administrations,” Singh said.
Still, the former spy says that Putin may have ulterior motives this time around, as he continues to wage war against Ukraine despite global condemnation.
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“Everything that Putin does is sending messaging, particularly threatening ones,” Barsky said.
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