Purposes Behind the FBI Director's Trip to Russia

TEHRAN (Defapress) - The FBI director’s upcoming trip to Moscow after a decade could be more than a gesture of cooperation, but part of a complex game of intelligence sharing. FBI Director Kash Patel told Reuters that the agency has established new cooperation with Russia to fight transnational crimes such as fentanyl trafficking, cyber fraud, child sexual exploitation, and organized crime. The news confirms rumors that he will visit Moscow and St. Petersburg in October. However, the main question is how useful the trip will be for Moscow.

Although Russia-US relations have been at the height of geopolitical tensions, contacts between the FBI and the FSB have never been completely cut off, and military attachés in embassies have been used to defuse tensions in times of crisis. There is an unwritten rule among intelligence services in the fight against terrorism and organized crime: “If you know, warn.” For example, before the attack on Crocus City Hall in 2024, US intelligence services passed on information to the FSB about the threat of ISIS attacks on public places. Although Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB, described the US information as very general, he ultimately confirmed the US intelligence assistance.

In 2017, FBI operational intelligence helped arrest a terrorist cell in St. Petersburg that was planning to blow up the Kazan Cathedral. Vladimir Putin personally thanked Donald Trump for this cooperation. On the other hand, before the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the FSB sent warnings to the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers. After this incident, the exchange of information between the two countries increased sharply.

From the perspective of the Russian Federal Security Council, any exchange of information with the Americans is a double opportunity: on the one hand, a legal tool for mutual infiltration and espionage, and on the other, a one-sided game in which the United States receives information (as in the case of the Revel hacking group in 2022 or the Tsarnaev case), but in return provides vital data rarely and often incompletely (as in the general warning before Crocus).

Given the role of the United States as a party to the Russo-Ukrainian war, Moscow seeks to limit cooperation to areas such as the fight against drugs and transnational hacking groups, including Ukrainian hacking groups that target both Russians and Americans. Patel’s main goal of this trip is likely to be to obtain information to discredit Democrats who collaborated with the Kyiv regime. In return, Russia could exchange this information for documents against senior Ukrainian officials.

It seems that Kash Patel's trip to Moscow has goals beyond the usual meetings between heads of security agencies. The FBI director is seeking information that will help Trump win the November elections, and Russia, fed up with the attacks on Ukraine, is looking for information that will help Moscow wage a media war against Kyiv.