The Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill US and UK troops, US intelligence has found.
A Russian military intelligence unit linked to assassination attempts in Europe had offered rewards for successful attacks last year, US media reported, adding that Islamist militants are believed to have collected some bounty money.
The Taliban rejected the report: “We strongly reject this allegation. The nineteen-year Jihad of the Islamic Emirate is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country and neither is the Islamic Emirate in need of anyone in specifying objectives”, the group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Saturday.
The Russian embassy in the US denounced the report as “baseless allegations” that have led to death threats against Russian diplomats in Washington and London.
“This primitive informational dump clearly demonstrates low intellectual abilities of the propagandists at the American intelligence service”, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
There have been more than 2,400 total deaths of US service members since the start of the 18-year war. Last year was the deadliest in 5 years for the US in Afghanistan, with 23 service members killed during operations in the country.
