It was an astonishing press conference given by an American citizen this Saturday from Moscow. “Daniel Martindale” – which is how he introduces himself, showing a worn American passport and a birth certificate on the screen – claims to have arrived in Ukraine from neighboring Poland as early as February 11, 2022, two weeks before the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukrainethen having done everything “to save the lives of Russian soldiers over the past two years and secure a future for Russians in Ukraine.”. “I’d like to keep doing it”he said, announcing that he was in Moscow of his own free will, that he was applying for Russian citizenship and that he had always believed in Russia’s victory.

This American citizen (or who presents himself as such) claims to have operated in Ukraine as a “volunteer, “humanitarian” or “journalist”. He was recently evacuated from the east of the country by Russian special forces after helping the Kremlin target Ukrainian troops, Reuters reported this Saturday. To date, there has been no reaction from the US embassy in Moscow.

Spy in the Donbass?

According to the Russian news agency RIA, which cites an anonymous source in the Russian intelligence services, Daniel Martindale provided Moscow with information on the location of Ukrainian infrastructures over a two-year period, as well as GPS coordinates which enabled the Russians to carry out their strikes. He himself has provided no proof of this activity, which he claims publicly. At his press conference, he explained that he had used the Telegram application to establish contact with Russian forces. The latter even delivered a phone to him using a drone, says the Russian newspaper. Izvestia.

He claims to have acted in particular in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine and to have played a key role, in particular, in planning the attack on the village of Bohoyavlenkaconquered just over a week ago by Russian forces, close to Vougledara Ukrainian town that fell in mid-October after more than two years of resistance. According to the Russian press, he was exfiltrated from this area to Donetsk by Russian security forces on October 24.

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Did Daniel Martindale have previous links with Russia? The state news agency Tass claims he studied at the Far Eastern Federal University, which he graduated from in July 2019 with a Russian language certificate from the State Russian Language Institute. He is said to have then sent to Poland’s Krakow region, then to Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, where he took part in sports races.

Asked at his press conference about the two candidates, Democrat and Republican, in the US presidential election to be held on November 5, the possible Russian spy responded with a pirouette. “If Putin were a candidate, I’d vote for him”he said. In terms of communication, the concomitance between the eruption of this affair, which is making headlines in the Russian press, and the American election period is undoubtedly not insignificant. As if echoing the divergent positions across the Atlantic on the war in Ukraine, it directly lends credence to the thesis that Americans have voluntarily sided with Moscow.