US spies caught Russian intelligence officers boasting that they had convinced the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) “to work together against US and UK intelligence agencies,” a purported US document posted online as part of a major US intelligence breach showed.
US officials declined to comment on the document, which bore known top-secret markings and was viewed by The Associated Press (AP).
The UAE government on Monday dismissed any accusation that it had deepened ties with Russian intelligence as “categorically false.”
However, the US has had growing concerns that the UAE was allowing Moscow and Russians to thwart sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine.
The document viewed by the AP includes an item citing research from March 9 with the title: “Russia/UAE: Intelligence Relationship Deepening.”
US officials declined to confirm the document’s authenticity, which the AP could not independently do, but it resembled other documents released as part of a recent leak.
The US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the possible release of Pentagon documents that were posted on several social media sites. They appear to detail US and NATO aid to Ukraine and US intelligence assessments regarding US allies that could strain ties with those nations.
Some of the documents might have been altered or used as part of a misinformation campaign, US officials said.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday urged caution, “since we know at least in some cases that information was doctored.”
Referring to the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB, the document seen by the AP says: “In mid-January, FSB officials claimed UAE security service officials and Russia had agreed to work together against US and UK Intelligence agencies, according to newly acquired signals intelligence.”
Signals intelligence refers to intercepted communications, whether telephone calls or electronic messages.
“The UAE probably views engagement with Russian intelligence as an opportunity to strengthen growing ties between Abu Dhabi and Moscow and diversify intelligence partnerships amid concerns of US disengagement from the region,” the assessment said.
It is not clear if there was any such agreement as described in the UAE-Russia document, or whether the alleged FSB claims were intentionally or unintentionally misleading.
Yet US officials are increasingly speaking out about a surge in dealings between the UAE and Russia.
Elizabeth Rosenberg, assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the US Department of the Treasury, last month singled out the UAE as a “country of focus.”
Businesses there were helping Russia evade international sanctions to obtain more than US$5 million in US semiconductors and other export-controlled parts, including components with battlefield uses, she said.
US intelligence officials have in recent years pointed to possible links between the UAE and the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary group closely associated with the Kremlin and active in Ukraine and several African countries.
In 2020, the US Defense Intelligence Agency assessed “that the United Arab Emirates may provide some financing for the group’s operations.”
Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College in London, on Monday called the UAE “the most important strategic partner for Russia in both the Middle East and Africa.”
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin, held extensive meetings with UAE leaders in Dubai in 2020.
Russia and the UAE share similar outlooks in some key conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and the influx of Russians into the UAE since Russia launched its war in Ukraine has also strengthened ties between the two, said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
However, the reference to teaming up against US and UK intelligence agencies is surprising, Ulrichsen said.
Russian intelligence officials “probably have an interest in describing something in those terms,” he said. “If that was the way the UAE was describing it, I’d certainly take it ... quite differently.”
A US official separately said that the US was also worried about Russian money coming into Dubai’s red-hot real-estate market.
In October last year, federal prosecutors in New York announced charges against two Dubai-based Russian men and others accused of stealing military technology from US companies, smuggling millions of barrels of oil and laundering tens of millions of dollars for the oligarchs surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prosecutors in that case quoted one of the Dubai-based Russians as assuring his partners “there were no worries” about using a UAE financial institution for the transactions.
“This is the [worst] bank in the Emirates,” he was quoted as saying, using an expletive. “They pay to everything.”
In a statement to the AP on Monday about the apparent intelligence document, the UAE said its officials had not seen the document, and claims regarding the FSB were “categorically false.”
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