That the Kremlin indeed was playing Cold War games, providing intel it believed to be important to Saddam to hurt the Americans.
The Kremlin cannot control all the current and former members of its intelligence services, and several of these individuals conspired to sell Iraq intelligence and/or to protect their business dealings with Saddam’s regime.
Here at Russia Blog, we lean towards the latter explanation … the Cold War at least had a certain logic … compared to the old KGB, the actions of privatized KGB and GRU agents acting as free agents are far more difficult to predict … The involvement of ex-KGB officers at every level of Russian business and organized crime is well documented, as is their service providing security for the oligarchs and collecting kickbacks for the Tax Ministry.
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