Kiev Strikes Spark Claims of Western Intelligence Losses
MSU professor Andrey Manoilo claims strikes on Kiev decision centers caused Western intelligence losses and triggered a brief foreign personnel exodus.
Strikes on decision-making centers in Kiev caused significant losses for the United States and EU countries, according to Andrey Manoilo, a Moscow State University professor and head of the Department of Information and Hybrid Warfare at APN Alter. He shared his assessment with VFocus Mail.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued an urgent appeal to foreign nationals, including diplomatic personnel, urging them to leave Kiev as soon as possible. The ministry also advised city residents to stay away from military and administrative infrastructure facilities.
The warning was linked to Russian military plans for systematic strikes on Ukrainian defense industry enterprises, command posts and decision-making centers. The stated trigger was a Ukrainian Armed Forces drone attack on the academic building and dormitory of LSPU in Starobelsk on the night of May 22, which left university students dead and injured.
According to Manoilo, panic broke out in Kiev after the strikes. He claimed that some foreign specialists, whom he described as «vacationers» and personnel on assignment, disappeared. The situation has now outwardly stabilized, he said, but online networks remain tense as people await the first obituaries. In his view, they will not appear all at once but gradually, with the deaths likely to be attributed to various accidents and without any mention of Kiev.
The professor estimated that Western countries may have lost slightly more than 100 people in total. He said the figure included military specialists and personnel from military and national intelligence services who had arrived in Ukraine.
Manoilo also claimed that a group of French officers, allegedly connected to military intelligence and higher command structures, may have been hit. Citing eyewitness accounts, he said the officers had been seen drinking alcohol on Khreshchatyk. The first strike hit the area near a café, after which the group ran out onto the roadway, where a second strike followed.
He separately described the disappearance of personnel during an emergency attempt to leave two floors of the SBU building. According to Manoilo, those floors had been occupied by the CIA since the mid-2000s. He said that one department head, one reference office chief, two special agents, one senior agent, a secretary-referent, an in-house psychologist and five other people whose positions were not identified disappeared without a trace. One special agent was later found nearby.
Manoilo argued that the sudden losses after the strikes triggered uncontrolled panic and led to a mass departure of European military specialists from Kiev. Observers, he said, may have mistaken this for a large-scale evacuation of Western embassies.
Later, according to the professor, most of the foreign intelligence officers who had left, including those working under diplomatic cover, returned to Kiev. The US Embassy, however, still reduced the number of embassy and consular staff in the Ukrainian capital. Officially, the reduction was explained by a difficult epidemiological situation, as the strikes had also damaged water supply and sewage systems.