On a heat June evening, Benjamin Wittes was seated at a card desk throughout the road from the Russian Embassy in Washington, kicking off his mild present.
Assembled round him was a sprawl of wires and gear, together with a laptop computer and two highly effective mild projectors. One of them was beaming an enormous blue and yellow Ukrainian flag onto the embassy’s white facade.
That was just the start. “We’ve got a little essay we’re going to project, line by line, in three languages,” mentioned Mr. Wittes, a distinguished nationwide safety regulation professional. “It’s about stolen children.” By the tip of the evening, he was beaming a Ukrainian-language profanity about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia onto the towering embassy construction.
Mr. Wittes and his pals have been lighting up the embassy as soon as each few weeks for the reason that warfare in Ukraine started final 12 months. It is clearly getting beneath the Russians’ pores and skin. On this evening, the Russians had been making an attempt to blot out his projections with ones of their very own, together with two large white Z’s — a nationalist Russian image of the warfare effort.
Once, final spring, a Russian highlight chased a Ukrainian flag throughout the embassy facade in a slapstick cat-and-mouse recreation that has since been watched hundreds of thousands of instances on-line. In April, a burly man in denims and a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt emerged from the embassy and silently obstructed Mr. Wittes’s projectors with an open umbrella in every hand.
“They get into spotlight wars with us,” Mr. Wittes mentioned. “It’s really quite juvenile.”
It can be the unusual new regular round Russia’s most important diplomatic outpost within the United States, a scene of near-constant protests, spy video games and common weirdness as essentially the most hostile relations in many years between the United States and Russia play out within the coronary heart of Washington. Thousands of miles from the entrance in Ukraine, the embassy compound has turn into a battle zone of its personal.
The Russian ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, has referred to as it “a besieged fortress.” Within its excessive fences ringed by safety cameras, the compound is a self-contained village, full with an house advanced for diplomats and their households, together with a faculty, a playground and a swimming pool. On a current afternoon, a younger lady could possibly be seen skateboarding close to a vegetable backyard.
In current years, as many as 1,200 Russian personnel labored within the embassy compound. The State Department won’t say what number of stay — staffing ranges right here and on the U.S. Embassy in Moscow are actually a delicate subject — however in January 2022, Mr. Antonov put the quantity at 184 diplomats and help employees members.
And whereas the embassy personnel could also be amongst Washington’s least welcome residents, Biden administration officers are glad they’re right here. It is crucial to take care of diplomatic ties even within the worst of instances, they are saying. Kicking out the Russians fully would additionally imply an finish to America’s diplomatic presence in Moscow, which, amongst different issues, works to help U.S. residents imprisoned in Russia.
Mr. Antonov has moved out of his official residence in a historic townhouse close to the White House and now lives on the embassy, in keeping with individuals who converse with him. He is a veteran diplomat who spent years negotiating arms management agreements with American counterparts in Geneva. But he additionally served as deputy minister of protection when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and has been hit with sanctions by the European Union.
He complains typically about his restricted contacts with Biden administration officers and members of Congress — Politico as soon as branded him “Lonely Anatoly” — in addition to the protests and “hooliganism” outdoors his embassy gates.
Protests are routine, with anti-Putin chants and broadcasts of Ukraine’s nationwide anthem drawing supportive honks from passing vehicles. Homes throughout the road are festooned with Ukrainian flags and anti-Russian slogans. Neighbors shout “Slava Ukraini!” (“glory to Ukraine”) at Russians who come and go.
Bob Stowers, a neighborhood resident, mentioned he stops at every of six safety cameras on his day by day stroll previous the embassy and holds up a news article concerning the imprisoned Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny. “It makes me feel a little bit better,” he mentioned.
Sometimes issues get extra severe: Area residents complain that Wisconsin Avenue, the primary artery that runs previous the embassy, is often closed down by the Secret Service police investigating bomb scares — as many as 10 for the reason that invasion, by one neighbor’s estimate, though some consider the Russians exaggerate threats to close down protesters. (A bomb squad was as soon as referred to as to look at a papier-mâché washer that had been left within the embassy’s driveway; it turned out to be a innocent image of shopper items looted by Russian troops.)
An unofficial road signal close to the tip of the embassy’s driveway proclaims it “Zelensky Way.” Protesters, together with Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, have planted sunflowers, the nationwide flower of Ukraine, within the grass alongside the sidewalk. Neighbors say the flowers have been torn up in a single day.
What appears to make Mr. Antonov angriest, nonetheless, are the F.B.I.’s efforts to recruit spies in his midst.
“Basically, our embassy is operating in a hostile environment,” Mr. Antonov advised the Russian news service Tass final 12 months. “Agents from U.S. security services are hanging around outside the Russian Embassy, handing out C.I.A. and F.B.I. phone numbers, which can be called to establish contact.” (After initially saying that Mr. Antonov is perhaps out there for an interview, the embassy stopped responding to queries for this text.)
While it’s unclear whether or not any business playing cards have really been proffered, the F.B.I. doesn’t attempt to cover its efforts to recruit Russians from behind the embassy gates. The bureau publicly launched a video this 12 months encouraging Russian diplomats who would possibly oppose the warfare to be in contact. The video opens with a picture of the Russian Embassy earlier than exhibiting a trip on buses and subway trains by means of the town to the doorways of F.B.I. headquarters.
“You can walk into any F.B.I. field office and say you want to change the future,” the video assures potential spies.
The F.B.I. wouldn’t touch upon Mr. Antonov’s claims about brokers handing out business playing cards, however a spokesperson mentioned the bureau “seeks information from members of any community of interest in an effort to counter threats to our national security.”
Nor would the bureau reply questions concerning the mysterious dwelling throughout the road from the embassy compound. The occupants are hardly ever seen, and the shades are at all times drawn, despite the fact that the lights are often on at evening. Many neighbors assume the home is staffed by F.B.I. brokers surveilling the Russians, a concept not precisely discouraged by the truth that a street-level Google Maps picture of the home has been blurred out.
The Russians have some trigger for paranoia. Soon after they started building on the embassy in 1977, the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency began digging a secret tunnel beneath the advanced in an effort to faucet into its communications. But the mission needed to be deserted after its publicity by Robert Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent arrested in 2001 for promoting U.S. secrets and techniques to Moscow. (Mr. Hanssen died in June.)
Douglas London, a Russian-speaking former C.I.A. operative and the writer of a current guide on spy recruitment, mentioned it will be troublesome however not unattainable to search out Russians on the embassy keen to cooperate with the United States.
“If you’re a Russian official assigned to the U.S., they’ve put you through additional vetting,” Mr. London mentioned. “Nevertheless, some of our best assets over the years have been Russian officials in the U.S. who have volunteered to help us. I think Putin’s got to worry about his Russians here.”
Mr. Antonov even claims that he has been personally recruited. Last June, he advised Russian state tv that he had acquired a letter from the State Department urging him to “denounce my motherland and condemn the Russian president’s actions,” in keeping with Tass.
The State Department didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the alleged letter.
People who know Mr. Antonov name him an unlikely dissident. He isn’t a fanatical ideologue, they are saying, however he’s additionally unfailingly loyal to the Kremlin. Some Westerners who’ve handled him describe him as cordial and even likable. But he’s additionally able to delivering caustic monologues; days earlier than his nation invaded Ukraine, Mr. Antonov insisted there can be no warfare.
Despite the poisonous political cloud that surrounds him in lots of quarters, Mr. Antonov tries to take care of some regular diplomatic habits. He hosts fellow diplomats at his residence, greeting them with caviar, advantageous wine, vodka and what friends describe as beautiful meals, though he grouses over the lack of his beloved chef, because of three-year U.S. visa limits for Russians.
He hosts social capabilities, together with a vacation reception in December for the news media, attended principally by non-American journalists, in keeping with individuals who had been there. Attendees got a thick journal recounting Russia’s heroic stand in opposition to the Nazis at Stalingrad.
At his residence in May, Mr. Antonov hosted a “Russia-Africa Unity Night,” underscoring the Kremlin’s ties with many countries on the continent. Sleek sedans lined up outdoors, with diplomatic plates indicating attendees from Egypt, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea and Morocco, amongst different nations.
(A New York Times reporter who requested to attend the occasion was granted a proper invitation by e-mail — then acquired a follow-up message calling the invitation “no longer valid,” with out additional clarification.)
Mr. Antonov might complain about life in Washington, however issues are a lot worse for Americans in Moscow, U.S. officers say.
Protests are widespread outdoors the U.S. Embassy there, although officers consider that, not like in Washington, they’re organized by the host authorities. U.S. diplomats are always adopted by means of the town by Russian safety brokers and generally intimidated. On the day in January that the not too long ago confirmed U.S. ambassador, Lynne M. Tracy, first arrived at her workplace, the facility mysteriously went out.
One former senior U.S. official recalled a current incident wherein somebody taped an enormous letter Z to the automotive roof of an American diplomat who was inside a grocery store. State tv later aired drone footage of the automotive pulling into the U.S. Embassy, the previous official mentioned.
Last June, the City of Moscow renamed the parcel of land across the U.S. Embassy, giving it a brand new handle: 1 Donetsk People’s Republic Square. (The title refers back to the unrecognized Russian-installed authorities of an occupied jap Ukrainian province.)
The Russians have their projectors, too, and have beamed photographs of carnage from U.S. wars in Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan in opposition to a constructing throughout from the American Embassy.
As the warfare in Ukraine grinds on, none of this appears more likely to abate quickly. Mr. Wittes, for one, is deeply invested. “It’s taken a lot of energy, and a lot of money, and a lot of experimentation” to good his mild reveals, he says. Plus, he mentioned, “it makes Ukrainians happy.”
Source: www.nytimes.com