Following the abduction of the four Russian diplomatic employees in Baghdad over the weekend and murder of the diplomat Vitaly Titov, Russian media brings out claims that the US secret services were behind this attack and kidnapping. As AIA reported previously, on Saturday, gunmen blocked and attacked a car in which five Russians rode in El Mansour The embassy's third secretary Fyodor Zaitsev and personnel members Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev, were moved by the abductors to unknown location. No Iraqi terrorist group has assumed responsibility for the abduction. No demand for ransom was received too. "There is no information so far about the fate of the Russian abducted diplomats", Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said today, Itar Tass reported. "The abductors of the Russians have not come to contact until now. The Foreign Ministry and the Russian embassy are in permanent contact with Iraqi authorities, the command of the coalition forces with the aim of finding the whereabouts of the Russians and freeing them as soon as possible", Kamynin said.
According to the Russian sources, a special staff, including Russia's Foreign Ministry and secret services' employees, was assembled in Iraq to monitor the situation.
Several Russian analysts brought up a claim, widely published by the media, that the US confidential services inspired this attack to "worsen relations between the Russian and Iraqi people". They said that Russia for a long time was one of the friendliest states to Iraq, and such an attack was impossible without "foreign incitement". It was also claimed that these attacks are unprecedented and the attackers perfectly knew whom are they attacking. Some Iraqi officials also sounded similar accusations.
As daily Kommersant newspaper's source in circles close to the Iraqi government supposed, the attack on the Russian diplomats might by favorable for Washington, which dislikes both Iraqi policy of Moscow, which runs counter to the American one, and excessive, from US point of view, activity of the Russian special services in Iraq. Iraqi ex-Ambassador to Russia Abbas Khalaf stated that the attack on the Russians is a provocation by the US troops. According to Khalaf, the USA "has continued trying to punish Russia for its active political role in the region and especially in Iraq" in such way.
It must be noted that the attack is not unprecedented. At least 439 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since the US-led invasion three years ago, according to figures provided earlier this month by a special US anti-kidnapping task force. Diplomats have been the targets of abductions previously. In May 2004, gunmen ambushed Russian electrical engineers at Musayyib, Iraq, kidnapping two and killing one. The two hostages were later released. Rebels also ambushed Russian technicians heading to a Baghdad power plant the same month, killing two of the technicians and an Iraqi.
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