US officials believe that Russian intelligence officers directed a Russian White supremacist group to carry out a letter-bombing campaign that rocked Madrid late last year, targeting the prime minister, the American and Ukrainian Embassies as well as the Spanish defense ministry, according to current and former US officials. Spanish authorities have yet to make any arrests in connection with the attacks, which wounded one Ukrainian Embassy employee, but they were widely suspected at the time to be linked to Spain’s support for Kyiv. Some details of how, exactly, the campaign was directed and carried out remain fuzzy, two US officials said. It’s not clear how much knowledge — if any — the Kremlin or Russian President Vladimir Putin himself had. Still, US officials now believe that the attack was likely a warning shot to European governments which have rallied around Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February of last year. (…) The State Department designated the White supremacist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, as a global terror organization in 2020. The group is believed to have connections to Russian intelligence agencies and has been used as a proxy force before, current and former officials familiar with US intelligence told CNN. But those connections are murky, these people emphasized, in part because the US lacks good visibility inside RIM.
via madison365: White supremacists to carry out bombing campaign in Spain, US officials say