Russian bounty program

The Russian bounty program was an alleged project of Russian military intelligence to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American and other allied service members during the war in Afghanistan. The existence of the alleged program was reported in the media in 2020 and became an issue in the 2020 presidential election campaign.

In June 2020, The Washington Post reported that intelligence suggesting the existence of a bounty operation dated to as early as 2018.^[1] Both the Washington Post and Associated Press reported that Trump administration officials were informed of the intelligence reports in early 2019.^[2] In June 2020, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed, several months earlier, that Unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had secretly offered Taliban-associated militants bounties to kill U.S. troops and other coalition personnel in Afghanistan, including during peace talks with the Taliban.^[3] The New York Times reported that "Officials said there was disagreement among intelligence officials about the strength of the evidence about the suspected Russian plot."^[4]

Defense Department officials then reported that U.S. military intelligence was unable to corroborate the reported program.^[5] In April 2021, the U.S. government reported that the U.S. intelligence community only had "low to moderate confidence" in the bounty program allegations.^[6][7]