Did Ukraine Trick Russia Into Paying A $500,000 Kremlin Reward By Faking Anti-Putin Commander Denis Kapustin’s Death? Spy Chief Reveals Shocking Insights

Ukraine pulled off a wild trick on Thursday, announcing it had faked the death of Denis Kapustin, a big-name Russian commander who switched sides and now fights against Putin.

The story gets crazier: Russian officials actually shelled out $500,000 as a bounty for an assassination that never happened.

Ukraine fakes anti-Putin commander’s death to trick Russia

On New Year’s Day, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, who runs Ukraine’s military intelligence, showed up in a video sitting right next to Kapustin. Budanov explained that the whole thing was a sting, a way to block a Russian plot to kill Kapustin.

According to Budanov, Russia’s special services ordered the hit and put up half a million dollars for the job. But Ukraine’s intelligence team turned the tables and saved Kapustin’s life with what Budanov called a “comprehensive special operation.”

Kapustin started the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) back in 2022. He and his group have been some of Ukraine’s boldest fighters, pulling off raids and cross-border attacks in Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions.

People know Kapustin as ‘White Rex.’ Russian agencies have been after him for years because he openly opposes Putin and the Russian government.

How did Ukraine fool Russia? 

In the same operation, on December 27, Kapustin was declared dead in a drone strike by his military unit, RDK, against the southern frontier. When the news fell on the ears of the Russian agencies, they gave the group they believed had killed Kapustin a bounty of 500,000 dollars.

However, the bounty was given to the special Timur unit of GUR that planned the trickery.

Budanov claimed that the activity of GUR prevented the Russian plan to poison Kapustin and the Russian spies including the conspirators in the Russian top secret services and the executioners of that scheme.

In the video of GUR, the masked commander of Timur said, under the implementation of this crime our side also had its share of funds since the Russian intelligence agencies allocated it.

According to The Telegraph, Kapustin had established the RDK to topple Putin and bring peace to Russia with the stated goal of ending Putin regime of lies, corruption, as well as lawlessness.

The RDK consists of former members of the Wagner Group, FSB, and even civilian volunteers in Russia.

In Russia, the RDK is recognized by the government as a terrorist group and Kapustin has been convicted twice of treason and terrorism in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment by the courts (as cited in The Telegraph).

Kapustin was even a fighter in the general Ukrainian war effort, but his involvement in far-right extremism and his past as a football hooligan, not to mention the neo-Nazi beliefs of some of his subordinates, have made it difficult to build relations with Ukrainian authorities. Ukrainian authorities initially claimed that the operation was not authorised when the RDK mounted incursions into Russia in 2024.

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