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(WASHINGTON) — The Kremlin has responded forcefully to the CIA launching an official channel on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app favored by Russians, featuring a dramatized video aimed at recruiting frustrated Russian civilians as spies.

The video invites them to engage with the agency on Telegram and share information it says could be critical to United States intelligence efforts.

The recruitment pitch is geared toward those whose knowledge of industry, science, technology or diplomacy, could be useful to the CIA — communicated by using a secure conduit on the internet.

“Contact us. Perhaps the people around you don’t want to hear the truth. We want to,” says text of the Russian-language video, which shows actors depicting Russians at home and at work, living quietly, as the voiceover of a Russian man contemplates telling truths the video suggests have been suppressed by the state.

“The CIA wants to know the truth about #Russia, and we are looking for reliable people who know and can tell us this truth,” the text of the video says. “Your information may be more valuable than you think.”

The Russian narrator acknowledges the “reality we speak about in a whisper” and laments “why the lives of some are worth more than others.” At the conclusion of the video, he’s decides to speak up: “This is my Russia. This will always be my Russia. I will endure. My family will endure. We will live with dignity because of my actions.”

The Kremlin has accused the U.S. of “attempts to interfere in our internal affairs, and attempts to destabilize the situation in our country.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned Tuesday that “such malicious activity, including the distribution of inflammatory materials, will not remain without a proper effective response.”

A CIA official told ABC News the Telegram channel and the accompanying video production could draw Russian nationals to communicate with the U.S. by appealing to their sense of wanting to do the right thing.

“They’re feeling compelled by the Russian government’s unjust war right now to reach us, but we just want them to do so as securely as possible…[The video] is meant to convey more emotion,” the official said on condition of not being named.

The character’s voiceover, however, says clearly in Russian, “I don’t believe in revolution.” The CIA official said the video’s intention is to connect with Russians who are willing to speak but not to ignite political change on the ground.

“Many Russians may be ready to [contact us],” the official said. “They just need direction on how to do it.”

Darrell Blocker, a former CIA deputy director of its counterterrorism unit and ABC News contributor, called the agency’s outreach on Telegram “a stroke of genius.” In intelligence circles, this mode by which citizens can come forward to share what they know with foreign officials is known as a “walk-in” program – essentially an open door.

“Walk-ins are absolutely some of the most lucrative intelligence cases in the history of the agency. It’s one of those quiet success stories that no one on the outside ever really knows about,” Blocker said.

The CIA had already released instructions on social media for contacting the agency via the Dark Web. The Telegram video launch, which comes a year later, represents the agency’s expanding toolkit that includes open-source analysis.

“So, this is just the CIA, the modern CIA, so to speak, using long established and successful programs and in a different way,” Blocker said.

But the war in Ukraine is not specifically referred to in the CIA video. “I think mentioning it specifically in a video coming from CIA could be seen as a provocation,” Blocker said.

The video is a more tactical approach to build intelligence over time. “There’s always an audience for information, whether it’s going to be applicable a week from now or 10 years from now, you just never know.”

The vetting process is intense and continuous, Blocker says, and the CIA’s expertise and process, which the agency couldn’t discuss publicly, serve to root out people who might look to exploit the channel by providing a false identity or information.

The CIA official said the program has already yielded results, receiving contacts from the broad set of people in industries from which it solicited information. It launched the program after Russians expressed interest in coming forward, the official said.

Inside and outside of the country, Blocker said Russians would likely have interest in sharing what they know but are unaware of a secure way to do so. It’s often these ordinary people that initiate major intelligence gathering.

“It’s said in the CIA that CIA officers don’t recruit the Russians, the Russians recruit the CIA officer,” he said.

ABC News’ Tayna Stukalova contributed to this report.

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(SAN LUIS POTOSI, Mexico) — Nine migrants were found Tuesday by Mexican authorities after a group was kidnapped on its way to the U.S.-Mexico border.

A bus holding 50 migrants left Tapachula, Chiapas, on Sunday and disappeared the following day near Matehuala, San Luis Potosí.

The migrants had permission to transit through Mexico and decided to take a bus to head to the border.

The owner of the company received a call asking for a thousand dollars for each of the passengers on the bus, the vice president of National Confederation of Mexican Carriers in San Luis Potosí said.

The bus was located Tuesday afternoon in Galeana, Nuevo León, but without the passengers.

Later in the night, nine of the 50 migrants were rescued in Nuevo Leon state after allegedly escaping their captors.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would send National Guard members to help with the search during his morning press conference Wednesday.

“The kidnapping of migrants in Matehuala is being taken care of. Some of them have already been found,” he said. “The site has already been identified. In short, we are already working on that. There is a deployment of the National Guard and we hope to rescue them.”

“Originally, we are talking of 50 [kidnapped migrants]. We are on it and we cannot say more for obvious reasons but work is being done,” he added.

Some migrants arriving in Mexico can freely move in the country without seeking the help of smugglers if they are provided with a transit permit issued by the Mexican National Institute of Migration.

Smugglers are now trying to make up for lost business by asking a fee from bus companies that move the migrants.

“Unfortunately there are gangs that kidnap. That is also why we make this appeal to the migrant brothers not to be deceived, manipulated by the traffickers, by the coyotes, by the polleros, who tell them that if they get five, six, eight thousand dollars, they’re going to take them to the U.S.,” Lopez Obrador said.

Pandemic-era border restrictions, known as Title 42, expired last week, leaving migrants from many Central and South American countries in limbo as they tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

After Title 42 expired, President Joe Biden implemented new asylum restrictions for immigrants, requiring them to apply first for legal protection in another country before doing so in the U.S.

Asylum seekers now have to meet a “higher threshold of proof” and have a “credible fear” of returning to their home country before qualifying, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

The Biden administration also said it was establishing processing centers for immigrants in Guatemala and Colombia. The Guatemalan government, however, has not yet agreed to a processing center with the U.S. even though the two countries have had some preliminary conversations about the matter, a spokesperson for the Guatemalan president told ABC News.

Despite the risks, thousands of migrants still make the perilous journey to the U.S. each day.

ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman and Haroldo Martinez contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Two staff members of the U.S. Consulate in Nigeria were among the four people killed by armed assailants when an American convoy was attacked on Tuesday, the State Department said.

The staff members, who were not U.S. citizens and who haven’t yet been publicly identified, were killed by people who were “linked with criminal groups” in the country’s southeast, U.S. officials said.

Two members of a local Police Mobile Force were also dead following the assault, Nigerian police officials sad. The victims’ bodies were later set on fire, officials said.

The consulate staff had been traveling in the Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State as part of a humanitarian effort when their vehicles were struck at about 3:30 p.m. local time, officials said.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said the State Department was investigating the incident.

“What I can tell you is that no U.S. citizens were involved, and therefore, there were no U.S. citizens hurt,” he said during a midday briefing at the White House. “But we are aware of some casualties, perhaps even some killed.”

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(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the United Kingdom on Monday for “substantive” talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said ahead of the meeting that his country would supply Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and long-range attack drones.

“I will meet my friend Rishi. We will conduct substantive negotiations face-to-face and in delegations,” Zelenskyy said on Twitter.

UK officials said ahead of Monday’s meeting that they’d send hundreds of air defense missiles and long-range attack drones — with a range of over 200 km — to Ukraine to aid in the fight against Russia.

“These will all be delivered over the coming months as Ukraine prepares to intensify its resistance to the ongoing Russian invasion,” Sunak’s office said in a statement.

Zelenskyy’s visit to Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, came a day after the Ukrainian president made a surprise stop in Paris for talks Sunday night with French President Emmanuel Macron.

France in the coming weeks will send Ukraine “tens of armored vehicles and light tanks including AMX-10RC” and will train Ukrainian troops to use them, Marcon’s office said.

“Besides, France is focusing its effort in supporting Ukraine’s air defense capacities in order to defend its population against Russian strikes,” the Sunday statement from the Palais de l’Élysée said.

Zelenskyy in February had made another surprise visit to France and the United Kingdom seeking military aid, including advanced Western fighter jets.

ABC News’ Angus Hines and Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this story.

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(NEW YORK) — An American citizen charged with spying in China has been sentenced to life in prison after it was revealed that he had been held for over two years.

Suzhou Intermediate Court announced the sentence against 78-year-old Liang Chengyun, also known as John Shing-Wan Leung, in a press release on Monday. Leung also held permanent residency in Hong Kong.

He “was found guilty of espionage, sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated personal property of RMB 500,000,” officials said in a statement translated by ABC News.

Leung had been arrested on April 15, 2021, by the Chinese State Security Bureau, an investigation agency similar to the FBI or CIA in the U.S., the court said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(ROME) — Italy’s government is on full alert following a national problem: skyrocketing Pasta prices.

Italy’s Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, chaired an emergency meeting on Thursday, convening government officials, trade and consumer association representatives and distributors, for crisis talks to discuss soaring pasta costs, which have seen the Italian staple rise by more than double the rate of inflation, according to data from the European Central Bank.

The Rapid Price Alert Commission met for the first time since its establishment in March in Rome’s Palazzo Piacentini on Thursday, according to Italian outlet ANSA.

The price of pasta rose for two consecutive months, by 17.5% in March followed by a 16.5% rise in April – when compared to the same periods a year earlier, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics.

This is despite the falling price of durum wheat, which has dropped by 30%, according to officials.

The crisis committee aimed to examine trends in pasta prices, monitor the dynamics that have contributed to the rising costs of pasta goods, as well as examine expectations for the coming months of the year.

“The meeting was particularly fruitful,” said the President of Coldiretti, Italy’s National Farmers Union, Ettore Prandini, following the crisis meeting. Coldiretti had said the situation was “an anomaly on which it is good to clarify,” arguing that the commission on expensive pasta underlines the “importance of having activated a control system on the supply chains linked to price trends.”

Italy’s government too, although refraining from capping prices, expressed similar hope that the market will correct itself.

“The latest price surveys are already showing the fist, albeit weak, signs of a price decrease, a sign that the cost of pasta may fall significantly in the coming months,” the government said in a statement.

Statistics show the average Italian eats about 23 kilos of pasta per year, according to consumer group Assoutenti. The southern European nation is also the world’s No. 1 pasta exporter, with statistics showing 2.4 million tons of pasta were exported in 2022.

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(NEW YORK) — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was granted two weeks of bail by Islamabad’s high court Friday, one day after the Supreme Court ruled his arrest on corruption charges was unlawful.

The ruling came in the wake of violent and unprecedented protests in Pakistan since Khan’s arrest on Monday.

At least six people have been killed and more than 150 were injured in protests across the country. Khan’s party claims the figures are much higher.

Much of the anger from protesters has been pointed at Pakistan’s powerful military, which Khan alleges played a major role in his ouster from government through a no-confidence vote in mid-April last year.

“The military itself feels fairly divided as far as its political thinking is concerned,” retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a former three-star general in the Pakistani army and current political commentator, told ABC News.

Khan, who led Pakistan from August 2018 to April 2022, is facing hundreds of charges, mostly related to corruption. He has accused current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of being behind the charges, and Khan still carries strong support among many Pakistanis.

Earlier this week, angry protesters breached the front gate of the the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi, a move that shocked a country used to the military’s stronghold on Pakistan since its creation in 1947. Protesters also ransacked and set ablaze the official residence of the army’s commander in Lahore.

In response to the violent protests, the military said Wednesday it will exercise “patience and restraint” in the national interest, but added that all the “facilitators and planners” who were involved have been identified and will be punished according to the law.

Thousands of Khan’s supporters rallied in the capital, Islamabad, on Friday to celebrate his temporary release.

Khan has demanded an early election across the country ahead of the end of the incumbent government’s tenure in August. But that seems unlikely with the incumbent government aware it is facing inflation, a caving economy, rising unemployment, bad governance and the looming threat of terrorism.

On Friday, a major paramilitary base in Baluchistan province came under attack with the military’s elite commanders called to deal with the situation.

“The political situation couldn’t be more confrontational than what it is today,” said Masood, who added he doesn’t see things getting better with the present arrangement.

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(LONDON) — The prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway could soon be extradited from Peru to face criminal charges in the United States, ABC News has learned.

The Peruvian government issued an executive order on Wednesday accepting a request by U.S. authorities for the temporary extradition of jailed Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot, who has been serving a 28-year sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old college student from a prominent Peruvian family. Upon arrival in the U.S., van der Sloot will face a federal trial on extortion and wire fraud charges stemming from an accusation that he tried to profit from his connection to the Holloway case.

“We will continue to collaborate on legal issues with allies such as the United States, and many others with which we have extradition treaties,” Edgar Alfredo Rebaza, director of Peru’s Office of International Judicial Cooperation and Extraditions of the National Prosecutor’s Office, said in a statement on Wednesday.

A source familiar with the matter told ABC News on Wednesday that van der Sloot’s extradition flight could happen as early as this weekend but will likely happen within a week. U.S. Marshals will accompany van der Sloot on the flight, which will depart from Lima. It was not immediately clear where exactly the plane would land in the U.S.

If van der Sloot is found not guilty of the charges, he will be returned to Peru to serve the remainder of his sentence there. If he is convicted, the Peruvian and U.S. governments will have to agree on where he serves his U.S. sentence as well as the rest of his Peruvian sentence.

Holloway, an 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, vanished on the night of May 30, 2005, while celebrating her high school graduation with classmates on the Dutch Caribbean Island of Aruba. She was last seen leaving a bar called Carlos’n Charlie’s in Oranjestad and getting in a grey Honda with then-17-year-old van der Sloot and two of his friends.

Van der Sloot was identified as a suspect and detained weeks later but ultimately released without charge due to a lack of evidence. An Alabama judge later declared Holloway dead, though her body was never found. No charges have been filed in the case.

On June 30, 2010, a federal grand jury in Alabama indicted van der Sloot for allegedly trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Holloway’s family after her disappearance.

Federal prosecutors alleged that on March 29, 2010, van der Sloot contacted Beth Holloway through her lawyer and claimed he would reveal the location of her daughter’s remains in exchange for $250,000 — $25,000 up front. During a recorded sting operation with the FBI, Beth Holloway’s attorney, John Q. Kelly, met with van der Sloot in a hotel room on Aruba, giving him $10,000 in cash as Beth Holloway wired $15,000 to van der Sloot’s bank account, according to prosecutors.

Then van der Sloot led Kelly to a location away from the hotel and changed his story about the night he had been with Natalee Holloway, prosecutors said. He now claimed he had picked her up but that she had demanded to be put down, so he threw her to the ground. He said her head hit a rock and she was killed instantly by the impact, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said van der Sloot then took Kelly to a nearby home and claimed that his father, who had since died, buried Natalee Holloway’s body in the building’s foundation. Van der Sloot parted ways with Kelly after the exchange and later emailed him saying the information he had provided was “worthless,” according to prosecutors. Within days, van der Sloot had slipped away to Peru.

Natalee Holloway’s mother released a statement on Wednesday reacting to the news that van der Sloot, now 35, would be temporarily extradited from Peru to the U.S.

“I was blessed to have had Natalee in my life for 18 years, and as of this month, I have been without her for exactly 18 years. She would be 36 years old now,” Beth Holloway said. “It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many is going to pay off. Together, we are finally getting justice for Natalee.”

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(MILAN) — A parked van exploded in a busy section of central Milan in Italy on Thursday morning.

The carabinieri — or Italian police — said that it was not clear what caused the van to explode in the Porta Romana neighborhood of the city and that no further details are currently available.

The explosion left several other nearby vehicles on fire as black smoke billowed into the sky in the downtown area.

Story developing…

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(KYIV, Ukraine) — Six-year-old Sasha Pylypets watched, impassively, with a type of curious stare, as people threw handfuls of earth into her dad’s grave.

Days later, in another Ukrainian region, Tetyana Taranukha sobbed uncontrollably as she arched her grief-stricken body over her son’s flag-draped coffin.

She pressed her face down onto the wooden casket, hugging it with both arms, caressing the flag’s yellow-and-blue fabric with her neatly manicured hand.

Sasha’s dad, Oleksandr Pylypets, was 30. Tetyana’s son, Yuriy Taranukha, was 25.

Both men served in the Ukrainian army. They were both killed defending Ukraine against Russia’s invading army in a war which has now entered its 15th month.

It is unclear how many Ukrainian soldiers have died since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February of last year.

The Ukrainian government has never released figures and a suggestion by a top U.S. official last November that around 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded or killed was denied by Ukrainian officials.

Over the past five months, Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region have largely been on the back foot.

Russia has, very slowly, taken land around the city of Bakhmut in a grinding, costly and, to date, unsuccessful offensive which Western officials say has “stalled.”

Ukrainian and Western officials consistently stress that Russia has lost many more men in the battle for Bakhmut. Moscow has denied a recent claim by U.S. officials that, in just the last five months of the war around 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured.

What can be said with certainty is that the fighting in the Donbas in recent months has been incredibly costly for both sides.

And accounts from Ukrainian soldiers provide us with insights into the scale of the loss.

Oleksiy Storozhez serves in an air reconnaissance unit in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

We met him on March 31, the day of the funeral of his friend, Yuriy Taranukha. The two men had worked construction together before the war in their local town of Zmiiv.

Storozhez said “a lot” of people who he knew in his local town had been killed in recent fighting, mainly in the area of Bakhmut, a city which Russia has been trying to capture for more than six months.

“There are funerals every day. Two or three people I know die every day,” Storozhez told ABC News.

Another soldier, Andriy Sheremet, who said he had been serving on the frontlines near to Bakhmut for around eight months said losses had sometimes been “notable,” however he added that Russian losses he had witnessed had been “much bigger.”

Visits to Ukrainian cemeteries also speak of the scale of sacrifice being made.

From one visit to the next, the long lines of blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags, each one marking the grave of a fallen soldier, grow longer. Freshly-dug graves, ready for the dead to be brought in, can often be spotted.

In one central cemetery in the western city of Lviv, ABC News counted around a hundred graves belonging to soldiers who were killed in the first three months of this year.

Oleg Rydvan was killed in Bakhmut in February. He was reportedly hit by shrapnel in the head after trying to rescue comrades who were surrounded by Russian forces.

In an interview with ABC News, his sister, Liudmyla Polio, described her brother as “a hero” who was killed while trying to save comrades who had become surrounded by Russian forces.

Liudmyla said her brother died for a cause, and, against the odds, helped Ukraine. The country’s forces have, so far, been able to hold onto Bakhmut in a battle that’s been bloody for both sides.

“We see coffins coming and coming,” Liudmyla said. “They are young men who are 30, 31. They had their whole life ahead of them.”

Liudmyla’s remaining brother, Slava, is still serving in the military and has vowed to take revenge against Russia for the death of his brother.

In the bitter and bloody battles in the trenches of eastern Ukraine, a soldier’s own mortality is unescapable.

Soldier Andriy Sheremet was a professional online poker player before Russia’s full-scale invasion and had no prior military experience. He said the only way to manage his intense fear was to “fully accept the possibility” he may die.

ABC News interviewed Andriy at a military rehabilitation center in the eastern Donbas.

Battle weary troops are sent there for two or three days to decompress, before they then return to ducking-down into the mud, out of the line of snipers and the constant thud of artillery and spray of shrapnel at their frontline positions.

The soldiers play table tennis, say prayers, are well fed, and are given trauma and meditation sessions before going back to what a military priest, Father Mykhailo, described as “hell on earth.”

For the soldiers serving in such hellish conditions there is also fear of a crude and simple concept; that to survive they almost certainly will have to kill, or be killed.

For many men, the ability to kill the enemy on the frontlines is automatic, explained Maryna Berko, a military psychologist at the rehabilitation center.

However, she said men with no previous military background can panic that life can begin to seem so fragile that they fear being dehumanized to such an extent that “they will not be able to return over the edge which they have crossed”.

Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion however means Ukrainians, perhaps understandably, rarely spare much thought for the enemy.

In order to cope with his fear of his own death, Andriy Sheremet said he isolated himself from bad thoughts and remained focused “on achieving victory.”

He says, he will, in the future, try and comprehend the current phase of his life.

When on the frontlines, soldier Oleksiy Storozhez said he “begs and prays” to come home “alive and unscathed.”

His biggest fear of being killed is the pain it would cause to his family. However protecting his daughter and wife from invading Russian forces is one of his main motivations to fight.

“I am fighting for my daughter, for her future”, Oleksiy said. “So she does not see, what we see on the front lines.”

Andriy Sheremet said he is partly driven by his desire to return to his former life and “the happiness from a simple walk in the park” or “drinking coffee in the morning with his wife.”

As Ukraine promises a major new offensive, it is almost certain that many more Ukrainian soldiers will be killed.

The inevitable apprehension about what the future months will bring is mixed with that trademark Ukrainian defiance.

Serhiy Pylypets fought back tears after burying his son at his funeral near Kyiv.

“No-one should have any doubt,” he said.

“Ukraine will win, but we will celebrate with tears in our eyes.”

ABC News’ Sohel Uddin, Natalya Kushnir, Yulia Drozd, Natalya Popova, Joe Sheffer and Bruno Roeber contributed to this report.

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