Trump Has Reportedly Known for Months That Russia Offered the Taliban Bounties to Kill US Soldiers in Afghanistan

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President Donald Trump has known for months of a Russian military intelligence campaign to offer secret bounties to Taliban militias for killing US soldiers in Afghanistan.

According to an exposé in the New York Times citing US intelligence officials, the president was notified of the bounty campaign in late March and discusses a range of possible responses, but has still yet to confront the Russians about the targeting of American troops.

“Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money,” the Times reported. “Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.”

“An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban,” the story noted. “It would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.”

The news of a coordinated attempt to kill US troops via Taliban insurgents comes amid the administration’s ongoing attempts at striking a peace deal with the Taliban and drawing down of the combat force’s footprint nearly 19 years after the war in Afghanistan began.

“The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia,” per the Times. “They said the intelligence has been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.”