A Russian group that hosted Republican Sinn Féin at a dissidents’ conference in Moscow is funded by the Russian state as a vehicle to “poison” and “divide” other countries by influencing their elections and exerting control over some of their political groups, US authorities allege.
Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, the Russian man who leads the Anti-Globalisation Movement of Russia (AGMR), has been charged with “conspiring to have US citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government” following an FBI investigation. It is claimed he was working for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
It is alleged in a US indictment that Ionov was “working under FSB supervision and with FSB support” when he recruited political groups from “Ukraine, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland” to attend conferences in Russia “sponsored by AGMR and funded” by the Russian government.
“Secret foreign government efforts to influence American elections and political groups threaten our democracy by spreading misinformation, distrust and mayhem,” said assistant attorney general Kenneth A Polite jnr of the US Justice Department’s criminal division.
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Ionov, a resident of Moscow, faces a potential jail sentence of up to five years if arrested and convicted in the US.
Republican Sinn Féin national treasurer Diarmuid MacDubhghlais, who attended an AGMR conference in Moscow in 2016, said the party did “not regret” its involvement in light of the new US allegations.
He said the conference had offered the party a “worldwide audience” to express its views on the “continued occupation” of Northern Ireland as well as its vision for a united Ireland.
Mr MacDubhghlais added his party was “independent of all outside influences and will remain so”. He said the US allegations shed “no real or tangible new light on the conference”, which had already been “maligned” in the media at the time.
Influence campaign
The offences were allegedly committed by Ionov from December 2014 to March 2022.
An indictment unsealed in Tampa, Florida, last Friday claims Ionov, through the AGMR, was “working under the supervision of the Russian Federal Security Service and with the Russian government’s support” and that it penetrated and controlled political groups in Florida, Georgia and California.
It added that Ionov relayed “detailed information about this influence campaign to three FSB officials”. The Americans alleged that after Ionov paid for one US political group to travel to Russia in 2015, he then exerted influence over that group for the next seven years.
It is alleged that when in California, Ionov supported one political group to “orchestrate a protest demonstration at the California Capitol building in Sacramento” and “attempted to direct” them “to physically enter the governor’s office”.
The indictment also alleges Ionov paid for members of another group to “travel from Atlanta to San Francisco to protest at the headquarters of a social media company that had placed content restrictions on posts supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
In another case, the indictment claims Ionov “guaranteed financing for — and ultimately funded — a four-city protest tour undertaken” by one of the political groups he allegedly exerted control over in the US.
This tour, the indictment said, was “in support of a ‘Petition on Crime of Genocide against African People in the United States’, which it [the US political group] had previously submitted to the United Nations at Ionov’s direction”.
It is also alleged Ionov supported candidates from groups under his control to advance their candidacy to state elections. He then emailed FSB officers telling them “our election campaign is kind of unique”, referring to one of those running in a Florida election as the candidate “whom we supervise”.
Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the indictment claims, one of the US political groups repeatedly hosted Ionov on video conferences in which he “falsely stated that anyone who supported Ukraine also supported Nazism and white supremacy”.
In a report to the FSB, it is claimed Ionov also said he had enlisted the same US group “to support Russia in the information war unleashed by the West”.
Ionov has also supported Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who has used photographs of the group meetings in his publicity material.
