For at least three years, a secret organization controlled by the Russian parliament managed to successfully intervene in European politics towards Moscow, campaigning in support of the annexation of the Crimean peninsula among parliamentarians from EU member states, the investigation showed, IStories journalists shared. , Eesti Ekspress, OCCRP, IRPI from Italy and Profil from Austria. Several emails that ended up in the hands of hackers show the big picture of an operation that used politicians from the EU bloc to help push Moscow’s agenda. And Romania is mentioned in the lobbying activities of a group headed by a PR man with ties to the Kremlin, being among the countries targeted for “cooperation with politicians.”

Russian political technologists linked to the Kremlin spent tens of thousands of dollars campaigning for the annexation of Crimea among European parliamentarians for at least three years between 2014 and 2017.

Journalists studied the e-mails of Sargis Mirzakhanyan, a public relations expert of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, made public by Ukrainian hackers.

The archive contains about 20,000 emails sent and received from 2007 to 2017. Mirzakhaniana worked as an assistant to Russian deputy Igor Zotov and helped coordinate work with European politicians.

Mirzakhanian’s group offered money to European politicians to push pro-Russian proposals in their countries’ legislatures and paid far-right activists to publish pro-Kremlin articles in European media.

A man in the Russian parliament allegedly organized trips to Crimea, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, for European politicians and businessmen, with transportation and accommodation paid for by Moscow-funded organizations.

It also helped to attract European politicians to Russia as election observers, the project budget was 68,000 euros.

Politicians from Germany, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic and Poland would be the focus of a group that outlined the Kremlin’s agenda.

Romania, the target of the lobby group

Mirzakhanyan and his staff operated under the auspices of the International Agency for Contemporary Politics, but in 2017 a company called Hemingway Partners was founded by the PR man’s mother, Satenik Markarian.

In the presentations of the Hemingway Partners group, it is stated that one of the goals of the association was the organization of rallies in the EU countries against anti-Russian sanctions, as well as “in support of the expression of will of the residents of Crimea and foreign citizens.” policy of the Russian Federation”.

The International Agency for Contemporary Politics is described in a PowerPoint presentation found in leaked media emails as a “closed association of professionals” that aims to “cooperate with the main EU parliamentary parties and politicians”. Other presentations indicated that the group’s target countries are Romania, Austria, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Latvia and Turkey.

– It’s a bomb!

In particular, Hemingway Partners named the resolution of the Council of the Italian region of Veneto, introduced by one of its deputies, Stefano Valdegamberi, as one of its international projects. The resolution recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea and condemned anti-Russian sanctions.

For example, last November Italian far-right local MP Stefano Valdegamberi wrote an editorial condemning the EU’s decision to recognize Russia as a terrorist state as a “serious mistake” that “fuels conflict by denying historical truth.”

Mirzakhanyan wrote about this resolution to one of his employees in April 2016.

“It’s a bomb! From the point of view of the media, most likely, this will be our loudest information operation,” Mirzakhanyan wrote to him.

After Veneto, two more Italian regions – Liguria and Lombardy – adopted similar pro-Russian resolutions, IStories notes. However, the Italian parliament rejected them.

20,000, the price of the resolution

One of the emails mentions a reward for presenting a similar resolution in the Austrian parliament: “€20,000 and another €15,000 if the vote is successful.” The deputies who introduced the resolutions deny that they received money for it.

The group planned for Italian senator Paolo Tosato and Austrian lawmaker Johannes Hübner, both from far-right parties, to propose resolutions in parliament to lift sanctions against Russia.

The drafts of the project do not say how this could have happened, and it is not clear whether these sums were to be paid directly to the two politicians or if they were the budgets of entire projects.

Mirzakhaniana also sent emails regarding similar activities in Latvia, Greece and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

An example of success in Cyprus

A few months after the movement into Veneto, the group achieved an even more important victory, this time in Cyprus.

An example of Mirzakhanyan’s successful lobbying activity was the draft resolution approved by the Parliament of Cyprus in 2016 on the cancellation of sanctions against Russia, introduced by the West in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea and the start of hostilities in southeastern Ukraine.

Journalists found in Mirzakhanyan’s correspondence a document almost identical to the final version of the resolution: the sanctions were called “fundamentally contrary to international law”, and the damage caused to Cyprus by the severance of economic ties with Russia was also emphasized.

Cypriot-Russian businessman Dmytro Kozlov acted as mediator between the International Agency for Contemporary Politics and Cypriot politicians of the Progressive Labor Party (AKEL). In the same year, he donated 15,000 euros to the party, becoming the party’s seventh largest donor.

Former AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou, in particular, told OCCRP that Kozlov’s son Serhii personally attended the meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the head of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs Leonid Slutsky. The Cypriot politician also admitted that Kozlov’s donation “could be a way of thanking them (AKEL) for the resolution”, but that the money did not reach him “personally”.

European politicians, observers of the Russian presidential elections

Investigative journalists claim that Mirzakhanyan’s team previously organized trips to Crimea for “union” MEPs, for example, to the Yalta International Economic Forum, founded in 2015.

A series of emails intercepted by Ukrainian hackers show that Mirzakhanyan communicated with Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian State Duma’s Committee on International Affairs, regarding the involvement of “international observers” in the 2018 Russian presidential election. wings of European parliamentarians.

The emails span the period from March 2007 to September 2017, and it is unclear whether Mirzakhanyan’s group is still active today, although individuals associated with his network, such as Waldegumberi, continue to make pro-Russian statements.

Mirzakhanyan’s leaked emails were first obtained by Ukrainian hackers in 2020, but the extent of Mirzakhanyan’s coordinated campaign to influence European politicians and impose Moscow’s EU agenda has not been revealed until now. (Photo source Dreamstime)