Another episode in the Kremlin’s efforts to create a ‘Russian party’ unfolded in Cyprus between 2019 and 2021. The party, known as ‘I Am a Citizen’ – ‘Ego o Politis’ (EOP), was founded in 2017.  Due to the circumstances, the story of the EOP’s creation, operation and dissolution has become well known. It provides an insight into the methods used by the Russian security services to build political parties in general. 
According to a well-informed source, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the idea of a Russian party with high-ranking Cypriot officials and, in response to their puzzled question ‘Why do you need this?’, replied something along the lines of: ‘I don’t understand what’s bothering you. In Israel, there is a Russian party called ‘Our Home Israel’, which is represented in the Knesset. We would like our compatriots to be represented in the parliaments of the countries where they live.” 
The party’s official programme focuses on combating corruption and bureaucratic inaction, and on environmental protection.  Given the party’s methods of operation, which are described below, the theme of ‘fighting corruption’ seems particularly incongruous. 
The party’s founders are the businessmen Alexei Voloboev and Ivan Mikhnevich. Voloboev served as party president until early 2019. He was succeeded by 
Yorgos Kontouris.
The party has no rank-and-file members; it consists solely of the Central Committee and the Politburo, comprising a total of six people.  
The party’s president and head of the Central Committee, Yorgos Kontouris, is a Greek Cypriot, a conductor, the director of the Cyprus Children’s Symphony Orchestra, and a member of the Expert Council of the Russian Cultural Centre. He graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatoire. 
The Vice-President of the EOP Central Committee, Ivan Mikhnevich, is a Belarusian businessman, multimillionaire, founder of Wargaming and an IT specialist. He is originally from Minsk.
The Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, Adamos Katsantonis, is a former member of the Communist Party of Cyprus, chairman of the Cyprus–North Korea Friendship Society, and a ‘friend of Kim Jong-un’. Katsantonis is the only member of the Party’s Central Committee who does not speak Russian. 
In March 2019, Katsantonis succeeded Dimitris Michalakakos as Secretary of the Central Committee; Michalakakos took up the post of the party’s press secretary. Dimitris Michalakakos, a Greek Cypriot and journalist, studied in Leningrad and is a former member of the Communist Party of Cyprus (Greece).
Dmitry Yakushev, a member of the EOP Central Committee and Politburo, is a native of Mariupol and the right-hand man of the oligarch Dmitry Bosov – the ‘coal king of Russia’. 
Igor Godovnikov, a member of the EOP Central Committee and Politburo, is the owner of a travel agency.
The first president of the EOP, and a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo, Alexei Voloboev, is a Russian businessman who has been living in Cyprus for many years and is the founder of ‘Russian Radio Cyprus’. Before moving to Cyprus, he was involved in the oil business. 
There are two de facto leaders of the party – Mikhnevich and Voloboev. Voloboev, however, was responsible for day-to-day operations. He enjoyed the full confidence of the Russian Embassy in Cyprus and attended all its events. In particular, Voloboev was shown confidential diplomatic documents at the embassy, such as the transcripts of talks between Lavrov and the Cypriot Foreign Minister in February 2019 in Moscow. 
The change of leadership was evidently linked to a shift in the party’s official ideology. From the very beginning, it had promoted itself as a party of ‘Russians’, and was perceived as such by those around it. But then it was decided to present itself as an ordinary Cypriot party, just like any other. As Mikhnevich stated in an interview in 2017, ‘We are set to become a fully-fledged Cypriot party, representing all the country’s ethnic groups, and first and foremost the Greek Cypriots’.  
The appointment of a Greek Cypriot to the post of EOP president was intended to serve these camouflage purposes. Greek Cypriots are indeed represented in the EOP’s Central Committee and Politburo, but they are ‘their own people’. That is to say, they are either educated in Russia – and consequently have the relevant connections – or have a communist past. Which also points to those same connections.
The party’s political objectives are vague. Formally, it stands for ‘all that is good’ and against ‘all that is bad’. In reality, it is a project of the Russian secret services, the aim of which is to have a party under their control in the Cypriot parliament in order to influence the political situation in Cyprus, destabilise the political system, and bring to power a parliament obedient to Russia and a president loyal to Russia. The strategic objective is to pull Cyprus out of the European Union. 
According to an eyewitness who accidentally gained access to party documents, the tasks facing the EOP party in Cyprus were roughly as follows:
‘Depending on the circumstances and the current situation, prepare and create a crisis in Cyprus. Possible options: 
financial – details to be finalised; 
banking – to withdraw one or two banks from Cyprus or drive them into bankruptcy;
economic – to drastically reduce the flow of tourists through active measures and a massive information campaign;
political (most preferable) – through active measures and mass information manipulation, organise mass protests by local residents against the current authorities with the aim of holding early elections. 
In Parliament, initiate the passing of laws on the withdrawal of British military bases from Cyprus and withdrawal from the European Union. In the final stage, organise mass protest demonstrations near British military bases, incorporating elements of violence’. The creation of the EOP is part of the implementation of an overall plan for the political destabilisation of Cyprus. 
As a political party, the EOP did nothing. It had neither members nor supporters; it did not campaign, did not organise public party events, and did not distribute campaign materials. Occasionally, political statements or proposals were issued by the party with the sole aim of reminding people of its existence. For example, on one occasion the EOP proposed to the Minister of Defence that a Russian unit be established within the Cyprus National Guard, comprising Russian Cypriots under the command of Russian-speaking officers, and that regular training exercises be held. 
Hopes that the party would win seats in parliament rested solely on bribing voters. The strategy mainly targeted two groups of voters – Russian-speaking Cypriot citizens and Pontic Greeks who had emigrated from the USSR to Greece in the 1990s. Greek-speaking Cypriots were virtually ignored. 
The main tool for influencing Russian Cypriots was brainwashing via social media. Xenophobia was actively encouraged within this community. To this end, even the most minor everyday conflicts between Russian migrants and Cypriots were blown out of proportion. Russians were led to believe that they were being oppressed in Cyprus, that they needed to defend themselves, fight for their rights and, to this end, have their own representation in parliament. The fight against mythical Russophobia is a very important aspect of Moscow’s propaganda. It rallies Russian migrants behind Putin’s regime. At the same time, the aversion to the regime itself – which is natural for people with democratic views – is attributed to a dislike of all Russians. 
This theme is exploited by Russian propaganda in all Western countries; only the targets of hatred change. In Germany, for example, Moscow’s propaganda pits Russian migrants against refugees from Muslim countries, Turks and Arabs. In France – against Arabs and Black people, and so on. 
The pro-Putin, Orthodox, monarchist and chauvinist television channel ‘Tsargrad’ spoke very candidly on this subject in an article devoted to the creation of the EOP:
‘As is well known, Russians are the most divided nation, as President Vladimir Putin has also stated. Our compatriots are forced to live in foreign countries, which often treat Russians as second-class citizens, in small communities that think only of how to survive in such an oppressive environment. People forget Suvorov’s maxim: ‘We are Russians! What a joy!’ and begin to lose their identity, assimilating into the dominant nation of their country of residence. In this sense, Cyprus demonstrates the absolutely phenomenal success of our diaspora, which not only survives but also fights for its political rights… Voloboev’s example proves once again that it is precisely the elite – those who own property and are educated – who must cultivate a sense of identity within themselves and instil it in the wider population.” 
‘Tsargrad’ was even more explicit about the party’s real aims: ‘Only someone who is not particularly well-informed about the flaws of this system would write eulogies to democracy. However, one can sometimes benefit from it. It is precisely thanks to a flaw such as pluralism that the Russians were able to successfully register their party and declare their rights for all to hear. In this way, they were able to exploit a loophole within the System to make it work for them. Undoubtedly, such a display of political acumen is highly commendable.” 
Expressing its enthusiasm for the creation of the ‘Russian party’, the ‘Tsargrad’ channel does not express the slightest doubt as to its anti-democratic aims. Such parties are created solely to undermine democracy: 
‘…the “I Am a Citizen” party sets a stunning example for all Russian diasporas. Democracy is currently the dominant form of government practically throughout the world, which allows its platform to be used to make one’s voice heard. Let us hope that the example set by Russian Cypriots will act as a kind of icebreaker, triggering a domino effect, and that similar parties will begin to emerge practically everywhere – or at least wherever there is a significant number of Russians.”  
The irony here is that this firm view of the EOP’s undeniably subversive and anti-democratic nature comes from ‘their own people’. And it is hard to disagree with it. 
One of the key tactical objectives pursued by the EOP leadership was to buy up Russian-speaking groups on Facebook in Cyprus, so that in the run-up to the 2021 parliamentary elections, no other Cypriot party apart from the EOP would be visible on the Russian-language Facebook. The next step was to manipulate these groups using trolls. By the spring of 2019, all the Russian-language groups had already been bought up, and Greek-language groups were being actively acquired. 
At the same time, vote-buying schemes were being developed. One option involved hiring so-called ‘brigadiers’, who are paid if a certain number of people at their polling station vote for the EOR. 
Another method of vote-buying works as follows. The administration of the President of the Russian Federation approached Ivan Savidis, a billionaire of Pontic Greek origin living in Greece, with a request to assist Voloboev in the 2021 parliamentary elections. Savidis proposed that Voloboev gather the leaders of the Pontic Greek community in Cyprus ahead of the elections, where he would urge them to persuade members of the community to vote for the EOP. This would be on condition that these leaders received financial compensation. 
Pontic Greeks who emigrated from the USSR are Russian-speaking (at least the older generation); they all watch Russian television and, on the whole, are easily influenced by Russian propaganda. 
At the same time, according to eyewitness accounts, party leaders spoke with extreme contempt of Cypriots at meetings, regarding them as stupid and primitive. They referred to Cyprus as a ‘banana republic’ and believed that if ‘Brexit’ had been achieved in educated England with the help of social media, the chances of the same happening in Cyprus – which they regard as uneducated – were even greater. 
In the 2021 elections, each Cypriot party was required to field 
56 candidates (corresponding to the number of Members of Parliament). In a 2018 interview, Voloboev stated that the EOP’s aim for the 2021 elections was “to secure around 30,000 votes from our electorate and win four seats in the Parliament of the Republic of Cyprus”.  
As the party has no coherent programme capable of attracting voters, candidates were selected not from among like-minded individuals, but from among people who could influence their personal circles during the election – family members, patients (if the candidate is a doctor), members of ethnic and religious communities, and so on. Such candidates can only be persuaded to stand for election through financial incentives.
According to some sources, 500,000 euros (according to other reports, 2 million) were set aside to buy votes in the 2021 election.
The party’s sole office was located in Nicosia and was entirely controlled by the security services. For example, changing passwords on office computers was only possible via Moscow. In practice, this means that the entire security system is managed from Moscow. 
In the autumn of 2018, a team of political strategists led by Andrei Ponomarev – previously known as the ‘Inside Agency for Effective Communications’ – was sent from Moscow to assist the EOP. The group’s coordinator, Viktor Perzhan, spent almost the entire autumn in Cyprus. Perzhan had previously been spotted in Transnistria, eastern Ukraine and Crimea. 
In an interview in 2018, Alexei Voloboev explained that, having decided to go into politics, he had withdrawn from all his business ventures, both in Cyprus and in Russia.  So he is no longer a businessman, but a politician through and through. One might conclude from this that he finances his political activities himself. However, given that the EOP is in reality no party at all, Voloboev’s activities are, naturally, not political in the slightest. They are described in entirely different terms. And Moscow’s influence agencies, whatever cover they may use, do not operate at their own expense. This raises a most interesting question regarding the EOP’s funding.
According to official information from the EOP’s website (and as stated by Mikhnevich), the party was funded as follows. By law, every Cypriot citizen is entitled to donate up to 50,000 euros per year to any political party. Officially, Mikhnevich and his wife, Aigul Mikhnevich, each donate 50,000 euros to the EOP every year. 
One of the unofficial funding channels works as follows. Voloboev drafts a letter addressed to the Russian ambassador requesting financial support. The ambassador writes a note on the letter addressed to a Russian businessman living in or visiting Cyprus, asking him to grant Voloboev’s request. 
In other cases, Voloboev contacts the administration of the President of the Russian Federation, which also instructs one of the Russian businessmen in Cyprus to allocate funds, either officially or unofficially, to support the party.
The whole operation ended in failure following a series of exposés in the Cypriot press.  The EOP did not take part in the 2021 elections, and in the autumn of 2021 it was legally dissolved. Kontouris stood for election with another party (DEKO) as a guest candidate (according to some reports, after the party leadership had received a bribe from Russian businessmen), but failed to win a seat. 
This whole story is a good example of how, in the fight against Putin’s agents of influence, the free press in democratic countries can be far more effective than their counter-intelligence services. 

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Another important aspect of the party leadership’s activities. On at least one occasion (2 October 2019), Alina Radchenko, the head of the Russian Cultural Centre, was present at a meeting of the party’s political council. 
In addition to purely propaganda and recruitment work within the émigré community, Rossotrudnichestvo’s remit includes selecting foreign students for free study in Russia. 
Rossotrudnichestvo’s 2016 report states: ‘The Agency pays particular attention to foreign nationals wishing to obtain a Russian education. The annual quota for the education of foreign nationals is 15,000. The education quota has proven itself to be one of the effective instruments of Russian ‘soft power’ in this area of international humanitarian cooperation. In 2016, 1,000 young foreign leaders from 100 countries visited the Russian Federation under the programme.”  
Cyprus also receives a certain share of the quotas. So, at a meeting of the EOP’s Political Council, attended by the director of the Russian Cultural Centre, discussions took place not only regarding the promotional campaign to mark ‘Victory Day’ on 9 May, but also concerning the participation of EOP President Kontouris in the commission responsible for selecting prospective Cypriot students for free study in Russia.