During Soviet times, the Kremlin could influence the situation in foreign countries only by recruiting agents from within their political, business, and cultural circles. This was done with great skill and effectiveness. The history of Soviet intelligence agencies is replete with the names of agents who belonged to the highest echelons of society in their respective countries. The situation remains unchanged today, although the scale and breadth of recruitment efforts have increased.
The mass migration of former Soviet citizens abroad has opened up entirely new opportunities for the security services. Specifically, the organisation of front ‘Russian’ parties made up of migrants attempting to gain seats in foreign parliaments and the European Parliament. Several such attempts have already been made.
The first ‘pan-European’ attempt was made back in 2004, with the establishment of the European Russian Alliance (ERA) – ‘a public organisation uniting Russian public figures, journalists, and politicians from European Union countries.’ The Alliance includes representatives from 20 European countries. The organisation's first working title was the ‘Russian Party of Europe.’
The Alliance's founding conference was held in 2005 in Prague. Simultaneously, four existing Russian parties in the EU created the Federation of Russian Parties of Europe (the Association for Human Rights in a United Latvia, the Union of Russians in Lithuania, the Russian Party of Estonia, and the Party for the Defence of Russophony in France). The party ultimately failed to form due to limited support among émigrés. Ultimately, the EPA survived as a social movement – since 2007, it has been led by Latvian MEP Tatiana Zhdanok. Cyprus is represented in the Alliance by Natalia Kardash, editor-in-chief of the pro-Kremlin publishing house Vestnik Kipra. Germany is represented by Larisa Yurchenko, chair of the All-German Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots. All the ‘Coordinating Councils of Compatriots’ scattered around the world, like the European Alliance itself, are branches of the Russian secret services masquerading as social activists.
In 2013, Germany established its own party of Russian émigrés, ‘Unity’ (Die Einheit), led by Dmitry Rempel, a former SPD activist. The party's sources of funding are unknown. During 2015-2016, Rempel feverishly established party branches in various German states. The party's stated political goals seem absurd: ‘The only party in Germany that focuses public efforts on realising the guarantees, rights, and interests of émigrés.’
In 2016, Rempel became famous for his statement in an interview with Crimean television that half a million ‘Russian Germans’ were ready to return from Germany to Russia. In the 2017 parliamentary elections, the Unity party received 373 votes and subsequently virtually ceased to make a mark. In Germany, Moscow's far more effective tactic was to bribe the existing large parliamentary far-right and left-wing parties.
There are currently two Russian members of parliament in the Bundestag – both from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The Left Party (Die Linke, the former GDR Socialist Unity Party) is also openly pro-Russian.
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Another spectacle of creating a Kremlin ‘Russian party’ took place in Cyprus between 2019 and 2021.
Cyprus is an extremely convenient base for Russian intelligence operations. It's a small country with a population of around one million. Fifty to seventy thousand migrants from the Soviet Union and Russia constitute a significant portion of the population. In the recent past, Cyprus was an offshore haven, a magnet for vast sums of money and their owners. The loyalty of the vast majority of Russian Cypriots to Putin's Russia is undeniable. It's also undeniable that a significant portion of the Russian businessmen who have settled in Cyprus are intelligence officers and agents. This is not to mention the 300-strong staff at the Russian embassy and official Russian organisations in Cyprus. Cyprus is a member of the European Union, which opens up additional tempting prospects for the Kremlin's intelligence services.
The party was founded in 2017 under the name ‘I Am a Citizen’ – ‘Ego o Politis’ (EOP). The party's official programme is to fight corruption, official inaction, and the environment. Given the party's methods of operation, discussed below, the theme of ‘fighting corruption’ seems particularly exotic.
The founders of the party are businessmen Alexei Voloboev and Ivan Mikhnevich.
Voloboev served as the party's president until early 2019. He was replaced by Giorgos Kountouris.
The party has no ordinary members; there is only the Central Committee and the Politburo, consisting of a total of six people.
The President of the Party and the Central Committee, Giorgos Kountouris, is a Greek Cypriot conductor, director of the Cyprus Children's Symphony Orchestra, and member of the Expert Council of the Russian Cultural Centre. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Ivan Mikhnevich, Vice President of the EOP Central Committee, is a Belarusian businessman, multimillionaire, founder of Wargaming, and IT specialist. He hails from Minsk.
The Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, 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 PB who does not speak Russian.
In March 2019, Katsantonis replaced Dimitris Michalakakos as Secretary of the Central Committee, who became the party's press secretary. Dimitris Michalakakos, a Greek Cypriot journalist who studied in Leningrad and a former member of the Communist Party of Cyprus (Greece), was appointed as the party's press secretary.
Member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the EOP, Dmitry Yakushev, is a native of Mariupol and the right hand of oligarch Dmitry Bosov, the ‘coal king of Russia.’
Member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the EOP Igor Godovnikov is the owner of a travel agency.
The first president of the EOP, member of the Central Committee and Politburo, Alexei Voloboev, a Russian businessman who has lived in Cyprus for many years and founded Russian Radio Cyprus, was involved in the oil business before moving to Cyprus.
The party has two actual leaders: Mikhnevich and Voloboev. Voloboev is responsible for day-to-day operations. He is fully accountable to the Russian Embassy in Cyprus, attends all its events, and enjoys the embassy's complete trust. Specifically, Voloboev was shown classified diplomatic documents at the embassy, such as transcripts of talks between Lavrov and the Cypriot Foreign Minister in Moscow in February 2019. Voloboev is openly pro-Putin and coordinates all party statements with the Russian embassy.
The change in presidents is clearly linked to a shift in the party's official concept. From the very beginning, it marketed itself as a party of ‘Russians,’ and it remains so in the eyes of those around it. But now it pretends to be an ordinary Cypriot party, just like all the others. As Mikhnevich stated in a 2017 interview, ‘We are destined to become a fully-fledged Cypriot party, representing all ethnic groups in the country, and first and foremost, Greek Cypriots.’
The appointment of a Greek Cypriot to the post of EOP president was intended to serve such covert purposes. The EOP Central Committee and Politburo do indeed include Greek Cypriots, but they are ‘our own.’ That is, they either had a Russian education, and therefore the corresponding connections, or they have a communist past, which also points to those same connections.
The party's political goals are vague. Formally, they advocate for all that is good and against all that is evil. In reality, it is a project of the Russian secret services, whose goal is to have a party under their control in parliament in order to influence the political situation in Cyprus, destabilize the political system, and install a parliament subservient to Russia and a president loyal to Russia. The strategic goal is to pull Cyprus out of the European Union.
According to an eyewitness who accidentally gained access to party documents, the tasks facing Russian intelligence services in Cyprus look something like this:
"Depending on the circumstances and the current situation, prepare and create a crisis in Cyprus. Possible options: financial – options are being clarified; banking – withdraw one or two banks from Cyprus or bankrupt them; economic – through active measures and massive information campaigns, sharply reduce the flow of tourists; political (most preferable) – through active measures and massive information campaigns, organise mass protests by local residents against the current authorities with the goal of holding early elections.
Initiate legislation in parliament to withdraw British military bases from Cyprus and withdraw from the European Union. At the final stage, organise mass protests near British military bases, with elements of violence."
The creation of the EOP is part of the implementation of a general plan for political destabilization in relation to Cyprus.
The party leadership's political views are entirely pro-Kremlin. Mikhnevich and Voloboev believe that Crimea is rightfully Russian, the referendum held there is a model for the entire world, there are no Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, the Boeing was shot down by Ukrainians on American orders to frame Russia, and fascists are in Kyiv.
As a political party, the EOP does nothing. It has no members or supporters, does not campaign, does not hold public party events, and does not distribute campaign materials. Occasionally, the party issues political statements or proposals for the sole purpose of making a name for itself. For example, the EOP once proposed to the Minister of Defence that a Russian unit be created within the Cypriot National Guard, consisting of Russian Cypriots commanded by Russian-speaking officers, and that regular training sessions be held. Recently, the party came out in support of the ousted dictator of Bolivia.
However, the EOP controls almost all Russian media (except those controlled by the embassy and the secret services) and conducts pro-Putin propaganda in them.
The party's hopes of getting into parliament are linked solely to vote-buying.
The primary focus is on two groups of voters: Russian-speaking Cypriots and Pontic Greeks who emigrated from the USSR to Greece in the 1990s. Greek-speaking Cypriots are practically ignored.
The primary tool used to influence Russian Cypriots is brainwashing via social media. This includes actively fostering xenophobia in this environment. To this end, even the most minor everyday conflicts between Russian migrants and Cypriots are inflated. Russians are told that they are being oppressed in Cyprus, that they must defend themselves, fight for their rights, and, to this end, have their own parliamentary representation. Combating this mythical Russophobia is a crucial aspect of Moscow's propaganda. It consolidates Russian migrants around the Putin regime. At the same time, the natural aversion of people with democratic views toward the regime itself is explained by a dislike of all Russians.
This motif is exploited by Russian propaganda in all Western countries, only the targets of hatred vary. In Germany, for example, Moscow propaganda pits Russian migrants against refugees from Muslim countries, Turks, and Arabs. In France, it pits them against Arabs and Blacks, and so on.
The pro-Putin, Orthodox, monarchist, and chauvinistic television channel Tsargrad spoke very frankly on this topic in an article dedicated to the creation of the EOP:
‘As is well known, Russians are the largest divided people, as President Vladimir Putin has also noted. Our compatriots are forced to exist in foreign countries, often treated as second-class citizens, in small communities whose sole concern is how to survive in such oppressive conditions. People forget Suvorov's maxim: 'We are Russians! What a joy!' and begin to lose their identity, assimilating into the dominant nation in their country of residence. In this sense, Cyprus demonstrates the absolutely fantastic success of our diaspora, which is not only surviving but also fighting for its political rights... Voloboev's example once again proves that it is the elite—people who own property and are educated—who must cultivate a sense of identity and instill it in the wider population.’
Tsargrad was even more explicit about the party's real goals: ‘Perhaps only someone not particularly well-versed in the flaws of this system would write panegyrics to democracy. However, sometimes it can be beneficial. It was precisely thanks to such a defect as pluralism that the Russians were able to successfully register their party and publicly declare their rights. In this way, they were able to exploit a loophole within the system to make it work for them. Such a display of political ingenuity is, of course, extremely commendable.’
While expressing enthusiasm for the creation of the ‘Russian party,’ the Tsargrad channel expresses no doubt about its anti-democratic goals. 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 in virtually every country in the world, allowing for the use of its platform to assert oneself. Let's hope that the example of Russian Cypriots will act as a kind of icebreaker, triggering a domino effect, and similar parties will begin to emerge practically everywhere, or at least in places where there is a significant Russian population.’
The piquant thing here is that the firm opinion about the undoubtedly subversive and anti-democratic nature of the EOP party comes from ‘their own.’ And it's hard to disagree with it.
One of the key tactical tasks undertaken by the EOP leaders was to buy up Russian-language groups on Cypriot Facebook, so that on the eve of the 2021 parliamentary elections, the presence of no other Cypriot party besides the EOP would be felt on the Russian Facebook. These groups were then to be manipulated using trolls. By the spring of 2019, all Russian groups had already been purchased, and Greek-language groups were also being actively acquired.
At the same time, vote-buying schemes are being developed. One option is to buy so-called ‘foremen,’ who receive money if a certain number of people vote for the EOP at their polling station.
Another vote-buying scenario appears to be as follows. The Russian presidential administration approached Ivan Savidis, a Pontian Greek billionaire living in Greece, with a request to assist Voloboev in the 2021 parliamentary elections. Savidis proposed that Voloboev gather the leaders of the Pontian Greek community in Cyprus before the elections, where he would strongly recommend convincing them to vote for the EOP. These leaders would receive financial compensation, he said.
The Pontic Greeks who emigrated from the USSR are Russian-speaking (at least the older generation), all watch Russian television and are generally easily influenced by Russian propaganda.
At the same time, according to eyewitness accounts, party leaders speak extremely disdainfully of Cypriots at meetings, considering them stupid and primitive. They call Cyprus a banana republic and believe that if educated England was able to push through Brexit with the help of social media, the chances of the same happening in Cyprus, which they consider uneducated, are 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 said that the EOP party's goal in the 2021 elections was to ‘collect about 30,000 votes from our voters and gain four seats in the Parliament of the Republic of Cyprus.’
Since the party lacks a coherent programme that could attract voters, candidates are selected not from among like-minded individuals, but from people who could influence their personal circles of acquaintances in the elections—family members, patients (if the candidate is a doctor), members of ethnic and religious communities, etc. Such candidates can only be attracted to participate in the elections through material incentives.
According to some sources, 500,000 euros (according to other sources, 2 million euros) have been set aside for vote-buying in the 2021 elections.
The party's only office is located in Nicosia and is completely controlled by the security services. For example, passwords on office computers can only be changed through Moscow. In reality, this means the entire security system is controlled from Moscow.
In the fall of 2018, a team of political strategists led by Andrey Ponomarev, formerly known as the ‘Inside’ Agency for Effective Communications, was sent from Moscow to assist the EOP. The team's coordinator, Viktor Perzhan, spent almost the entire fall in Cyprus. Perzhan had previously been prominent in Transnistria, eastern Ukraine, and Crimea.
In a 2018 interview, Alexei Voloboev said that, having decided to enter politics, he withdrew from all his business projects, both in Cyprus and Russia. So he is no longer a businessman, but a pure politician. This might lead one to conclude that he finances his political activities himself. However, given that the EOP is not actually a party, Voloboev's activities are naturally not political at all. They are called something else entirely. And Moscow's agents of influence, no matter what disguise they employ, do not operate at their own expense. This raises the fascinating question of the EOP's financing.
According to official information from the EOP website (and according to Mikhnevich), the party is funded as follows. By law, every Cypriot citizen has the right to donate up to €50,000 annually to any political party. Officially, Mikhnevich and his wife, Aigul Mikhnevich, each donate €50,000 annually to the EOP.
One of the unofficial funding methods is as follows: Voloboev prepares a letter to the Russian ambassador requesting financial support. The ambassador then writes a resolution addressed to a Russian businessman living or visiting Cyprus, requesting that Voloboev's request be granted.
In other cases, Voloboev contacts the Russian presidential administration, which also instructs one of the Russian businessmen in Cyprus to allocate funds, officially or unofficially, to support the party.
This entire operation ended in failure after a series of exposés in the Cypriot press. The EOP party did not participate in the 2021 elections, and in the fall of 2021, it was legally liquidated. Kountouris ran as a guest candidate for another party (DIKO) (according to some reports, after the party's leadership accepted a bribe from Russian businessmen), but failed to win.
This whole story is a good example of how, in the fight against Putin's agents of influence, the open press of democratic countries can be much more effective than their counterintelligence agencies.
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Another important aspect of the party leadership's activities: Alina Radchenko, head of the Russian Cultural Centre, attended at least one party political council meeting (October 2, 2019).
A brief digression is necessary here. Russian cultural centres, which operate in more than 60 countries, belong to an organisation called the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation. Or, in short, Rossotrudnichestvo.
Rossotrudnichestvo was founded in 2008, but it is the successor to the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), which existed until 1958 and subsequently changed its name several times. In the USSR, relations with foreign countries traditionally fell under the purview of state security, and in Russia, nothing has changed in this regard, so Rossotrudnichestvo can rightfully be considered a departmental branch of the secret services. In addition to purely propaganda and recruitment work among émigrés, Rossotrudnichestvo's responsibilities include selecting foreign students for free study in Russia.
Rossotrudnichestvo's 2016 report states: ‘The Agency pays special attention to foreign citizens wishing to obtain a Russian education. The annual quota for the education of foreign citizens is 15,000. The education quota has proven itself to be an effective tool of Russia's 'soft power' in this area of international humanitarian cooperation. In 2016, 1,000 young foreign leaders from 100 countries visited the Russian Federation under this programme.’
Cyprus also receives a certain portion of the quotas. At a meeting of the EOC Political Council, in the presence of the Director of the Russian Cultural Centre, in addition to a propaganda campaign to celebrate ‘Victory Day’ on May 9, the participation of EOC President Kountouris in the commission to select future Cypriot students for free study in Russia was discussed.
Kountouris is a member of the Expert Council of the Russian Cultural Centre in Nicosia, comprised of Cypriot political and cultural figures—‘friends of Russia.’ The list begins with Bishop Isaiah, Metropolitan of Tamas and Oreini, and Michalis Azovides, Assistant to the President of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus.
Metropolitan Isaiah graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1997, and in 2003, he defended his PhD dissertation at the Moscow Theological Academy. The remaining members of the Expert Council, including Anastasios Kouzalis, president of the Cyprus Association of Graduates of Russian and Soviet Universities, and Haris Trassou, president of the Cyprus-Russia Friendship and Cultural Relations Society, enjoy similarly intimate relationships with Russia and its intelligence agencies. Both graduated from the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow and currently hold prominent positions in Cyprus.
As stated on the centre's website: ‘The Expert Club is an informal structure without governing bodies... The mission of the Expert Club is to bring together Cypriot figures who have studied in Russia, speak Russian, and are open to collaboration with the Russian Centre for Science and Culture and the Russian-speaking community in Cyprus, with the goal of exchanging experiences and opinions on both current activities and various major projects and initiatives.’ In other words, the Expert Council of the Russian Cultural Centre is comprised of Russian agents of influence in Cyprus, whose functions include selecting future candidates for these positions.
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The example of the EOP party clearly illustrates the mechanism by which Moscow creates fake public organisations. Of course, it's not a party at all, but a pure intelligence operation. Everything there is a sham. A sham of party ideology, a sham of party programmes, a sham of party activity, a sham of public outcry. The actors themselves, performing this performance, are simulating politicians.
In reality, there is no party, no members, no party leadership. There are no social movements that could form such a party. There is a group of hired figures, paid by Moscow to carry out operational tasks assigned to them by Moscow.
All the countless other pseudo-public organisations created by Moscow around the world function in roughly the same way—‘coordinating councils of compatriots,’ ‘societies for friendship with Russia,’ and all manner of cultural, scientific, literary, political, sports, and student organisations and foundations. They are sprouting up in all countries, especially active in those with relatively large numbers of migrants from the USSR and Russia, and in these environments, they imitate public activity.
Their mission is threefold. First, to cultivate the émigré community, promote Putin's regime, and recruit its supporters. Second—and most importantly!—to infiltrate the social and political life of foreign countries, destabilize it, recruit agents, and influence them in a direction favourable to Putin's government. The third mission is direct military and industrial espionage. All three are operational tasks of the Russian intelligence services.
This entire complex, sprawling system of phantom public entities exists solely thanks to funding from Moscow. There's no doubt it will be completely paralyzed the moment that funding ceases.