In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Cyprus on 24 May 2026, the Russian security services once again employed their tried-and-tested tactics of hybrid influence. 

In early 2026, the party ‘ΑΓΡΟΝΟΜΟΣ’ (full name: Αγροτικό Εργατικό Κόμμα Κύπρου, the Agrarian Labour Party of Cyprus) appeared in the Cyprus Ministry of the Interior’s register under number 26. Its founder and leader is Andreas Christofias (Ανδρέας Χριστοφή). The party announced its intention to stand in the May elections and actively joined the election campaign amid the agricultural crisis – an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, mass culling of livestock and farmers’ protests.

Andreas Christofi graduated from Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University (RUDN) in Moscow – an institution that for decades was used by the KGB/FSB to recruit and train foreign agents. 

In a 2018 interview with the Cyprus Mail, Christofi openly stated: “I am a communist, and I like everything to do with Russia and the former USSR, which is why I decided to go and study in Moscow.”
He lived in Russia for many years, where he acquired 200 hectares of land in the Krasnodar Krai and registered Fruit-Argo LLC. In Cyprus, Christofi set up a company called The Land of Dreams (ΗΕ 399972), which owns a fish farm and a holiday resort in the Trimiklini area. 

The farm mainly catered to wealthy Russian clients. 10 per cent of the company is owned by Christofi himself, whilst 90 per cent is owned by his wife, Anna Christofi, who resides permanently in Moscow at 16 Dmitriy Ulyanov Street, Block 2 – in a building under the control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the FSB of the Russian Federation.

Christofi is an organiser and active participant in pro-Russian rallies in Cyprus since 24 February 2022. He has openly supported the ‘special military operation’ and supplies fish to the Russian Embassy in Cyprus, a fact of which he has repeatedly boasted publicly.

Of the 16 people in the leadership of ‘ΑΓΡΟΝΟΜΟΣ’, four are from Russia, and another is a Ukrainian citizen from Donetsk with strongly pro-Russian views. 

All of them hold Cypriot citizenship and have extensive connections within the island’s Russian community.

At public events, party members have repeatedly been photographed with General Murad Zyazikov of the FSB, who also serves as the Russian Federation’s Ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus, and with staff from the GRU of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces — military attaché Igor Golenev (formerly of the Strategic Missile Forces) and his deputy Anton Pogorelov (a former officer of the 45th Separate Guards Special Forces Brigade of the Airborne Forces).