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It’s been a weird week for pro-Kremlin assets. Donald Trump fanboyed Vladimir Putin during a Presidential debate, which he used as an opportunity to lie for 90 minutes while President Joe Biden looked on in horror.
And Julian Assange, who trafficked stolen goods by Russian military intelligence to help throw the 2016 election to Trump, pleaded guilty to espionage.
And Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage — a reliable mouthpiece of the Putin regime — said Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should negotiate a peace deal with Russia, just like pro-Russian interloper in the US election, Robert Kennedy Jr.
But what may be long forgotten in Farage’s history of engaging in active measures to harm democratic governance globally is his participation in an attempt to vivisect California in collaboration with Dana Rohrabacher, a former California politician nicknamed “Putin’s favourite Congressman”.
I learned about Farage meddling in California politics when Moscow resident Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov was indicted by the United States in collaboration with at least three Russian agents for engaging in foreign malign influence campaigns targeting the country.
Founder of the Anti-Globalisation Movement of Russia (AGMR) – a body financed by the Russian Government – Ionov was accused of funding Russian propaganda designed to exploit divisions in the US.
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The indictment alleged that Ionov used American political groups as foreign agents of Russia, working on behalf of the FSB. It offered pages of examples of electronic correspondences between Ionov and various groups, instructing them to plant news stories sympathetic to Russia, Putin, and the invasion of Ukraine. It also revealed that Ionov backed multiple American political candidates.
Farage Caught Being a bit Fishy
When we first investigated the story, court documents pointed to one of the groups being “Yes California” – an organisation set up in 2015 by Louis Marinelli, a New Yorker living in Russia. It advocated for California breaking away from the rest of the United States.
The campaigns to divide California in two countries and to secede from the Union – known as ‘Calexit’ – was repeatedly covered by Russian state media in 2016 and 2017. Yes California’s Marinelli opened an ‘embassy‘ in Moscow in 2016, with the Anti-Globalisation Movement of Russia providing the office space rent-free. A right-wing activist who had campaigned against LGBTQ rights, said he left his home in Yekaterinburg, about 1,000 miles outside Moscow, to fight for California’s secession.