{"id":16462,"date":"2021-03-03T05:33:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T05:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/?p=16462"},"modified":"2021-03-03T12:05:17","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T12:05:17","slug":"the-influence-operation-run-by-yevgeny-prigozhin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/the-influence-operation-run-by-yevgeny-prigozhin\/","title":{"rendered":"The influence operation run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was just added to the FBI Most Wanted list, has new targets right in the heart of Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illustration: Mart Nigola \/ Delfi.ee<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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We are publishing a\u00a0joint investigation by The Daily Beast, the Dossier Center, German broadcaster ARD, Delfi.ee in Estonia, and Siena.lt in Lithuania. First time published in English by The Daily Beast.<\/a><\/p>\n

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He\u2019s sent Wagner mercenaries to Ukraine<\/strong>, Syria, and Libya; faced U.S. indictments for assigning his \u201ctroll farm\u201d<\/strong> to interfere in the 2016 presidential election<\/strong>; and even dispatched white supremacists and neo-Nazis to sow anti-Western sentiment in African nations. Now Yevgeny Prigozhin<\/strong>, the catering magnate commonly referred to as \u201cPutin\u2019s chef,\u201d has trained his attention a little closer to Russia\u2019s doorstep: Europe and the Baltic States.<\/p>\n

A joint investigation by The Daily Beast<\/a>, the Dossier Center, German broadcaster ARD, Delfi.ee in Estonia, and Siena.lt in Lithuania reveals that operatives closely associated with the Russian oligarch\u2019s previously exposed influence operations organized a two-day conference in Berlin from Jan. 14-15 pegged to economic and environmental issues affecting Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Baltic Sea Region Strategic Dialogue was the first of what is meant to be a series of so-called \u201cforesight sessions\u201d to \u201ccreate a new vision of the post-pandemic future\u201d for the aforementioned countries, with an ostensible focus on COVID-19, Brexit, environmental sustainability, e-governance, and digital technology. Participants included Rihards Kols<\/strong>, the head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Latvia\u2019s parliament, as well as several members of the German Bundestag including Stefan Keuter<\/strong>, a member of the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD<\/strong>) party.<\/p>\n

The event was organized by two organizations, both of them closely connected to the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation, or AFRIC.<\/p>\n

As The Daily Beast reported, AFRIC<\/strong> is run by Prigozhin\u2019s St. Petersburg-based organization. According to internal documents obtained by the Dossier Center, AFRIC was conceived as a \u201cnetwork of agents of influence\u201d meant to provide \u201cexpert evaluations and opinions beneficial to Russia\u201d in Africa. Founded in 2018, AFRIC sent \u201celection observers\u201d\u2014many of them\u00a0well-known white supremacists and neo-Nazis<\/a> from Europe\u2014to try to sway democratic races in Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa, in races in which other arms of Prigozhin\u2019s vast empire often supported one or more of the candidates.<\/p>\n

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Last week, the FBI announced that Prigozhin had <\/span>been added<\/a>\u00a0to its <\/span>Most Wanted list<\/strong> for his alleged \u201cconspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission, the United States Department of Justice, and the United States Department of State\u201d from 2014 to 2018. A <\/span>$250,000 award<\/strong> was posted for any information leading to his arrest.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

As with most of Prigozhin\u2019s foreign influence operations, this one consists of a series of nesting doll structures registered outside of Russian Federation territory and helmed, at least on paper, by non-Russians. The same cast of characters recurs, both at the hierarchical level of these operations and among the Western political figures they aim to cultivate.<\/p>\n

For instance, one of the organizers<\/strong> of the conference was ADMIS Consultancy<\/strong>, a company founded and operated by Vaiva Adomaityte<\/strong>, a Lithuanian national who is also a member of AFRIC\u2019s administration. An occupational psychologist and self-described \u201cglobal change expert,\u201d Adomaityte has participated in at least one of AFRIC\u2019s three conferences in Berlin, co-authored its \u201cAfrica Vision\u201d report, and has been an AFRIC representative at the Russia-Africa summit in Sochi in 2019. She is also a confidante and associate of Yulia Afanasyeva (Berg)<\/strong>, the Prigozhin operative who established AFRIC<\/strong> in 2018 out of the oligarch\u2019s \u201cback office\u201d in St. Petersburg, as leaked documents obtained by the Dossier Center demonstrate.<\/p>\n

Adomaityte previously edited a questionnaire written by Afanasyeva for AFRIC\u2019s similarly named \u201cforesight session\u201d in Berlin in 2019. She also wrote to the Hilton Hotel complaining about substandard accommodations and to settle AFRIC\u2019s billing dispute with the management. Adomaityte<\/strong> even updated her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 to account for her work on behalf of AFRIC. In one awkwardly worded letter dated March 3, 2020, she wrote to Afanasyeva<\/strong> in English, \u201cShall I start calling you my God Mother I wonder… sounds much ore badass then God Father.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

AFRIC-related events, in fact, appear to be the only ones with which Adomaityte\u2019s ADMIS Consultancy has ever worked. Afanasyeva even hired and paid for a Russian social media expert to work on ADMIS Consultancy\u2019s social media pages, as per the correspondence obtained by the Dossier Center. The Baltic Sea event in January took place in the same Hilton Hotel in Berlin as previous AFRIC conferences. One of the earlier events was presided over by Aleksandr Malkevich<\/strong>, a top Prigozhin operative<\/strong> who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2018 for running a subsidiary company working on behalf of the oligarch\u2019s Project Lakhta, a global political and election interference operation. Malkevich<\/strong>, according to the Treasury Department, ran a company\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0USA Really, which \u201cengaged in efforts to post content focused on divisive political issues but is generally ridden with inaccuracies. In June 2018, USA Really attempted to hold a political rally in the United States, though its efforts were unsuccessful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still another co-organizer of the Baltic Sea conference was the Federal Association for Economic Development and Foreign Trade in Germany, better known by its acronym BWA<\/strong>. BWA and ADMIS consultancy co-hosted AFRIC\u2019s last event in Berlin, an online conference on global consequences of COVID-19 in June 2020.<\/p>\n

BWA is headed by Michael Schumann<\/strong>, a German business consultant specializing in China. Under Schumann\u2019s leadership, BWA has developed partnerships with a series of Russian outfits in Germany including the Association of Russian Businesses and the Dialogue of Civilizations think tank, which was founded in 2016 by Vladimir Yakunin<\/strong>, a former KGB officer and close confidant of Vladimir Putin. Yakunin was the vice president of Russia\u2019s state rail monopoly until 2015, a year after he was sanctioned by the United States for his alleged involvement in Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. So far he has evaded EU sanctions.<\/p>\n

Two other BWA members, Volker Tschapke<\/strong> and Urs Unkauf<\/strong>, acted as AFRIC election observers in Madagascar, DRC, Zimbabwe and South Africa in the past few years. Tschapke and Unkauf were also present at AFRIC\u2019s second and third conferences in Berlin, in July 2019 and January 2020, respectively. Yulia Afanasyeva, Prigozhin\u2019s St. Petersburg-based operative, is also a member of BWA.<\/p>\n

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Misha Japaridze\/AP<\/span><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

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Afanasyeva did not respond to The Daily Beast\u2019s request for comment on this story.<\/p>\n

Adomaityte said in a Zoom interview that she had no information about Afanasyeva\u2019s involvement in the Baltic Sea conference and that she \u201cfelt uncomfortable\u201d talking about AFRIC. She claimed that she was directly hired by BWA in Germany. \u201cWe did [earlier] work together with BWA with the AFRIC institution,\u201d she said. \u201cSo that was the direct link. However, I was directly requested by the BWA to conduct the research study for the Baltic Sea region.\u201d<\/p>\n

This account, however, is contradicted by documents obtained by the Dossier Center indicating that not only was Afanasyeva actively involved in organizing the Baltic Sea event, which she attended virtually, but she was in constant communication with Adomaityte about it. Afanasyeva was included in a back-and-forth exchange setting up the venue in the Berlin Hilton; Adomaityte further kept the Russian abreast of how everything had gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look at the backgrounds [of the people involved], the connection to Prigozhin is clearly visible,\u201d said Indrek Kannik, the former head of analysis of Estonia\u2019s Foreign Intelligence and now the director of the International Centre for Defence and Security in Tallinn. He said the Baltic intelligence services likely follow such influence operations closely.<\/p>\n

According to a person with direct knowledge of how the Baltic Sea conference was organized, Afanasyeva gave a direct order not to touch on matters of international security and instead focus on economics and ecology. That, too, Kannik said, is textbook tradecraft for the early stages of any successful influence operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is noteworthy that they started with politically uncontroversial topics such as the green deal,\u201d Kannik told The Daily Beast:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey start \u2018soft\u2019 and only when they gain some public trustworthiness and a moderately positive image, they take on more relevant topics for the Kremlin such as security, criticism of the Baltic states, Russia\u2019s talking points about dialogue between Europe and Russia, not to mention everything else to do with Crimea and Ukraine.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another classic tradecraft technique employed by the conferences was employing unwitting foreigners to make the events appear legitimate, in this case by producing ancillary literature. A \u201cstrategy recommendation\u201d report, released subsequent to the Berlin conference and branded as an ADMIS Consultancy product, was written by unsuspecting freelancers hired over the internet, The Daily Beast has confirmed. In September, U.S.\u00a0news outlets<\/a>\u00a0reported that Prigozhin\u2019s Internet Research Agency, or \u201ctroll farm,\u201d had set up two fake news websites\u2014one catering to the far right, the other to the far left\u2014which hired unwitting American writers to contribute. Even the avatars of the putative editors of these sites were bogus, their faces generated with AI software. The goal was clearly to launder disinformation and propaganda through native participants, whose worldviews intersect with Kremlin interests.<\/p>\n

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The danger with bricks-and-mortar operations like the conferences is that they\u2019re liable to snare respectable and credible participants who are fixtures at similarly themed events. And the participants don\u2019t necessarily have to be influenced or persuaded by Russia propaganda; their mere presence is itself an operational success. Having, say, a government minister from an EU or NATO country photographed alongside a Prigozhin operative is a great way to signal back to Moscow that these exercises pay off.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In October 2014, months after Russia\u2019s invasion and occupation of Crimea, the psychological warfare of the GRU, Russia\u2019s military intelligence agency, orchestrated an entire security conference in Athens using cut-outs and front groups including a local Greek think tank and a Russian institute purportedly devoted to Russian diaspora issues.\u00a0According to Estonia\u2019s foreign intelligence service<\/a>, an officer from GRU Unit 54777 even participated in a panel discussion next to Panos Kammenos<\/strong>, a Moscow-friendly Greek politician who subsequently became Greece\u2019s defense minister.<\/p>\n

One of the people invited to give a presentation at the Baltic Sea event was Mihkel Krusberg<\/strong>, an Estonian official from the Ministry of Environment. He received a personal invitation from Adomaityte a little over two weeks ahead of the conference. Because Krusberg is frequently asked to attend such forums and the other publicly named guests appeared legitimate, Krusberg told The Daily Beast he didn\u2019t see any red flags in the offer. \u201cHad I known about the background of the organizers, I would have politely turned down their invitation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Baltic Sea Region Strategic Dialogue was not envisaged as a one-off affair. The same group of organizers is already planning a follow-up conference to focus on the relationship between the Baltic and Nordic countries. According to Adomaityte, it\u2019s scheduled to take place online in late March. \u201cHowever we are really hoping to have a physical conference in the summer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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