The European Union is preparing sanctions against Russians involved in information warfare and hybrid attacks. This is reported by the investigative project Sistema, which has familiarized itself with the draft document (it is at the disposal of Radio Liberty).
The sanctions, which are expected to be announced on Monday, December 16, will be imposed against individuals involved in Russian hybrid operations, information manipulation and attempts to undermine democratic processes around the world. The list will include 16 individuals and three companies.
They will include individuals involved in Operation Doppelgänger (“Doppelgänger”), a disinformation campaign that Russia has deployed since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is aimed at audiences in Western countries. In the course of the operation, websites mimicking major international media outlets and other authoritative sources are publishing fake news.
According to the version of European officials, the operation was headed by Nikolai Tupikin, head of GK Struktura LLC. Sofia Zakharova, an employee of the Russian presidential administration, was also actively involved in the operation. She may also be associated with projects that discredit the Russian opposition – this is the first time that such a justification for sanctions has been found in EU documents. In addition to them, TV presenter and deputy CEO of Gazprom-Media Tinatin (Tina) Kandelaki, who, according to EU officials, is engaged in propaganda justifying Russian aggression in Ukraine, may fall under the sanctions. In the territories of the country occupied by Moscow, Kandelaki’s media structures were involved in replacing Ukrainian TV channels with Russian ones.
Among the representatives of law-enforcement agencies, FSB officer Artem Kureyev is among the candidates for the sanctions list. The EU believes that he coordinated operations to spread disinformation in Europe and Africa, launched the Rusafro and African Initiative propaganda projects, spread disinformation accusing the West of “bioweapons experiments”.
The EU also intends to accuse GRU officers Yurii Sizov and Valerii Lipchenko, GRU Major General Andrei Averyanov and the GRU military unit 29115 headed by him of organizing sabotage and hybrid attacks. According to information already published by investigative journalists from The Insider and Bloomberg, these individuals were involved in disinformation companies that replicated claims about “genetically modified mosquitoes” and that Western companies, under the guise of vaccination, allegedly used the African population as a “free clinical base.” Sizov and Lipchenko’s activities allegedly included the creation of agent networks, arson and attacks on critical infrastructure in the EU and Ukraine. The authors of the document claim that Russian authorities may have used gold mined in Mali to finance their campaigns.
Employees of the 29155th military unit, the document says, have been linked to a number of European GRU operations. For example, an investigation by Czech weekly Respekt and Bellingcat said that a Russian military intelligence operation to organize a sabotage at weapons depots in the Czech Republic in the fall of 2014 was personally supervised by Averyanov. According to The Insider, officers of this military unit have been involved in sabotage in Europe since 2011.
