Ukrainian MP named as ‘Russian agent’
The US Treasury Department has sanctioned a member of Ukraine’s parliament for running an ‘‘influence campaign’’ against former vice president Joe Biden, dubbing the lawmaker ‘‘an active Russian agent for over a decade’’ who has maintained ‘‘close connections with Russian intelligence services’’.
The sanctions against Andriy Derkach – who in an attempt to tarnish the Democratic nominee for president released pilfered and edited phone conversations that Biden had years ago with Ukraine’s leadership – come less than two months before the 2020 presidential election and mark the most aggressive public action the US government has taken to date to staunch foreign interference ahead of the vote.
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has met twice with Derkach since late last year and publicised the Ukrainian lawmaker’s claims on his podcast and elsewhere, elevating what the Treasury Department has now characterised as a foreign interference campaign by an active Russian agent aimed at influencing the 2020 election. Giuliani met Derkach in Kiev late last year, just as the House prepared to impeach Trump over a pressure campaign orchestrated by Giuliani to induce the Ukrainian government into announcing probes of Biden.
Derkach later visited Giuliani in New York, months before he began releasing the tapes of Biden at news conferences in Kiev.
Derkach ‘‘and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,’’ Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said. ‘‘The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.’’
The Treasury Department said Derkach had ‘‘directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 US presidential election’’.
‘‘Today’s designation of Derkach is focused on exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting our upcoming elections from foreign interference,’’ the department said.
‘‘This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated.’’
In addition to sanctioning Derkach, the Treasury Department also sanctioned three individuals from the Internet Research Agency, the St Petersburg-based troll factory that created fake accounts on social media during the 2016 campaign in attempt to influence the election. The department said the three individuals supported the IRA’s cryptocurrency accounts, which were used to fund such operations. One of them was also charged with a fraud conspiracy in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The sanctions come a day after a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security alleged in a whistleblower complaint he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election in part because it ‘‘made the President look bad.’’
A former member of Ukraine’s Russia-leaning Party of Regions, Derkach was educated at the Higher School of the KGB in Moscow before entering business and politics in independent Ukraine after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
In a statement to The Washington Post earlier this year, Derkach praised Giuliani for co-operating with his activities and denied working for or with any foreign intelligence agencies, saying such accusations were attempts to stop his work combating international corruption.
‘‘There is not a single confirmed or reliable fact of my illegal activity or wrongful connections,’’ Derkach said.
He said many high-ranking officials in countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact studied at Moscow’s premier intelligence academy.
The Treasury Department said
that all property interests Derkach holds subject to US jurisdiction would be frozen, and US persons would be prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him. The sanctions also block entities that are 50 per cent or more owned by him from doing business in the United States.
Derkach didn’t respond to a request for comment on the sanctions. Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, declined to comment.
Since last year, Derkach has been running a full-fledged cam
paign against Biden and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko from Kiev, complete with an English-language website and YouTube channel and a conspiratorial flowchart featuring the former vice president and financier George Soros at the centre.
The Ukrainian lawmaker called his campaign ‘‘DemoCorruption,’’ making an array of spurious allegations – including some that Giuliani helped publicise in the United States – against Biden and US officials who worked with him. In May, he began holding news conferences at which he revealed edited snippets of recordings from telephone conversations Biden had with Poroshenko while leading diplomacy towards Ukraine.
According to the Treasury Department, Derkach was waging an influence campaign that cultivated false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning US officials in the 2020 vote and sought to spur corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States ‘‘designed to culminate prior to election day.’’ The Ukrainian lawmaker’s unsubstantiated narratives, the Treasury Department said, were pushed in Western media through coverage of his news conferences and interviews and statements he gave.
‘‘Derkach almost certainly targeted the US voting populace, prominent US persons, and members of the US government, based on his reliance on US platforms, English-language documents and videos, and proRussian lobbyists in the United States used to propagate his claims,’’ the department said.
Derkach’s allegations were seized upon by One America News, a favourite network of the president that has featured pro-Trump conspiracy theories. One America News conducted interviews with Derkach and publicised his allegations against Biden, helping inject the narrative the Ukrainian lawmaker was seeking to promote into the American political ecosystem ahead of the election.
A spokeswoman for One America News did not respond to a request for comment.
The sanctions have punctuated a political dispute on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have warned that Senate Republicans risk legitimising information from figures like Derkach as part of their probe into the Bidens and Ukraine.
‘‘This is, of course, the same Kremlin agent who has been meeting and communicating with the President’s personal lawyer and peddling this false information to Congress,’’ House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said yesterday.
Derkach said that he had also sent materials to Congress in an attempt to spark investigations into his claims there.
Giuliani did not respond to calls seeking comment yesterday. In an interview with The Post earlier this year, Giuliani said he knew Derkach ‘‘quite well’’ and that the Ukrainian lawmaker ‘‘has been very helpful to me’’. Asked if Derkach, had provided him with materials, Giuliani said, ‘‘Oh my God, yeah.’’
Giuliani denied he was being used as pawn in a Russian influence campaign, saying Derkach didn’t seem pro-Russian and appeared to be ‘‘totally dedicated to a free Ukraine’’.
– Washington Post