A confidential report prepared by the intelligence and situation center of the European Union (Intcen) details Russia's attempts to influence the crisis in Catalonia and draws links between the independence movement and the Kremlin.
The document, from November 2017, a month after the secessionist referendum, speaks of the networks "associated with the Russian intelligence services" and their presence in Catalonia, of meetings of people from the Kremlin's orbit with the Catalan Government and of meetings of people “directed” by another of the Russian secret services (the FSB) with “businessmen” from Barcelona.
“Several Russian and Russian-associated individuals and separatist entities [linked to Moscow] have used, in a coordinated effort, a wide range of hybrid tools (active measures) to influence the Catalan crisis,” says the report to which it has had access. THE COUNTRY.
“It is highly unlikely that these activities would be carried out without the approval and support of the Russian Government (Kremlin),” he notes.
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Russia sought to influence the Catalan crisis with the tools at its disposal, the European document concludes.
He managed cybernetic instruments, such as “Russian and Venezuelan robot networks,” to amplify messages on social networks and give greater international dissemination.
He also used other tools, such as “individuals associated with the intelligence services” and political figures from pro-Russian secessionist movements in South Ossetia and Ukraine, also linked to Moscow espionage and whose ties continue to the Kremlin, according to the same report consulted by this diary.
The text analyzes some of those people who “offered their support” to “Catalan independence leaders”, whose names it does not reveal;
nor those of businessmen.
The document, which details that it has been prepared with “highly credible intelligence information that has been corroborated,” has been written with the data and elements provided by several European secret services, since the EU does not have its own service, with agents on the land.
The Intcen report, which depends on the External Action Service, does not detail why it was written or if it was commissioned by the community Executive (which changed in 2019), but it shows the concern in the European Union about what happened in Catalonia during the referendum. secessionist
“Many of the hybrid tools (active measures) that have been used [in Catalonia] and the people who have been active are recognized in other countries,” says the document, which complements another intelligence report on Russian interference in the US elections. 2016 elections – which ended with a victory for Republican Donald Trump – in which the Kremlin carried out a “concerted campaign to influence the outcome.”
The report speaks of an “emboldened” Russia and the possibility that it will try to repeat its tactics in elections in European countries, “to try to influence the results in its favor.”
The individuals and organizations that lead to the Kremlin
The EU Intcen report on the Kremlin's interference in the 2017 secessionist crisis focuses on three Russians – two of them with a presence in Catalonia and another with various contacts – that it associates with the secret services, and traces their steps until linking them with high-ranking Russian Government officials.
One of those key people in the plot, and also recognized in other countries, is Alexander Ionov, whom the report defines as “suspected of having perpetrated cyberattacks” with a hacker network
linked
to the GRU (Russian military intelligence) and who also is president of the Anti-globalization Movement of Russia, an entity founded in 2012 that has carried out activities financed by the Kremlin (such as congresses), in which the report details that one of the independence movements, Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència, has participated, which the document defined as “radical”.
The European intelligence center analyzes Ionov in the section that it dedicates, above all, to the messages about the constitutional crisis, the disinformation and propaganda of the media in the Kremlin's orbit, the amplification on social networks - in which he also speaks of figures such as Edward Snowden, exiled in Moscow, and Julian Assange, whose entourage, according to the document, helped shield the telecommunications of the independence leaders.
It also details other hybrid activities, among which it specifies the “election observers commissioned by Russian front groups that were detected in Catalonia.”
Ionov, who has been a lawyer for Russian
hackers
charged in the US for cyberespionage in the 2016 election campaign, is accused in that country of orchestrating a campaign of foreign malign influence for years, of using his anti-globalization organization to recruit political groups Americans to promote Russian state interests, spread pro-Russian propaganda and interfere in elections, according to data from the 2023 case.
The document also talks about Dmitri Medoyev, who was the de facto minister of South Ossetia – self-proclaimed independent from Georgia a little more than three decades ago with the political, economic and military support of the Kremlin, which maintains bases in that territory – and mentions his communications with the Catalan independence movement - and other contacts in regions of Italy at times when referendums were also held to request greater autonomy.
He also points out his visits to Barcelona after the 1-O secessionist referendum with the aim of “establishing links” and in which he assured that he was going to open an Ossetian representative office.
The report also details the contacts of the Catalan regional government with Alexander Zakharchenko, a pro-Russian Ukrainian separatist and leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) until he was murdered in a bomb attack in a cafe in Donetsk, the Ukrainian city controlled by the Kremlin, summer 2018.
“We assess that these contact tracing activities are possibly led by the Russian security service FSB,” says Intcen.
“The anti-globalists, the individuals from South Ossetia and the DPR do not act alone or at random,” he continues.
“These individuals and entities are controlled by Russia and are important tools for the FSB and GRU.
For example, it is very likely that South Ossetia is being used as a financial center for the Kremlin to support Ukrainian separatists,” says the 2017 report, three years after the start of the Donbas war promoted by the Kremlin through pro-Russian separatists, which two years ago led to the large-scale invasion launched by Vladimir Putin.
“Thus, Medoyev's meeting with businessmen from Barcelona attracts special interest,” says Intcen.
In its reconstruction of the who's who, the document notes Zakharchenko's “close association” with Alexander Borodai, his predecessor as secessionist leader in Donetsk.
“It is most likely that Borodai is a high-ranking FSB official, in charge of coordinating separatist movements,” notes the European report, which also places him in Transdiester in the 1990s—during the secessionist conflict—and in which it states that he played “unclear anti-separatist tasks” in Chechnya, where through two wars Russia destroyed the secessionist movement.
Borodai, in turn, is associated with the philosopher Alexander Dugin—father of Eurasianism—and with Vladislav Surkov, one of the fathers of
Putinism
, according to the EU Intcen report, which also documents the relationship with a photograph of the three men. .
In addition to the Kremlin strategist, Surkov was responsible for the government of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Donbas, he notes.
“Surkov and Borodai are assigned special political projects, including separatism and front groups,” the report says.
Surkov left the Kremlin in 2020, in 2022 after the war in Ukraine and the failures in the offensive launched by the Kremlin he was placed under house arrest accused of embezzlement of funds for Donbas and now has an unclear position.
Russia, destabilizing but opportunistic
A few weeks ago, the European Parliament once again requested an investigation into the links of the Catalan independence movement with Russia and the Kremlin's interference in the
process
in a resolution promoted by the case of a Latvian MEP suspected of being in the pay of Moscow, and who also asks to investigate – at the initiative of the European People's Party and the liberal group that includes Ciudadanos – Carles Puigdemont, president of the Generalitat during the
process
, fled from Spain in 2017 and MEP since 2019.
In the framework of that session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the vice president of the Community Executive for European Lifestyle, Margaritis Schinas, referred to “reports” about “regular contacts and organized visits between Russian officials and representatives of a group of Catalan independence supporters. ”.
All as before the European elections in June, crucial for the stability of the EU, and with the shadow of the interference of Russia, which has maintained a strategy of sowing to destabilize the West by supporting divisive political movements through propaganda, disinformation,
hacking
, information leaks, covert financing of political movements and other measures.
The European intelligence report notes that Russian actions related to geopolitical objectives “are essentially opportunistic.”
“Russia attempts to exploit vulnerabilities as they arise.
In some cases, we believe that Russia may be delayed due to lack of opportunities, changes in risk calculations or other geopolitical objectives, such as 'approach' signals or similar,” the confidential report notes.
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