NEW YORK: A Russian legislator and two aides pushed a covert propaganda campaign aimed at winning U.S. government support for Russia's foreign policy agenda, including moves against Ukraine, according to a Justice Department indictment unsealed on Thursday.
The effort was part of what American officials describe as a broader Russian government objective to sway public opinion in its favor, to sow discord in American institutions and to drive wedges between the U.S. and European allies.
In this case, prosecutors say, the legislators sought to co-opt American and European political officials, including members of the U. S. Congress, and also sought to enter the U.S. under false pretenses to participate in meetings.
The legislator, Aleksandr Babakov, 59, is identified in the indictment as a high-ranking Russian government official from the same political party as Russian President Vladimir Putin who currently serves as deputy chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature.
Two of his staff members, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Vorobev, 52, and Mikhail Alekseyevich Plisyuk, 58, were also charged in Manhattan's federal court.
All three men named are based in Russia and remain at large, authorities said.
They are accused of conspiring to have a U.S. citizen act as a foreign agent for Russia and Russian officials without notifying the Justice Department; with conspiring to evade U.S.sanctions; and with visa fraud conspiracy.
"Today's indictment demonstrates that Russia's illegitimate actions against Ukraine extend beyond the battlefield, as political influencers under Russia's control allegedly plotted to steer geopolitical change in Russia's favor through surreptitious and illegal means in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
"Such malign foreign interference will be exposed, and we will pursue justice against its perpetrators."
The case is part of a concerted Justice Department crackdown against Russia, with prosecutors in recent weeks unsealing cases against an oligarch accused of sanctions violations, a tycoon charged with illegal campaign contributions and, now, a surreptitious effort to sway public opinion in the United States through the spread of propaganda.
Amid Russia's war against Ukraine, the Justice Department also launched a task force to enforce sanctions violations and export restrictions imposed on Russian figures.
The indictment depicts an effort to reach inside the power chambers of Washington, with the defendants accused of contacting at least one member of Congress five years ago to offer free travel to a conference in Yalta that they and their associates had been working to organize and promote.
The conference was intended to support Sergey Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea who had been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his policies threatening Ukraine's sovereignty.
The congressman, who is not identified by name in the indictment, declined the offer, prosecutors said.
The defendants are accused of seeking to "co-opt" American and European politicians and of recruiting an American citizen and other individuals to help advance pro-Kremlin interests.
The effort included requesting a meeting with a member of Congress to push Russia's agenda in the United States and submitting phony visa applications to travel to the U.S. under the false pretenses of a vacation when they were actually intending to hold meetings with U.S. political figures, the indictment said.
The visa applications were ultimately denied.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Russia on Thursday of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere even worse by invading Ukraine, calling it "just another grim example of the ripple effect Russia's unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war is having on the world's most vulnerable."
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a U.N. Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen that the World Food Program identified the Arab world's poorest nation as one of the countries most affected by wheat price increases and lack of imports from Ukraine.
Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky shot back saying: "The main factor for instability and the source of the problem today is not the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but sanctions measures imposed on our country seeking to cut off any supplies from Russia and the supply chain, apart from those supplies that those countries in the West need, in other words energy."
"If you really want to help the world avoid a food crisis you should lift the sanctions that you yourselves imposed, your sanctions of choice indeed, and poor countries will immediately feel the difference," he said.
"And if you're not prepared to do that, then don't get involved in demagoguery, and don't mislead everybody."
The sharp exchange took place a day after a U.N. task force warned that the war threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are now facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched their report saying, "As many as 1.7 billion people -- one-third of whom are already living in poverty -- are now highly exposed to disruptions in food, energy and finance systems that are triggering increases in poverty and hunger."
Thirty-six countries rely on Russia and Ukraine for more than half their wheat imports, including some of the world's poorest countries, he said, and wheat and corn prices have risen 30% just since the start of the year.
Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the U.N. agency promoting trade and development who coordinated the task force, said the 1.7 billion people live in 107 countries that have "severe exposure" to at least one dimension of the crisis -- rising food prices, increasing energy prices and tightening financial conditions.
The task force said 69 of the countries, with a population of 1.2 billion people, face a "perfect storm" and are severely or significantly exposed to all three crises.
They include 25 countries in Africa, 25 in Asia and the Pacific, and 19 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The United Nations on Thursday announced it was releasing $100 million from its emergency fund for seven hunger hotspots, Yemen and six African countries -- Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan and Nigeria.
"Hundreds of thousands of children are going to sleep hungry every night while their parents are worried sick about how to feed them," U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement.
"A war halfway around the world makes their prospects even worse. This allocation will save lives."
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric was asked about Polyansky's comments and whether Guterres is concerned that sanctions are driving up food prices.
"I think it would be safe to say that there would be no sanctions if there were no conflict," Dujarric replied.