Accused of intervention in St. Petersburg fell under US sanctions

In April, the US Department of Justice named Popov and Sukhodolov FSB officers and accused them of secretly financing candidates in US elections, including in St. Petersburg, Florida. Now sanctions have been imposed against the Russians US Treasury building

The US authorities have added two Russian citizens to the sanctions list, the US Treasury Department's Office for Foreign Assets Control said in a statement.

The list includes Yegor Popov, born in 1992, and Alexei Sukhodolov, born in 1974.

In April, the US Department of Justice named Popov and Sukhodolov FSB officers and accused them of secretly financing candidates in the St. Petersburg (Florida) elections. At the same time, the president of the anti-globalization movement of RUSSIA, Alexander Ionov, fell under the suspicions of the Ministry of Justice. According to the department, Ionov participated in a “foreign campaign of harmful influence” directed against the United States from November 2014 to July 2022, and Sukhodolov and Popov controlled him from Moscow.

They are believed in Washington to have recruited members of the African Popular Socialist Party in Florida, the Black Hammer Party in Georgia, and another unnamed political party in California to “act as unregistered illegal agents of the Russian government, sowing discord and spreading pro-Russian propaganda.” The four American citizens accused in this case are members of these parties.

The indictment alleges that the Russians were also involved in clandestinely funding certain candidates for the 2019 St. Petersburg local elections. According to the Ministry of Justice, Popov directly called this work on behalf of the FSB "our election campaign", and Ionov called the candidate "a candidate whom we supervise." Together, the charges against Ionov, Sukhodolov and Popov face up to five years in prison, while the Americans face up to ten years in prison.

The United States has been accusing Russia of meddling in elections since 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidential election . In 2017, U.S. intelligence released a report on the subject that said it was "with a high degree of certainty" that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a campaign to interfere in the presidential election. The Kremlin dismissed the accusations contained in the report as unfounded.

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The ex-president of the United States himself has repeatedly called such messages "fake news" and "witch hunts." Vladimir Putin said that one of the purposes of accusations against Trump is to impose sanctions against Russia.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who led the investigation into collusion and election interference, found no evidence to link the Trump campaign to Moscow. However, he concluded that Russia did interfere in the election to help Trump and exacerbate tensions in American society. Russia denied this accusation as well. In June of this year, another special counsel, John Durham, also said that no evidence had been found of Trump's collusion with Russian intelligence agencies.