Thread by @SlickRockWeb

Wow, @donie wasn't kidding. This really is a fascinating indictment from the DOJ. Russian FSB having proxy control and influence over three political groups in the US since at least 2014. This is going to be a fun one to watch play out. #disinfo #InfoOps justice.gov/opa/pr/russian…

Well US group 1 is rather obvious. I remember a number of yrs ago I was told they were infiltrated & a Kremlin proxy group and I didn't fully believe it at the time. Over the yrs its become obvious and really clear more recently with their propaganda around the Russian invasion.

If I am correct ... they are obnoxiously anti-war ... except when Russia is involved. Others appear to be naming and shaming ... like US Group 2 apparently IDed by @bellingcat

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1553087394886197248

Seems the consensus for Group 3 is "Yes California". Looks pretty solid ... especially the bio for one of the founders.

Boy the Russian FSB covered their bases ... California secessionist group, militant African American group & a leftwing Anti-war group. These are only the ones that got caught. I can promise you there are others currently operating that have not yet been caught. #disinfo #infoOps

So I was wrong about US Group 1 ... although my guess is they are still heavily infiltrated. But according to this article it would appear US Group 1 is the Uhuru Movement. We definitely have seen them before and because of a linkage to Russian propaganda. wtsp.com/article/news/l…

Well as @Red_eyedjedi said ... I guess there were signs ... blaring!! 🤦‍♂️

https://twitter.com/DemopJ/status/1549925739881013251

Holy hell this is weird .... also I thought Gavin had walked away from the Proud Boys many yrs prior.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220729225448/https://twitter.com/BlkHmmrTimes/status/1470457436083572742

Interesting ... so Ionov had also been facilitating some fundraising for the defense of Maria Butina in 2019. Of course he was.

Wow the very day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is a little ironic ... these groups claiming to be anti-imperialist and yet supported the invasion of a sovereign country with a democratically elected leader #StandWithUkraine

Websites (and not too surprising) that the social media accounts for some these groups from the DOJ indictment like to interact with.

So it kind of seems like the Russian invasion of #Ukraine may have been a contributing factor in part triggering this cascade. Ionov got sanctioned and got more scrutiny leading to very obvious connections to US activist groups. An email the day of the war & then two days later

And these ... not so subtle pro-Kremlin propaganda.

So some of Alexander Ionov's social media is quite interesting .... h/t @ushadrons... as one would expect given what we just found out. Hmmm ... Cynthia ... didn't you previously run for President (3rd party) and was a Georgia congresswoman for over 10 yrs?

Yup FSB linked Ionov wasn't subtle ... there were blaring signs.

Related and crazy investigative article by @elisethoma5 and @bellingcat. When they have something to say, its bound to be really captivating and wild.

https://twitter.com/elisethoma5/status/1553153628902289408

Looking at Alexander Ionov's web properties & infrastructure using @PassiveTotal reveals quite a bit. For example one dedicated IP 5.178.87[.]16 at Selectel in Saint Petersburg Russia hosted his anti-global(.)ru website for ~3 yrs. And hosted other sites like these #OSINT

So its clear from the @riskiq analysis that Ionov was also likely running the stop-imperialism(.)com site & associated Twitter account @/STOPIMPERIAL. The stop-imperialism site also repackaged the "Burning Spear" content from the Uhuru Movement group in Florida. #OSINT #disinfo

Here is some interesting redmeat in these 2015 tweets from @/StopImperial. So it appears that Ionov & crew did not build out the Stop-prison(.)org website for whatever reason. We have so far been unable to find any real content besides a Facebook reference in 2016 ... I believe