Exclusive: Andrey Kharchenko, one of the Russian attendees of a much-scrutinized 2018 meeting in a Moscow hotel with Lega leader Matteo Salvini's right-hand, is an FSB Fifth Service officer, @the_ins_ru today reveals. The meeting was to negotiate Russian funding of Lega.
The principal Italian at that event was Gianluca Savoini, Salvini's "sherpa to Russia." Savoini constantly travels to Russia, sometimes for no more than a day. He was a big reason Lega signed a partnership agreement with Putin's United Russia in 2017. 
The Metropol affair was broken in the Italian press by @StefanoVergine and @GiovanniTizian. A recording of the meeting was then leaked to @BuzzFeed. Then the identities of all participants, including Kharchenko, was confirmed by @the_ins_ru, @bellingcat, etc.
But Kharchenko's role as a spy has never been publicly established-- until now.
The bribery scheme mooted at the hotel was simple: a major Russian oil giant would sell an Italian oil company via intermediary brokers about 3 metric tons of oil for $1.5 billion -- a $65 million discount given market prices at the time.
That $65 million would go to Lega's coffers, with of course a little beak-wetting factored in for the Russian side.
Italian law as of 2018 banned Italian political parties from accepting foreign donations in excess of €100,000, owing to a loophole that's now been closed. At any event, $65 million would have still been a no-no.
The Metropol meeting looked as if it was close to finalizing a deal, part of a series of negotiations between Lega and the Russians extending over many months. @StefanoVergine and @GiovanniTizian's reporting put an end to those negotiations. Salvini/Savoini obfuscated.
An Italian investigation was opened into the affair. It was dismissed last summer for lack of sufficient evidence. For one thing, there's no proof any money changed hands. For another, to meet the standards for an international corruption case...
... there has to be evidence that the parties involved were public officials. Savoini was an adviser at the time. The rest of the participants were consultants, businessmen or people of obscure backgrounds, such as Kharchenko.
While certainly doing everything possible to avoid publicity as a spy, he was definitely a Russian official -- a fact unknown until today. Might that complicate the judge's decision to dismiss the investigation? We'll see.
Also, Kharchenko isn't just any spook, by the way. He is a protege and former student of Aleksandr Dugin, Russia's foremost fascist philosopher. He obtained a PhD in political philosophy with Dugin as his adviser.
They're clearly likeminded. Kharchenko's dissertation was about the moral and geopolitical dangers posed by heedless migration and cellphone selfies. Dugin may well have been the connection to Savoini, too.
Dugin was photographed with Salvini's consigliere a day before the Metropol meeting, on October 17, 2018. That night, Salvini (who was also in Moscow at the time) met with Russia's Deputy PM Dmitry Kozak, who is alluded to at the Metropol as someone needing to weigh in...
... on any details vis-a-vis the oil deal. Dugin, meanwhile, has known Savoini for years. Savoini has liaised with Tsargard, the Russian media network owned by sanctioned "Orthodox oligarch" Konstantin Malofeev. Tsargard acts as a sort of Comintern for the European far-right.
Dugin and Savoini have wrangled to host any number of these actors from Germany's AfD, Austria's FPO, or France's FN. Leaked emails show Savoini asking Dugin's daughter Darya (since blown up by Ukrainian intelligence in Moscow) to ask her father to come to...
..."a great meeting of Lega with Marine Le Pen" and also attend a "private lunch" with Salvini. (Mamma mia!) newlinesmag.com/reportage/excl…
The nexus between Dugin, the son of a GRU lieutenant colonel, and the contemporary Russian special services merits further study. It is key to understanding the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, as @pierrevaux and I argued in this report: 4freerussia.org/vile-bodies/
Lo and behold, we now find one of Dugin's younger, former pupils nestled comfortably within the FSB Fifth Service, the unit tasked for a decade with politically destabilizing Ukraine in advance of war. Ukraine is a country Dugin wants to see "wiped off the face of the earth."
Dugin's pupil was looking to co-opt a powerful European party opposed to sanctions on Russia and outwardly very fond of Russia and its dictator. (In 2018, the year of the Metropol meeting, Lega had the second-highest number of seats in Italian parliament.)
So where, you ask, is Andrey Kharchenko these days?
Well, he's got a new gig working for Igor Levitin (another Fifth Service officer), who is today Vladimir Putin's presidential assistant. Here they are meeting with Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber in January 2023. (Kharchenko, far left, is looking at his papers.)
And here they are meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani in November 2023, just a few months ago. Russian spies have excellent access in the corridors of power in the Middle East. (Kharchenko, far left, is writing again.)
Our partners in this investigation were (naturally) @StefanoVergine and @GiovanniTizian. Their story for the Italian newspaper Domani is here. /END editorialedomani.it/fatti/caso-met…
@StefanoVergine @GiovanniTizian And a link to our story, which somehow got lost in the first tweet: theins.press/en/politics/26…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
