Russian President Vladimir Putin employed a network of Ukraine-linked individuals to damage the United States’ ties to Ukraine, denigrate U.S. President Joe Biden and his candidacy, and improve former President Donald Trump’s prospects for reelection, according to a declassified U.S. intelligence report released on Tuesday.
“We assess that the goals of this effort went beyond the U.S. presidential campaign to include reducing the Trump administration’s support for Ukraine,” reads the report.
The report names Andriy Derkach, pro-Kremlin Ukrainian lawmaker, and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian and Russian political consultant, as Russia’s influence agents and the primary actors in Russia’s election influence campaign.
“Derkach, Kilimnik, and their associates sought to use prominent U.S. persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to U.S. officials and audiences,” the report said.
The declassified report is the most comprehensive intelligence assessment of foreign efforts to influence the 2020 elections in the U.S. It outlines how Russia engaged Ukrainian actors to undermine both U.S. elections and US-Ukraine relations.
Derkach publicly released audio recordings four times in 2020 in attempts to implicate President Biden and other current or former U.S. Government Officials in allegedly corrupt activities related to Ukraine as part of his attempt to reelect former President Trump.
Derkach also tried to bring these allegations to courts both in the U.S. and Ukraine. Former Ukrainian officials associated with Derkach sought to promote similar claims throughout late 2019 and 2020, including through direct outreach to senior U.S. government officials.
According to the intelligence community’s assessment, Putin had purview over Derkach’s activities.
The report says that Kilimnik took steps throughout the 2020 election to hurt Biden and his candidacy and helped to peddle conspiracy theories that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for interfering in U.S. elections.
Paul Manafort, a former political consultant for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, shared inside information about the U.S. presidential race with Kilimnik and his Russian and Ukrainian associates in 2016, according to a bipartisan report last year by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
The report does not name Rudy Giuliani directly. However, it mentions operations in which materials were provided from Ukraine to American investigators pushing for federal inquiries into President Biden’s family—actions that Giuliani is known to have taken.
The report also assesses that Russia’s cyber units gathered information to inform the Kremlin about the U.S. election.
In late 2019, the GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, conducted a phishing campaign against subsidiaries of Burisma holdings, one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies. This was likely an attempt to gather information related to President Biden’s Family and Burisma, the report says.
President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sat on the supervisory board of Burisma Holding at the same time that his father started to visit the country in order to support the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress and pro-Trump allies repeatedly attempted to accuse President Biden of a conflict of interest. That narrative was widely debunked by media outlets, including the Kyiv Post.
In the backdrop of these cyber attacks is the recent report by U.S. cybersecurity officials that Russia used a conduit company called SolarWinds to attack upward of 250 US federal agencies and businesses.
The U.S. is concerned that Russia would be able to pull off an attack in the U.S. similar to a 2015 attack in Ukraine, which targeted electricity grids and shut off power for six hours in the dead of winter.
Sanctions
The intelligence report mentions that upon review of the findings, the U.S. will impose appropriate sanctions for activities determined to constitute foreign interference in a US election.
Last September, the U.S. Department of the Treasury added Derkach to its list of sanctioned individuals for acting in Russia’s interests and threatening the 2020 presidential election in the U.S.
In January, the treasury added Derkach’s associates to that list, sanctioning lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky, former deputy prosecutor general Kostyantyn Kulyk, and former diplomat Andriy Telizhenko. Kilimik has not been sanctioned by the US for his role in election interference.
Tatyana Shevchuk, of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre in Ukraine, thinks that while the U.S. sanctions were sufficient, the Ukrainian government response has been “disgraceful”.
When Derkach was first sanctioned back in September, the U.S. said he had worked with Russia’s intelligence services to undermine U.S.-Ukraine relations and interfere in U.S. elections. However, Ukraine’s security services have not investigated his actions and he remains a member of Ukraine’s parliament.
“The report clearly identifies Derkach as an FSB operative, so the question goes to Ukraine’s security service: where is a proper investigation into Derkachs’s activities in Ukraine?”
Shevchuk believes that Derkach should be investigated for treason. His associates must also be investigated for knowingly or unknowingly cooperating with Russian agents.
But as Shevchuk pointed out, it took two months for Ukraine’s parliament to sanction and remove lawmakers Dubinsky from Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party. Derkach has a long record of work with Russian intelligence and has been on a sanctions list for more than six months.
While the Ukrainian government could impose sanctions on Derkach, Shevchuk hopes that Ukraine can show “it can prosecute such people.”
Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said that the report will increase pressure on the Biden Administration to punish the Kremlin.
“The Administration recently sanctioned Russia for its treatment of Navalny and his supporters,” said Herbst. “It has not shown an inclination to do so on the election issue; but this report may give it reason to take another look.”
