A Russian intelligence operative who’s leading a Kremlin disinformation campaign in across the African continent has helped run influence operations in Europe for years, according to documents Bloomberg has seen and government officials familiar with the matter.
Artem Kureyev, identified as a Russian Federal Security Service agent in an Estonian court case in 2022, has had frequent contact with at least half a dozen European journalists, arranged and covered travel costs for some of them to visit occupied territories in Ukraine, and at times appears to have offered to pay for planted news articles, the documents show.
On other occasions, he has adopted more subtle methods to try to sway coverage by arranging interviews as well as flagging and debating topics in the news or organizing press events.