Rewards for Justice is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any foreign person, including a foreign entity, who knowingly engaged or is engaging in interference in U.S. elections, as well as information leading to the prevention, frustration, or favorable resolution of an act of foreign election interference.
Rewards for Justice is seeking information on Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian national who engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States. Ionov uses his positions and various companies to promulgate the Kremlin’s disinformation and malign influence agenda.
Ionov is the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. AGMR has maintained connections with separatists and anti-establishment groups in the United States and abroad, holding conferences and protests in the United States in opposition to U.S. policy. AGMR has received funding from Russia’s National Charity Fund, a trust created by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin which gathers money from Russia’s state-owned companies and oligarchs. Ionov utilized AGMR to carry out Russia’s influence campaign.
Since at least the summer of 2020, Ionov cooperated and coordinated with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to identify socio-political points of contention within the United States. He provided support, usually in the form of monetary donations, to organizations that he and Russia’s intelligence services believed would create socio-political disturbances in the United States. In the summer of 2021, Ionov informed the FSB about a known U.S. person’s political ambitions;the FSB subsequently expressed an interest in this person.
Ionov cooperates with Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s Project Lakhta entities to publish and disseminate disinformation. Project Lakhta is a Kremlin-linked global influence and disinformation operation funded by Prigozhin. In the summer of 2021, Ionov sought to collaborate with Prigozhin’s Foundation for Battling Injustice (FBR) about the feasibility of directly supporting a specific candidate in a 2022 U.S. gubernatorial election. In mid-2021, Ionov worked to disseminate and promulgate disinformation that would influence the U.S. election process and exacerbate the socio-political division within the United States.
In July 2022, Ionov was charged by U.S. authorities with conspiring to have U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government.
Anyone with information on Aleksandr Ionov or associated entities and/or individuals linked to foreign interference in U.S. elections should contact Rewards for Justice via our Tor-based tips-reporting channel at: he5dybnt7sr6cm32xt77pazmtm65flqy6irivtflruqfc5ep7eiodiad.onion (Tor browser required).