Author: Lucie Sýkorová, HlidaciPes.org
Vladimir Sergiyenko, a former assistant to two members of the German Bundestag for the AfD party, has been placed on the new EU sanctions list. For the first time, this list also focuses on Russian hybrid threats and destabilizing actions. One of the three entities that made it to the list is also Unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU). Its agents were said to be behind the explosion of an ammunition depot in Vrbětice and the well-known case of the poisoning of agent Skripal with Novichok.
The fifteenth package of European sanctions adopted in mid-December 2024 includes 54 individuals and 30 organizations that “undermine or threaten the territorial integrity of Ukraine”. In addition, for the first time ever, the European Council also imposed sanctions on 16 individuals and three entities responsible for Russia’s hybrid threats and destabilizing actions abroad.
Vladimir Sergiyenko, who was born in Ukraine and has lived in Germany for more than thirty years, has worked in recent years as a parliamentary assistant to German Bundestag members Ulrich Oehme and Eugen Schmidt (both AfD).
He openly supported Russia and, according to German investigative media, was connected to the same Russian FSB group as former Latvian MEP Tatjana Zhdanoka.
In August 2023, The Insider and Der Spiegel magazines published information about Sergiyenko’s email and text correspondence with an FSB agent known as “Alexey.” According to media reports, this is Ilya Vechtomov, an officer in the fifth service of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the successor agencies to the Soviet-era KGB.
This FSB unit was also supposed to have assigned tasks to former Latvian MEP Tatjana Zhdanoka. According to investigative media, it has been cooperating with Russian intelligence services since at least 2005.
In an email response to Der Spiegel, Sergiyenko denied having any ties to Russian intelligence or agent Ilya Vechtomov. However, he was indicted by the revealed communication with Vechtomov and also travel records. According to German media, these show that Sergiyenko has visited Russia eighteen times since the beginning of the war.
He even flew to Moscow on February 23, 2022, the day before the invasion began. He was checked by customs officers at least twice when returning from these trips from Russia, and on both occasions he was supposed to have 9,000 euros in cash with him. The maximum amount that can be brought into Germany from a foreign country is ten thousand euros.
AfD lawsuit against aid to Ukraine
Sergiyenko was also supposed to have requested 93 thousand dollars from FSB officer Vechtomov to finance legal services. One of the results of his work was to be a lawsuit by the AfD party based on the thesis that the German government cannot send any military aid to Ukraine without the consent of the Bundestag – not only tanks, but also non-lethal equipment such as woolen blankets and sleeping bags.
In July 2023, the AfD parliamentary group did indeed file such a lawsuit with the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. When asked by Spiegel, the AfD parliamentary group denied the connection between this lawsuit and Sergiyenko’s communication with Vechtomov.
Sergiyenko’s other tasks for Vechtomov were to write a letter to Pope Francis describing the “persecution of Christians in Ukraine.” The letter was sent on behalf of several AfD politicians and the pro-Russian NGO Vadar (Association for the Defense against Discrimination and Exclusion of Russian Germans and Russian-Speaking Fellow Citizens in Germany), which Sergiyenko founded with politicians in 2022. Sergiyenko even sent a draft of the letter to Vechtomov for approval.
Phone bill records examined by journalists from The Insider and Der Spiegel show that Sergiyenko also communicated with Sargis Mirzakhanian, a Russian parliamentarian who runs an organization called the International Agency for Contemporary Politics.
The organization was founded in 2014 after Russia’s occupation of Crimea and “paid politicians thousands of euros to submit pro-Russian resolutions in European legislatures,” according to the network of investigative journalists OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project).
Vladimir Sergiyenko, along with AfD politicians Ulrich Oehme, Eugene Schmidt and others, was very active in spreading pro-Russian narratives. They often used the Vadar association for these activities.
According to Der Speigel’s findings, the association complained on Telegram about allegedly widespread Russophobia in Germany, financed the legal representation of pro-Russian influencer Alina Lippo, and spoke out against Germany’s ban on the Z symbol.
It also spread disinformation about Russian atrocities, for example claiming that the massacre in the town of Bucha, which left more than 400 dead, was “organized by the Ukrainian regime to discredit the Russian army.”
In his role as an assistant to AfD MP Eugen Schmidt, Sergiyenko was also supposed to help write speeches for lawmakers and other AfD members.
Eugen Schmidt, who employed Sergiyenko until 2024, will no longer sit in the new Bundestag. Although he ran again in his district of Oberberg, he was not nominated by the AfD party at the nomination meeting in early January.
According to Der Spiegel magazine, Sergiyenko applied for German citizenship in 2019 and actually obtained it in mid-November 2022. Since the German authorities only later discovered that he also had a Russian passport, his citizenship was suspended. He was subsequently included in the EU sanctions list as a result of revelations by investigative journalists and was subsequently expelled from Germany.
Look who I am
Even after his expulsion from Germany, Sergiyenko apparently continues to follow German politics and regularly comments on it on the X platform. In bad German, but with a lot of emotion.
In March, he declared himself a politically persecuted person on X, and in February and January, he declared himself a victim of Der Spiegel magazine and an exiled dissident who is demanding the lifting of sanctions, an apology from the media, and financial compensation.
“I am a victim of Spiegel! Spiegel stripped me of my German citizenship, I was expelled from Germany, I cannot use a bank account or do business and I am banned from entering the EU! My name is in the 15th EU sanctions package. I would like to punish this dump Spiegel and the corrupt ‘journalists’ who work there!”
In the same post, he also publicly addressed the owner of the X network, Elon Musk. “@elonmusk good luck! be careful, the dump Spiegel does not hesitate to report to the secret services and the secret services in response are looking for opportunities to harm those who had the courage to tell the truth about Spiegel.”
He later approached Musk in the same way with a personal offer. “Elon, I know Germans well. I know like-minded people who have undergone Ukrainization of their brains. Tesla can safely rely on Russian labor. Let’s move the factory to Russia! I’ll help you!” Elon Musk has a Tesla factory in Berlin, where Sergiyenko lived before being expelled from Germany.
Although Sergiyenko complained about his name being on the sanctions list, he also called German MP and former Bundeswehr General Staff officer Roderich Kiesewetter a “total idiot” when he was talking about the effects of the sanctions. “I’m in Russia and European sanctions have no effect on anyone here!” Sergiyenko wrote on X.
During Easter, he threatened the Berliner Zeitung on his profile that if the media did political agitation, Germany would be wiped out by modern weapons within 40 minutes. In the post, he also linked German deliveries of Taurus missiles to Ukraine to the start of World War III, saying that (the Germans) do not understand how the Russians think.
“I invite you to Moscow! Please see who I am – and then think!”
Fake media clones spread disinformation
The sanctions also apply to individuals involved in Operation “Doppelgänger,” a Russian digital disinformation campaign that used fake news media clones from many European countries to spread disinformation in support of Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine.
The list includes Sofia Zakharova, head of the department in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation for the Development of Information and Communications Technologies, and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tupikin, who was one of the key figures in Russia’s disinformation campaign in Latin America.
Anatoly Prizenko, a Moldovan businessman with ties to exiled pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor, coordinated the dispatch of agents to France on behalf of the GRU to paint Stars of David on buildings in Paris in exchange for financial compensation.
The Doppelgänger botnet then spread the news about the graffiti and promoted a story about rampant anti-Semitism in France amid anti-Israel protests.
Also on the list is Vladimir Lipchenko, a GRU officer responsible for hybrid attacks in Europe under the pseudonym “Wlodek Lyakh.” He is part of a special GRU unit set up to carry out sabotage activities in Western countries.
For example, he recruited the attackers who set fire to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga at the end of February last year with Molotov cocktails.
Another sanctioned person is Russian businessman Visa Mizaev, who played a key role in the Russian intelligence operation against the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), which involved obtaining highly classified information from the BND and passing it on to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB).
Sanctions for Russian operations in Africa
Three organizations also found themselves on the new list of European sanctions against hybrid threats: GRU Unit 29155, GPCI and the Africa Initiative.
GRU Unit 29155 is a secret unit of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU), known for its involvement in foreign assassinations and destabilizing activities throughout Europe. Through coups, assassinations, bombings and cyber attacks against other countries around the world in connection with the war in Ukraine, it sought to create chaos and destabilize the countries of the European Union.
It was the commander of GRU unit 29155, Colonel General Andrei Vladimirovich Averyanov, who in 2014 directed the operation to blow up the weapons depots in Vrbětice, carried out by agents Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, who were also responsible for the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal with Novichok in 2018.
Another officer of unit 29155, Vladimir Popov, organized a pro-Russian political coup in Montenegro in 2016 and two years earlier in Moldova protests against the association agreement with the European Union.
The new sanctions list includes both the unit as a whole and its commander, Averyanov, by name. However, the EU sanctions document focuses on Averyanov’s work in the Africa Corps, an entity under the Russian Defense Ministry that has taken over Wagner Group operations in Africa.
The Pan-African Trade and Investment Group (Groupe Panafricain pour le Commerce et l’Investissement, GPCI) is a disinformation network carrying out pro-Russian covert influence, particularly in the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso.
GPCI was blocked by Meta in May 2023. Despite this, GPCI is still active and conducts coordinated disinformation campaigns targeting France in particular, including through accusations of conspiracy, terrorism, destabilization operations or preparation of coups d’état against the Union or its Member States. GPCI has been indirectly funded by the Wagner Group military group.
African Initiative is a news agency registered in 2023 in Moscow, operating on the African continent. It has been involved in spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation against the West and has hired journalists and influencers to spread Russian propaganda. It also organized press trips for African journalists to the illegally occupied territories of Ukraine, during which pro-Russian narratives about the war were spread. The African Initiative further organized events serving the interests of the government of the Russian Federation, including facilitating access to mineral resources.
