As Moscow’s geopolitical isolation has increased, Dmitry Khmelnitsky says, the role of its agents of influence abroad and the enormously variegated organizations that recruit and direct them has increased far beyond what they were during the Cold War when anti-communism served as a constraint.
“The Russian network of agents of influence abroad is extraordinarily broad and differentiated,” the Ukrainian historian living in Germany says. “It consists of a multitude of organizations created and financed by Moscow and under social groups and simulating social, cultural and scholarly activity”