On March 12, 2018, just before 6 p.m. in Moscow, Aleksandr Ionov, a well-traveled Russian man with a penchant for tailored three-piece suits, sent a series of text messages to a local phone number regarding a quixotic effort to get the state of California to secede from the United States.
Two years earlier, Ionov, who ran an NGO called the Anti-Globalization Movement, had helped marginal California pro-secession activists set up an office in the Russian capital and had hosted them and other activists from around the world at a Moscow conference called the Dialogue of Nations.
The first two messages Ionov sent were links to U.S. news articles about California's secession.
"You wanted turmoil," Ionov then wrote. "You got it."
The recipient of the message, according to U.S. officials, was Yegor Popov, an officer in Russia's main intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB). Popov's superior was Aleksei Sukhodolov, a unit chief in a division called the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism, informally known as the Second Directorate.
The messages are included in dozens of pages of chat logs obtained by U.S. authorities that were released in U.S. court proceedings, revealing FSB officers' internal discussions of coordination with American activists, some of whom went on trial in U.S. federal court in Florida this week.
While a handful of quotes from the chats were previously included in U.S. indictments, the detailed transcripts -- some four dozen pages -- had not previously released publicly.
In addition to details of the FSB officers' work on U.S. politics, the messages also reveal their discussions of government critics, FSB bureaucracy, independent media the Kremlin sees as hostile to its interests, and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ionov, Popov, and Sukhodolov -- along with two other FSB officers, Yevgeny Vistorpovsky and Aleksei Mityagin -- allegedly engaged in a multiyear effort to work with several groups of American activists "who provided the FSB with the information…to sow division inside the U.S."
Ionov and the FSB officers have all been identified publicly, with Popov and Sukhodolov indicted by the Justice Department alongside Ionov last year. It's highly unlikely any will ever be tried in a U.S. courtroom.
On July 29, 2022, the day U.S. prosecutors announced the first indictment, Ionov texted Popov a euphemism roughly translating as "friggin' frick."
"Trash the phones," he wrote.
Back Up To The Cloud
The broad outlines of the effort orchestrated by Ionov and his FSB handlers were initially described in the 24-page indictment issued in July 2022, followed by the second indictment issued 10 months later.
The detailed transcripts of the chats were entered into the record in the Florida federal case last month, on August 21, shortly before the opening of the trial of the American activists accused of coordinating with the FSB officers.
The transcripts were included in a filing by a defense lawyer for one of the activists, Penny Hess, who argued they should not be allowed to be introduced during the trial, calling them "hearsay" evidence.
U.S. prosecutors argued otherwise, saying "Ionov's work with these U.S. groups was done on behalf of the FSB, an arm of the Russian government, which is an essential element of the charged crimes."
The messages "were an integral part of this conspiracy, providing the FSB with the information needed to 'utilize' the defendants to, in their own words, 'sow division inside the U.S.,'" prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney's office in Tampa, Florida, where the case is being tried, confirmed the chat files had been turned over by the Justice Department as part of the discovery process -- the requirement that any evidence being introduced as part of a criminal trial be shared with the opposing legal counsel before trial.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office declined to say how the chats were obtained -- whether U.S. intelligence agencies had hacked the FSB officers' phones, for example.
However, the lists of exhibits scheduled to be used during the trial -- and the metadata accompanying the chat message -- indicate that U.S. authorities got the bulk of the communications through a backup on iCloud, the Apple cloud computing service.
That means Ionov and Popov in all likelihood used iPhones, which backed up some of their chats, including their WhatsApp messages, to Apple servers -- giving U.S. prosecutors the ability to obtain the chats with a court-authorized search warrant.
RFE/RL sought comment from Ionov and the others identified in the logs, calling all the phone numbers listed in the court records.
Ionov and Sukhodolov's numbers were out of service; a call to Popov's number was directed to what sounded like a call center recording, asking RFE/RL to call back later.
A man answered the phone identified as Vistoropsky's and appeared to respond affirmatively when addressed by name but then refused to answer questions and hung up shortly thereafter. A man answered the phone identified as Mityagin's number asked a reporter, who identified himself, if it was a prank call, and then hung up.
'Why Were They Thrown Into A Massacre?'
Ionov's work cultivating activists in California advocating the state's secession has been well-documented.
About a month before Ionov gloated about his efforts with California activists, Popov wrote to him to press for photographs of a march that was planned to the California state house in Sacramento. Popov also appeared underwhelmed with how little coverage U.S. news outlets gave to the event.
"This is the only article I've seen," Popov wrote.
Two weeks later, in early March, Popov invited Ionov to meet at a Moscow cafe not far from the offices of the Second Directorate.
Popov also advised Ionov that his superior, Sukhodolov, wanted to meet, which prompted a complaint from Ionov.
"I'm angry at AB for some reason," he wrote, using the initials of Sukhodolov's first and middle names. "He's stirring up trouble. I really don't like it. I might just lose my temper. And start a fight."
"They cut our money, that's a fact," Popov tried to reassure Ionov. "Different agenda, different people, plus a lot of other things. No need, he's a good man, he just can't tell us everything. He's limited by his superiors."
But different American activists are currently on trial in the Florida federal court: four men and women who are current or former members of a relatively obscure political organization called the African People's Socialist Party. Several are also members of a related group called the Uhuru Movement.
Prosecutors charged that the activists knowingly worked with Ionov and by extension the FSB officers; Ionov paid for at least one of them to travel to Moscow in 2015 for a conference planned by Ionov's organization, the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia. All have denied the charges.
Ionov also allegedly advised the group on wording for protest signs; according to the indictment, he also paid $3,000 to several activists for them to travel to San Francisco to protest at the headquarters of Meta, Facebook's parent company, after it restricted pro-Russian posts about Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The chat logs show Ionov messaged frequently with Popov and less frequently with Sukhodolov, sending photographs, links to news articles, and even links to online photo albums.
A day after the invasion, Ionov appeared to comment on reports of internal divisions among Russia's ruling class over the war, including an Instagram post by the daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that read "No to War!"
"Peskov has lost his mind," he wrote to Sukhodolov, adding in a subsequent message: "Everyone has completely f***ing lost it."
The two also discussed a battle in the early days of the invasion, when Russian paratroopers tried to land troops at an airport north of Kyiv. Ukrainian soldiers mounted a hasty defense that inflicted serious losses on the paratroopers, thwarting the raid.
"Why were they thrown into a massacre?" Sukhodolov asked Popov. "Where were the reinforcements? Was that a tactical blunder?"
"You'll need to call the [Defense Ministry] to find out," Popov replied.
'You're A Stud'
In late April 2019, a Russian woman named Maria Butina was sentenced to 19 months in U.S. prison for not registering as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. Butina had spent several years in the United States befriending and ingratiating herself with political figures, mainly Republicans.
About a week after her sentencing, Ionov, who had been raising money for Butina's legal defense, and Popov discussed the sentencing and a press event that Ionov hosted in Moscow to advocate for Butina's release. Ionov included a link to an online photo album that shows a Moscow press event, with more than a dozen reporters.
"Awesome material on Butina! You're a stud," Popov wrote to Ionov.
The tone of that message differed starkly from a message Popov sent six weeks earlier following a report about Ionov's financial links to Butina published by The Atlantic, a U.S. magazine. Ionov sent a link to his FSB handler.
"I will not report this! You are called the patron of Butina, who admitted to interfering in the 2016 elections," Popov wrote to Ionov. "They also mention the separatist conferences [a reference to the Dialogue of Nations events in Moscow]. Now they will impose sanctions against you."
Three years later, Ionov was hit by U.S. Treasury Department sanctions.
On July 29, 2022, discussing the news of the initial indictment, Ionov advised Popov to discard his phone, apparently suspecting it had been hacked or accessed.
"And I told you: the Arabs gave you a strange phone," Popov replied.
It's unclear from the message exactly who Popov is referring to as the source of the "strange phone," though Ionov had business interests in Lebanon and Syria.
"I haven't had it for ages," Ionov responded. "It was my second one."
'Political Division Is Weakness'
Going back decades, Soviet and Russian intelligence agencies have sought to spread disinformation and stoke dissent to undermine foreign governments, Western or otherwise.
In the 1980s, the KGB helped spread the suspicion that the United States had invented the virus that causes AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Russian government-linked "trolls" created scores of fake online personas to try and sow discord on social media.
"This campaign sought to polarize Americans on the basis of societal, ideological, and racial differences, provoked real world events, and was part of a foreign government's covert support of Russia's favored candidate in the U.S. presidential election," a bipartisan report compiled by the U.S. Senate's Intelligence Committee found.
On September 4, one day after the Florida trial started, U.S. authorities announced wide-ranging sanctions and other measures against Russia entities, accusing them of trying to interfere, and sway American opinion, in the ongoing presidential campaign. The State Department announced new restrictions of five state-funded news outlets, including RT -- the Russian state-funded TV network formerly known as Russia Today.
The Justice Department also announced a new criminal indictment against two RT employees, accusing them of a conspiracy to spread disinformation and propaganda, partly by using a media company in Tennessee.
"Russia…does what it can to accentuate divisions in its adversaries' societies, especially the United States, applying the philosophy that political division is weakness," said Kevin Riehle, a scholar at Brunel University London and author of a new history of the FSB.
"If the Russian government can highlight fringe opposition groups within the United States (or elsewhere) then it diminishes Western powers in the eyes of the world," he told RFE/RL. "It also makes them less attractive to Russians. Russia can claim that the United States is weak because it is chaotic and riven with divisions, including from a few groups that the FSB itself supports."
Left-wing political activists weren't the only individuals that the FSB's Second Directorate targeted.
Two of the FSB officers identified by the Justice Department in court papers and elsewhere have also been publicly linked to a parallel case involving a Russian woman named Natalia Burlinova.
In 2023, U.S. prosecutors charged Burlinova in connection with what they said was a multiyear effort to recruit and cultivate young Western professionals who might be sympathetic to Russia's foreign policies.
Burlinova held meetings at major U.S. universities with academics and students and oversaw a conference that paid for recent university graduates to travel to Moscow and attend workshops and lectures. One of the lectures featured a Russian man who was among those kicked out of the United States in 2010 for being a deep-cover "illegal."
The effort, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, was overseen and coordinated by Popov and Sukhodolov.
