Russia is co-opting far-right politicians in Europe with cash
For nearly a year, Czech authorities secretly recorded hours of meetings between several far-right politicians from across Europe and #Artem #Marchevsky,
đź’Ąwho was running the propaganda website, "Voice of Europe", đź’Ą
-- including at its offices on a quiet side street in the center of Prague.
E.U. and Czech authorities, which have shut down the site, have labeled Voice of Europe a #Russian #propaganda operation.

The Czech probe rapidly expanded into Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and France,
European security and intelligence officials said,
as investigators concluded that
👉Voice of Europe represented far more than its official veneer as a pro-Russian website interviewing favored European politicians about ending aid to Ukraine.

The organization was being used to funnel hundreds of thousands of euros
— up to 1 million a month
— to dozens of far-right politicians in more than five countries to
🔥plant Kremlin propaganda in Western media 🔥
that would sow division in Europe and bolster the position of pro-Russian candidates in this week’s European Parliament elections.
Most of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing and sensitive investigation.
Michal Koudelka,
head of the Czech domestic security service,
said that the Voice of Europe operation was also an attempt to
get more pro-Russian members into the European Parliament
and that after the vote that starts this Thursday,
“there was a plan for the people in the European Parliament to conduct classic espionage”
on behalf of Russia.

“It was an operation that aimed to shape Europe,” Koudelka said in an interview.

Far-right parties could end up with 25 percent of the seats in the 720-member European Parliament, according to some opinion polls.
And for Russia, increasing influence among those parties could provide a mechanism for threatening aid to Ukraine,
as well as fertile ground for espionage, according to Vera Jourova,
the European Commission’s vice president.

Pro-Russian politicians “could really make the financing [of Ukraine] difficult,” Jourova told The Post.