The United States has imposed sanctions on two organizations in Moscow and Iran, as well as two Russian individuals.
These sanctions were targeted at the international non-profit organization Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), located in Moscow, and its director, Valery Korovin. The US State Department has stated that the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), founded by Alexander Dugin, a Russian political scientist and propagandist, has cooperated with the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) and received instructions from an officer of the GRU to spread disinformation about US presidential elections.
Korovins’s statements are known in Russia as anti-Western and anti-US. Before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he argued that Ukraine had no right to exist as an independent country, calling it part of southern Russia.
The second organization that has been sanctioned is the Iranian The Cognitive Design Production Center (CDPC). The United States considers CDPC to be a subsidiary of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Since 2023, CDPC has been planning influence operations aimed at inciting socio-political tensions among the US electorate in the run-up to the 2024 US elections on behalf of IRGC, the US Treasury Department has said.
In addition, sanctions have been imposed on Olesya Mendeleeva, the judge who sentenced Alexey Gorinov to seven years in prison in 2022. Gorinov was a municipal deputy from the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow and was convicted of sharing information about the Russian army.
