A number of pro-Russia anti-war rallies in Europe allowed for identifying a number of political forces that Russia exploits to try to sow splits in Europe and cultivate anti-American moods. There is an increasing trend in Moscow engaging left-wing parties and movements, which indicates a return to the Kremlin’s tactics dating back to the Cold War. This implies a temporary shift from ultra-right allies to destabilize and exert pressure on national governments to left-wing forces, which have traditionally served the Kremlin to whip up anti-American and anti-NATO sentiment and claim major divisions allegedly existing in the West.
Moscow has expanded the area where its intelligence assets extensively operate against the background of growing international pressure over Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine.
The first signs that Russia is forming an intelligence hub in Ireland came in February 2021. Two years on, its effectiveness can be assessed on the example Ireland’s MEP Clare Daly, who has been actively involved in one of the latest Russian psyops.
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In 2012, she left the Socialist Party for a political connection with independent legislator Mick Wallace. The first signs of her affiliation with Russian intelligence agencies came when she filed ((jointly with another Irish politician Mick Wallace) a number of amendments with the European Parliament (EP) on behalf of the Left group seeking to remove parts of resolutions about Russia in relation to the shooting down of Flight MH-17 over Donbas. After that, Daly raised concerns in the EP about a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the 2018 Douma chemical attack. Daly said that “an independent OCPW is absolutely necessary.” The individuals who have been exploited by Russia since early 2023 in their psyops have previously participated in similar campaigns run by Moscow. For example, a U.S.-based journalist Seymour Hersch, who in February 2023 got involved in the Russian operation to accuse the United States of blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, also participated in the effort to tar Syria’s White Helmets.
Read also: Scale of Kremlin assets’ exposure in U.S.
In May 2022, Daly has come out strongly against the moves by the EU to ban Russian energy imports. Daly has attended protests supporting Algirdas Paleckis, a politician confessed of spying on behalf of Russia, and attended a court hearing where Paleckis’ appeal was being heard.
In late January 2022, Daly described the Russian troop build-up on the Ukrainian border as being “clearly defensive,” and believed there is “no evidence that Russia has any desire to invade Ukraine, it would be of no benefit to them”. In February 2022, shortly before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Daly (alongside Mick Wallace) was one of 52 MEPs who voted against providing EUR1.2 billion in loans to Ukraine, against 598 MEPs in favor. On March 2, 2022, she was one of 13 MEPs who voted against a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Daly also abstracted on an approved January 2023 resolution that looked to establish a war crimes tribunal probing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In October 2022, Daly published an explanation for the vote “Russia’s escalation of its war of aggression against Ukraine” (RC-B9-0430/2022/REV, B9-0430/2022, B9-0432/2022, B9-0433/2022, B9-0438 /2022, B9-0446/2022)”, which were supposed to shift suspicions away from Russia’s advocacy moves in the European Parliament. Instead, however, she only added to such suspicions by voicing Russian narratives about the threats of continued security assistance to Ukraine: “I oppose the policy of collective punishment, sanctions that also hurt European citizens, the flooding of Ukraine with weapons, and other actions that escalate the war and run the risk of igniting a direct conflict between NATO and Russia”. Subsequently, Daly published explanations for all her votes (whenever she voted “against”) on condemning Russia for its war on Ukraine. In those explanatory comments, she used a range of basic Russian narratives.
The likely motive for the pro-Russia operations by Mick Wallace, synchronized with those of Daly, is his financial abuse and other related issues. In May 2011, Wallace said he would face personal financial ruin and the possible loss of his seat in Dáil (lower house of the country’s parliament).
Wallace entered the Dáil in 2011 as an independent lawmaker (TD), with a stake in three companies: 99% of his own building firm, M&J Wallace; 99% of the Wexford Youths, a football club he set up; and a 40% share in Wallace Calcio, the holding company behind (at that time) five wine bars and a cafe.
Wallace did own a number of wine bars before he went bankrupt in 2016. But he ceased to include them in his Dáil register of interests at around that time.
He is on record in 2012 as saying that he sold a vineyard in Italy, Piedmont, to his brother to settle business debts.
In February 2023 Wallace made a boast on social media that he had “three wine bars in Dublin.” This aroused alarm from Wallace’s European parliamentary group, as no such assets were listed on his mandatory declaration of financial interests.
After the bankruptcy in 2016, Walles’s son Fionn – who has been working as an assistant to fellow Independent MEP Clare Daly since 2019 – was named a director of Wallace Calcio, a position he held until 2018.
Clare Daly’s pro-Russian motives are less obvious, with the exception of her Trotskyist ideological background, which may explain her sympathy for China. Her adventurism is confirmed by her being detained in the past on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Started her political career in Ireland’s Labour party, where she was a member of the Militant Tendency faction before she was kicked out in 1989, along with other Militant members, for creating a party within a party. The expelled group formed the Socialist party in 1996.
She left the Socialist party in 2012 and won a second term in the Dáil in 2016 as a member of the Independents4Change party. She was then elected to the European parliament in 2019, joining forces with her long-time political ally and close friend Mick Wallace.
Daly was elected as a MEP for the European Parliament. Soon after Daly was accused of nepotism for hiring her former husband Michael Murphy as her assistant, forbidden by the rules of the European Parliament.
In 2012, she was accused of embezzling funds for a business trip. In the same year, she refused to call for the resignation of her political ally Mick Wallace. She was elected to the Irish Parliament in 2011 in the general election.
In January 2023, ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mick Wallace and Clare Daly spoke at an anti-NATO conference alongside former Russia Today presenter and British MP George Galloway. The “No2Nato” conference was run by the “No2Nato No2War” campaign.
The group says it stands “against US proxy war in Ukraine and continuing NATO aggression against China and Iran.” RLI’s analysis of these operations directly points to their ties with the Russian intelligence agencies. Twitter has designated Galloway’s account as “Russia state-affiliated media.”
That Daly and Wallance participated in the event organized by RT, a traditional tool of Russian interagency psyops, removes suggestions that pro-Russia activity by Daly and Wallace is driven by their pacifist or leftist ideological motives.
Mr Gahler, the European Parliament’s standing rapporteur on Ukraine, added that (Mr Wallace) reads things so intensely from a piece of paper, I don’t know where he gets it from. Maybe he is under instruction from Moscow or the embassy there,” Mr Gahler said.
Wallace’s tweet in April 2022, claiming Taiwan is China was most likely posted in the interests of Moscow, not Beijing.We also consider unlikely the possibility for Daly and Wallace being exploited by Russia and China at the same time. According to our assessment, the two interact with Russia through Wallace. Meanwhile, comments are used by both Russian and Belarusian propaganda machines.
Particularly interesting was the 2014 arrest of Irish parliament members Mick Wallace and Clare Daly at Shannon Airport. They were detained at Shannon police station on suspicion of trespass and interfering with aircraft. It was reported that they were at the airport in order to inspect a US military aircraft (a Hercules C-130 was parked off a main runway at the time, along with another military aircraft). The purpose of the penetration effort remained unclear, although it suggested possible intelligence gathering in the interests of a third country on U.S. military logistics in Europe. In April 2022, Wallace participated in a pro-Russian rally in support of the Russia puppet “DPR/LPR” entities, alongside Latvia’s MEP Tatjana Ždanoka, a Kremlin affiliate who has been promoting in her home country the ideas of the notorious “Russian world” concept.
Mr Gahler, the European Parliament’s standing rapporteur on Ukraine, added that (Mr Wallace) reads things so intensely from a piece of paper, I don’t know where he gets it from. Maybe he is under instruction from Moscow or the embassy there,” Mr Gahler said.
