Media: Spanish judge announced Russia’s interference in the independence of Catalonia

The judge in the case of the illegal referendum on the independence of Catalonia, Joaquin Aguirre, believes that Russia has offered material and military assistance to the independence movement, according to the Spanish newspaper El Periodico. RIA Novosti, citing a court order, reports that, according to Mr. Aguirre, a group from Russia, created during the time of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, worked in the region.

Mr. Aguirre, according to El Periodico, drew conclusions based on the recordings of telephone conversations of the Catalan politician Victor Terradellas, who was an associate of the head of the Generalité Carles Puigdemont. In a telephone conversation, a group of Russians allegedly offered to send 10 thousand soldiers to Catalonia and pay off the debt to Spain. RIA Novosti reports that in the order, Mr. Aguirre referred to the strategy of disinformation and destabilization on the part of Russia and controlled, in particular, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, editor-in-chief of the RT channel Margarita Simonyan and political scientist Sergei Markov.

The Russian Embassy in Spain responded with a joke to media reports. “We must add two zeros to the number of soldiers and mention the most important thing in the conspiracy: the troops were to be airlifted by Mosca and Chato planes, collected in Catalonia during the Civil War and hidden in the Catalan Sierra until secret instructions in the press,” it wrote on Twitter.

A referendum in Catalonia was held in 2017. 90.1% of citizens supported the separation of the autonomous region from Spain, with a turnout of 43%. The Spanish authorities did not recognize its results. In 2019, 12 Catalan leaders received real prison sentences ranging from nine to 13 years. In 2019, the El Pais newspaper reported that the Spanish Supreme Court had opened an investigation over the possible involvement of the main directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (formerly the GRU) in the events in Catalonia.

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