The Russian Federal Security Service building (Kopchiowski O.P., https://tinyurl.com/3bahmtr6; CC BY 2.5, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en).
As shadowy political puppet-masters go, Alexander Ionov is no Machiavelli. A self-proclaimed lawyer, businessman, human rights activist, and—according to U.S. prosecutors—asset of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, Ionov has made flashy and often trollish attempts to interfere in Western democracies that have been blasted across Instagram, Facebook, Russian media, and occasionally Western media for almost a decade. Ionov’s indictment by the Justice Department in July, therefore, raises a question: Why have prosecutors only now decided to indict him?
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