Ukrainian open-source intelligence group Molfar—which falsely names several American politicians, including Vice President J.D. Vance, as “foreign propagandists of the Russian Federation”—appears to have received funding from former President Joe Biden’s United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to a recently conducted investigation, the Molfar organization has previously listed USAID and the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation (CRDF) as partners. Documents published by Ukraine’s National Coordination Cybersecurity Center (NCSCC) both credit funding from USAID and training provided by Molfar.
Founded in 2019, Moflar—taking its name from a Ukrainian folk term akin to “wizard”—is an open-source intelligence organization comprised of an estimated 35 intelligence analysts and several hundred volunteers who work to identify media sources and foreign politicians who are unfriendly to the Ukrainian government. The group says it is tasked with documenting Russian war crimes and exposing Russian propaganda.
However, Molfar’s most notable activity is a so-called “blacklist” of foreign politicians who they claim serve Russian interests. Among those accused of being “foreign propagandists of the Russian Federation” by Molfar include Vice President J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán. Also listed are several U.S. members of Congress and members of the Trump administration, including Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), and Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY). For those on the blacklist, Molfar demands their “removal from public positions, the introduction of sanctions, and investigations into personal involvement in crimes.”
According to the report, Molfar is partly funded through USAID grants awarded to the Ukrainian government’s National Coordination Cybersecurity Center (NCSCC). Notably, NCSCC documents indicate that Molfar is also involved in training Ukrainian government employees in cyber warfare tactics.
The National Pulse has previously reported that Molfar was behind a Ukrainian artificial intelligence (AI) honeytrap operation aimed at extracting troop deployment details from lonely Russian soldiers in occupied Ukrainian territory.