Igor Danchenko

Igor Danchenko (Russian: Игорь Юрьевич Данченко) is a Russian national, and a Eurasia political risk, defence and economics analyst in the United States.

Igor Danchenko
Игорь Юрьевич Данченко
Born
Igor Yurievich Danchenko

(1978-05-05) May 5, 1978[1]
Perm, Perm Krai, Russia
NationalityRussian
Other namesIggy
OccupationAnalyst
Children1

In July 2020, Danchenko was revealed to have worked for Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence on the research and production of the 2016 Trump–Russia dossier.

Education

In 1996, Danchenko graduated from Specialized English Language School 7 in Perm, Russia.

Danchenko graduated from the Law Faculty of Perm State University and the Department of Political Science at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, United States.[2] While working at the Brookings Institution, Danchenko earned a Master’s degree from Georgetown University. In 2006-2009 he attended the CERES (Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies) Programme at the Walsh School of Foreign Service there.[3]

Career

Early in his career, Danchenko worked at Lukoil subsidiary Permtex in Perm and at UralSubSoetStroy in Iran. Between 1999 and 2005, he was a facilitator for the Open World Russian Leadership Program, US Library of Congress and a leader for senior Russian federal and regional delegations to the US.

From 2003 to 2005, Danchenko worked as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Louisville.

In 2005, he became President of Professionals in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Affairs (PREEA), an organisation affiliated with Georgetown University, and began to work at the Brookings Institution, soon becoming Senior Research Analyst, where his specialty included foreign policy and the political elite of Russia, as well as energy policy.

He has worked in a number of analytical capacities over the years.

In 2006, Danchenko co-wrote a research paper that suggested that parts of Vladimir Putin's 1976 doctoral thesis had been plagiarized.[4]

FBI investigation and contact with Russian intelligence officers

In May 2009, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation into Danchenko after he had reportedly told two associates from the Brookings Institution that he knew of a way they could "make a little extra money” if they were able to "get a job in the government and had access to classified information.” Further information revealed that Danchenko had prior contacts with Russian intelligence officers in 2005 and 2006. The FBI's investigation into Danchenko was closed in March 2011.[5]

2016 U.S. election

Beginning in March 2016, Danchenko was tasked by Steele to investigate Paul Manafort, as well as Donald Trump, Carter Page, and Michael Cohen.[6]

Reaction to the publication of Steele's election reporting

In January 2017, shortly after BuzzFeed had published the Steele dossier, Danchenko was contacted by the FBI for an interview. About a week and a half later, in exchange for immunity, he agreed to answer questions about his work relationship with Steele, as well as his opinion on the accuracy of the Steele dossier.[7]

Identity revealed

In July 2020, online sleuths discovered the identity of Danchenko.[8]

In October 2020, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Danchenko's main source for information about the alleged collusion between the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government was Olga Galkina, a former parliamentary correspondent for RIA Novosti.[9][10][11][12]

Galkina has denied being a source for Danchenko.[13]

Public charges

In March 2013, Danchenko was cited in Maryland for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his child in a safety seat while on federal property.[14]

References
  1. "Igor Danchenko". Odnoklassniki. Archived from the original on August 1, 2020. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  2. https://tlt.ru/business/igor-danchenko-osnovnye-tendencii-svyazany-s-izmeneniem-roli-gosudarstva-v-ehkonomike/1857673/
  3. "Senior Analyst /Consultant / Research / Investment / Risks". Archived from the original on July 19, 2020. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  4. Strauss, Valerie (March 18, 2004). "Russia's plagiarism problem: Even Putin has done it!". Archived from the original on July 19, 2020. In 2005, two researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington got a copy of the thesis, titled “Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region under Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations,” and presented their findings in 2006. Researchers Clifford Gaddy and Igor Danchenko found that the thesis had been heavily “borrowed” from a 1978 textbook, “Strategic Planning and Public Policy,” written by University of Pittsburgh Professors David I. Cleland and William R. King.
  5. Barrett, Devlin; Hsu, Spencer; Zapotosky, Matt (September 25, 2020). "Justice Dept. disclosures cast fresh doubt on Trump-Russia investigation". Archived from the original on September 25, 2020. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Attorney General William P. Barr said the individual whose information was used to assemble much of a dossier of allegations against the Trump campaign had been the subject of a national security investigation between 2009 and 2011, because FBI agents suspected he might be working for Russia.
  6. "Interview of Igor Danchenko" (PDF). p. 47. Retrieved July 25, 2020. [Danchenko] described the US election-related tasking came in three waves: (1) the initial tasking about Paul Manafort; (2) the tasking about any compromising materials on Donald Trump; (3) tasking about Sergey Ivanov's involvement in the US election; and (4) later on, in the fall of 2016, 4-5 names to ask about (which [Danchenko] talks about earlier, including Carter Page and Michael Cohen].
  7. Wemple, Erik (December 19, 2019). "Opinion:'Yeah, I briefly chased the pee tape' — New York Times reporter talks Steele dossier, Horowitz report and more". Archived from the original on April 20, 2020. I figured out the full extent of this Jan. 13, 2017*, meeting. It was awful. The dossier was garbage, and then I learned the court hadn’t been told.
  8. Goldman, Adam; Savage, Charlie (July 24, 2020). "The F.B.I. Pledged to Keep a Source Anonymous. Trump Allies Aided His Unmasking". Archived from the original on July 25, 2020. The report blacked out Mr. Danchenko’s name and other identifying information. But within two days, a post on a newly created blog entitled “I Found the Primary Subsource” identified him, citing clues left visible in the F.B.I. document.
  9. Cullison, Alan; Gauthier-Villars, David (October 28, 2020). "Russian in Cyprus Was Behind Key Parts of Discredited Dossier on Trump". Archived from the original on October 28, 2020. In the nearly four years since they were published, many of the unverified allegations about President Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele have been widely discredited, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddlings in the 2016 U.S. election. Yet the source of some of the most critical allegations in that dossier and how they reached Mr. Steele have remained a mystery. A Wall Street Journal investigation provides an answer: a 40-year-old Russian public-relations executive named Olga Galkina fed notes to a friend and former schoolmate who worked for Mr. Steele.
  10. Ross, Chuck [@ChuckRossDC] (October 28, 2020). "hoo boy. Olga Galkina confirmed as Steele dossier Source #3. First sleuthed by @FOOL_NELSON" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  11. @FOOL_NELSON (July 20, 2020). "THREAD: 1/ Steele's Primary Sub-source's Source 3 is most likely Olga Galkina. She is a Facebook friend of @danchenko_igor, and according to him "one of the key sources for the "Trump Dossier""" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  12. Kovalev, Alexey; Dmitriev, Denis; Reiter, Svetlana; Yapparova, Liliya (November 3, 2020). "Meduza spoke to all the likely sources behind the 'Steele dossier.' The report that forever transformed Donald Trump into a 'Russian agent' looks less and less convincing". Archived from the original on November 3, 2020. Olga Galkina was first connected publicly to the Steele dossier and Igor Danchenko in a tweet on July 21, 2020, by an anonymous Twitter user named @FOOL_NELSON, who told Meduza that he identified her by crosschecking details mentioned in the FBI report with open biographical data.
  13. "Russian woman denied the message of the WSJ about the source of compromising material on Trump". October 30, 2020. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Russian Olga Galkina, whom the Wall Street Journal called the source of compromising material on US President Donald Trump, told RIA Novosti that this was not true.
  14. "USA v. Igor Danchenko" (PDF). Retrieved July 24, 2020. Mr. Danchenko is charged by way of citations with three petty offense misdemeanors, to wit: drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his child in a safety seat.
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