Hipster couple who run 'pagan home decor' shop exposed as Putin agents

A pair of struggling artists known for their outspoken "anti-war" views have been exposed as influence agents of the Kremlin who are trying to destabilize the Eastern European country of Moldova to help Vladimir Putin expand his Ukraine assault, reported The Daily Beast on Thursday.

"The couple, 37-year-old Aleksey Losev and 33-year-old Anna Travnikova, were sanctioned by the U.S. government on Tuesday for their role in 'the government of the Russian Federation’s destabilization campaign and continued malign influence campaigns in Moldova,' along with five other Russian nationals, a press release from the U.S. Treasury’s office said," reported Noor Ibrahim.

Losev and Travnikova, who run a workshop called Julleuchter by Perko which “offers exclusive pagan home decor and specializes in Yule lanterns,” have been active on social media appearing to condemn the war in Ukraine. “In all my life I have not met a single person who would want war. And despite this, wars in our world continue to occur with enviable regularity. I feel pain and powerlessness,” wrote Losev in one post.

But at some point, the couple pivoted to a secret operation to try to expand the war across Eastern Europe, the report alleged.

READ MORE: 'Politically dangerous' for Garland to overrule Jack Smith on indicting Trump: former GOP AG

"According to the announcement, the freshly sanctioned Russians operated as malign influence agents in a 'large global information operation connected to the Russian Federation that targets Ukraine, countries bordering Ukraine including Moldova, Balkan countries, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States,'" said the report. "They are accused of 'provoking, training, and overseeing' anti-government activities in Moldova while maintaining ties to Russian intelligence services."

Maia Sandu, the pro-NATO president of Moldova, has long warned that there is a covert Russian effort to engineer a coup in the country; Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region of the country, has long had a separatist movement, but the region has been drifting closer to Western alignment and Russian forces have been trying to counteract this shift.

All of this comes as the Russian invasion in Ukraine, which has lasted over a year, lain waste to cities, and killed tens of thousands of people, is now facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive.