The conference hosted separatists from multiple Western nations—Ireland, Italy, Spain—in addition to a Western Sahara contingent. The greatest plurality of representatives, however, came from the United States. Russia has prior cultivated relations with separatists in Texas—who are currently attempting to land the question of secession on Texas’s GOP ballot—but Ionov and his organization have since expanded their reach among American separatists. (Ionov also lists the UK’s Stop the War Coalition, linked to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as one of his group’s foremost partners; a representative from Stop the War denied the partnership, saying they have “never had any dealings with it.”)

While the Texas contingent slotted for the conference did not arrive, and while no Native American representatives originally planned ended up showing—although Ionov met with a Native American representative earlier this summer—the meeting saw leaders of independence movements from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the “Uhuru” black nationalist movements in attendance.

Out of Hawaii, Lanny Sinkin, representing the “Independent and Sovereign Nation State of Hawaii,” lobbied for the return of the erstwhile Hawaiian monarchy. (The proposed king, as it is, happens to be a felon with some 13 years behind bars.) Out of Puerto Rico, Ramon Nenadich, who had prior threatened to investigate the United States for “crimes of war and genocide … in its occupation of Puerto Rico,” staked his case. (Nenadich has his work cut out for him—in 2012, 61 percent of Puerto Rico’s populace opted for statehood, and only 5 percent sided with independence.) And representing the Uhuru movement, Chairman Omali Yeshitela called on Russia to push the claim before the United Nations that the United States had committed genocide against African-Americans.