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EU Observer reported on September 14th that “Tiny Kox, the Dutch head of a venerable watchdog on European democracy, has denied being a Kremlin fixer after one Russian spy described him as a top contact in leaked files. “Such claims were false and unfounded”, Kox’s private office told EUobserver by email on Wednesday (14 September). The 69-year old left-wing politician became president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg, France, in January 2022. Like the EU, the Council of Europe was created to forge European unity after World War 2, but has 46 member states. It expelled Russia in March and Kox loudly condemned its invasion of Ukraine. But according to Russian intelligence reports leaked to Dossier Center, a London-based NGO, Kox was seen as a darling of Kremlin interests before his elevation to PACE’s top job. In the Russian files, Valery Levitsky, an officer in Russia’s GRU military-intelligence service, describes Kox as someone who could “make it happen” for the Kremlin in Strasbourg. In one document from June 2017, Levitsky speaks of Kox’s potential help on delaying the ejection of Pedro Agramunt, a pro-Kremlin Spanish former PACE president, from office. In a report from December 2017, Levitsky also says that “according to Tiny [Kox], everything should be finished in our favour by April,” speaking in the context of a lobbying campaign to restore Russia’s voting rights in PACE. PACE suspended Russia’s rights in 2014 after it first invaded Ukraine. Its voting rights were eventually restored in 2019 before its PACE expulsion this year. Levitsky was Russia’s consul general in Strasbourg before France expelled him in 2018 on grounds of espionage. He was already enlisted in the Russian armed forces (of which the GRU is part) when he was Russia’s deputy consul in Marseilles, France, between 1995 and 1998, a Dossier Center document shows. Levitsky also studied at the Pushkin Higher School of Air Defence Radioelectronics and the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow before making France his second home. The GRU’s man pushed for Kox to get the PACE top post via go-betweens in Strasbourg even after he’d been made persona non grata by France, Dossier Center’s documents revealed.”