Around the same time he left the campaign team of Mircea Geoană – the former NATO deputy chief who is running for president of Romania – political strategist Rareș Mănescu registered a new joint venture company with a Russian businessman.
The name of Mănescu’s business partner is Aleksei Kozlov, an aquaculture specialist and self-declared fishing fanatic.
Kozlov also seems to have a secret identity, reporters have discovered.
Under the name Alex Krepchinsky, he appears to have been a firebrand propagandist who spent the years after the initial 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine stirring up pro-Russian sentiment.
Mănescu declined to answer questions about his business partner’s apparent propaganda activities in Ukraine. He did tell reporters in September that he had left Geoană’s campaign “five months ago.”
Geoană, who officially launched his campaign on September 11 – one day after leaving NATO - said Mănescu “was never my campaign manager.”
However, two internal communications from Geoană’s organization, which were obtained by reporters, show that Mănescu played a role in the preparatory stage of the campaign.
An email from Geoană’s organization dated April 5 refers to Mănescu as one of coordinators in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. An event invite shows Mănescu billed as speaking to activists on April 13 about “progress in creating the organizational structure and support networks.”
Mănescu says he left that work sometime in May. The Romanian Trade registry records the first incorporation document of his company with Kozlov on May 31, according to files obtained through a Freedom of Information request.
Mănescu declined to provide any details about his corporate association with Kozlov.
Rareș Mănescu
Substantial Evidence
Almost a decade before going into business with Mănescu, Kozlov appears to have been busy posting pro-Russian propaganda under his alter-ego, Krepchinsky.
Among Krepchinsky’s misadventures, later reported by the Ukrainian media outlet Dumskya, included attempts to recruit activists to the Russian cause, and offering monetary rewards for collecting personal information on Ukrainians.
Krepchinsky also received attention in Russian media for helping people escape from Ukraine to Russia, alleging attacks against them by so-called “Nazis.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his propagandists have often made the claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis as a justification for the invasion.
“Ukraine is sick,” Krepchinsky wrote in one Facebook post. “Sick with Nazisim, and in a critical state.”
Krepchinsky was also quoted numerous times by NewsFront, a Crimea-based propaganda website that the U.S. sanctioned for alleged links to the Federal Security Service, Russia’s intelligence agency.
In an interview, Kozlov denied that he had appeared online under the name of Krepchinsky.
“The publications of Krepchinsky's fake account were conducted from Donetsk,” he said, referencing the eastern Ukraine city where fighting has been ongoing since 2014, when Moscow backed pro-Russian militia groups there.
“I have never been there,” Kozlov said, adding: “I have not been in Russia for a day since the war started.”
However, there is substantial evidence that Kozlov and Krepchinsky are the same person.
Flight records obtained by reporters confirm that Kozlov went to Crimea more than 10 times between 2015 and 2020. There were no records of an Alex Krepchinsky traveling there.
Krepchinsky shows up in a photo with Oleg Yefimov, a veteran of Ukraine’s former special police, the Berkut unit, which participated in the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
That was among scores of photos collected by reporters who ran images through three different face comparison applications. Each app confirmed that the people in the photos were the same – regardless of whether they were labeled as Kozlov or Krepchinsky.
Aleksei Kozlov (center) at Moscow's Red Square with a military veteran.
Other material provided clues about’s Kozlov’s apparent activities in eastern Ukraine, under the guise of Krepchinsky.
In October 2016, for example, a 40-minute video surfaced online showing Krepchinsky giving an interview to the Russian state radio channel Vesti FM. In the interview, he recalled visiting the war-torn eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas.
A reporter shared evidence – including photos, news articles, interviews, blog posts, and social media comments – with Truth Hounds, an open-source research group in Ukraine. Truth Hounds found that Krepchinsky was indeed a pseudonym used by Kozlov.
“Alexei Vitalievich Kozlov is his only legal name,” said Bohdan Kosokhatko, the group’s head of investigations.
Jekyll and Hyde
Although it is not clear when or where they met, Kozlov’s background in fisheries appears to have hooked Mănescu. The political strategist and his wife, Ramona Mănescu, co-own 50 percent of the aquaculture company Beluga Ventures.
Aside from their aquaculture interests, the Mănescus are a political power couple in Romania.
She is a former member of the European Parliament, and also served as Romania’s foreign minister. A longtime member of the National Liberal Party, Mănescu has served as a municipal councilor, deputy of the Romanian parliament, and mayor of the Sector Six municipality in Bucharest.
Mănescu did not say why he decided to dive into the aquaculture business, but Kozlov explained his interest in the sector in a 2021 interview with a Moldovan blogger.
The blogger, Pavel Zingan, told reporters he met in person with Kozlov who gushed about his lifelong love of fishing.
“In 2011, I left Russia for a long time. I lived in Miami, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and fished everywhere,” Kozlov told Zingan when they met. “At some point, the hobby grew into a business.”
His passion eventually brought him to Moldova, a small landlocked country nestled between Romania and Ukraine. Kozlov saw it as a good base for aquaculture exports, “an excellent bridge for access to Romania, and there, perhaps, further to the European Union.”
It was in Moldova that he started another aquaculture company called Noida Group SRL.
Kozlov’s partner in that venture is Andrei Batin, a Moldovan national who appears to have fought with Russia in 2016. Pictures posted online show Batin and other soldiers in Staromykhailivka, Donetsk region, posing with weapons, including on the premises of Ukrainian households occupied by Russia.
Batin has also appeared in photos with Grigore Caramalac, a Moldovan alleged organized crime figure who has been sanctioned by the European Union and is wanted in his home country for murder and blackmail.
Grigore Caramalac (with microphone) and Batin (circled) at an event with the International Foundation IFAVIS, a sports organization founded by Caramalac.
In an interview, Batin denied fighting in Ukraine, saying the images of him there with weapons were actually taken from a film he was involved in, which was made “under Moscow.”
Kozlov said Batin was helping him with “a project on fishmeal and animal feed from fishmeal in Moldova,” and declined to comment on his business partner’s apparent past as a mercenary for Russia.
Kozlov insisted that photos showing him as the pro-Russia propagandist named Krepchinsky were faked, and posted by “fraudsters.”
“It was for a couple of years when they extorted money from me and blackmailed me,” he said, although he did not explain who, or what their motivation would be.
Kozlov insisted he was a “peaceful person with a humane profession.”
However, he did ask a reporter unprompted: “Do you like Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson books?”
When asked if he was comparing himself to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – a character of Stevenson’s who has two personalities, one good and the other murderously evil – Kozlov provided another cryptic response.
“You'll find out soon enough, just a little patience,” he said.
