Russian parliamentary group arrives in Washington at invitation of Republican congresswoman

A group of Russian parliamentary deputies has arrived in Washington after accepting an invitation extended to them by Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna to visit the US this week, Russian news agency Interfax reported on Wednesday.

According to Interfax, the group will be headed by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior figure in the ruling United Russia party, and is known to include Communist Party lawmaker Vladimir Isakov.

Both Isakov and Volodin are under Western sanctions, including designation by the US under one of its principal sanctions frameworks, the US-Russian Harmful Foreign Activities program. 

State Duma Deputy Alexey Chepa told Interfax on Wednesday that the planned visit would be “very, very much of a working nature.” Hours later, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he welcomed the visit, which he said could be a way of “reviving dialogue” with the US. 

“It could only be welcomed if this kind of contact between parliamentarians from the two countries takes place; it is truly necessary,” Peskov said.

The trip comes amid reports that Russia has been sharing the locations of US military assets in the Middle East with Iran to facilitate their targeting, something Vladimir Putin has said it would stop doing if the US halted its own intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

Luna, a rookie Congresswoman from Florida, announced in January that she had been granted permission from the State Department to invite members of the Russian legislature to Washington to meet members of Congress for “peace talks”, though that meeting never took place.

A longstanding critic of US aid to Ukraine, Luna is known to have close working relationships with a number of senior Russian officials, including Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and has repeatedly been accused of amplifying Kremlin propaganda narratives.

In October, Luna said that Russia’s ambassador to the US had given her a 350-page report on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which she later published. One month earlier, she had announced that she wanted to organise a meeting with Russian officials to discuss UFOs.