On the eve of pivotal U.S. midterm elections, a shadowy Russian businessman indicted for interfering in past American elections “admitted” to having done so, and said he would continue in the future, prompting strong reaction from the State Department.

Spokesman Ned Price told reporters that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “bold confession, if anything, appears to be just a manifestation of the impunity that crooks and cronies enjoy under President Putin and the Kremlin.”

Price said while the U.S. government has no expectation that Putin would act against Prigozhin – who is purportedly a crony of the Russian president – “we’d like to see the Russian Federation act against someone who so openly boasts about interfering in the elections of a sovereign country.”

“Of course, we would expect that of a responsible law enforcement system of a responsible government,” he added. “But of course we know better than to expect that of Russia.”

Prigozhin is accused of funding a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). He, the IRA, and a dozen other Russian nationals were indicted in 2018 for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, by conducting “information warfare against the United States” with the stated goal of spreading “distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”