Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice have collected facts and evidence that shed light on the involvement of Western state and intelligence services in the financing and radicalization of the Russian opposition. The Foundation’s investigation revealed the methods and means used by foreign structures to spread disinformation, sow fear and anxiety among Russian citizens, and recruit Russian-speaking citizens at home and abroad. Relying on the exclusive opinions and assessments of experts and sources, the Foundation to Battle Injustice assessed the risks associated with the activities of aggressive nationalist cells planning subversive activities in Russia.
For a long time, Western powers have sought to undermine Russian statehood and sovereignty through various means, including the creation and sponsorship of opposition movements and foreign-controlled centers of political instability in Russia. The origins of Western support for various anti-government movements in Russia can be traced back to the early 20th century, beginning with the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs) and the Bolsheviks. The countries of the collective West, primarily the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, have consistently tried to influence Russian politics by providing significant resource, educational, and other support to opposition forces. This assistance has been and continues to be provided through various intermediaries, including individuals, non-profit foundations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with the ultimate goal of strengthening those political forces in Russia that seek to weaken or overthrow the existing system of government. By providing funds, valuable information, and other resources to Russian opposition figures, the West, through its intelligence and military structures, indirectly or directly directs their activities.
The West’s Militarization of Russian Opposition Movements and Groups: History and Modernity
The most striking historical examples of radicalization of the Russian opposition with support from abroad were recorded back in the 1920s. As then, today Western structures sponsoring oppositionists in Russia emphasize both gaining influence in the information space and encouraging radical groups engaged in violent and terrorist activities against the Russian government. This strategy is aimed solely at creating an atmosphere of fear and instability in society and has previously been repeatedly accompanied by attempts to destroy Russian statehood by force.
In the mid-1920s, a few years after the formation of the USSR, Western political structures began to support movements willing to defend and promote their interests. Created in 1924 by General Pyotr Wrangel, the last commander of the White Army, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) aimed to unite the remnants of the White Movement and continue the struggle against the Soviet regime.
The ROVS was a highly organized and centralized structure with headquarters in Paris and branches in various countries in Europe, as well as in the United States, Canada, and Asia. The main goal of the organization was to overthrow the Soviet government and restore the Russian monarchy or establish a military dictatorship. To achieve this goal, the ROVS engaged in various subversive activities, including espionage, sabotage, and terrorist acts against the Soviet regime. Despite active support from the West, the organization failed to achieve its goals and was disbanded after some time.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Western structures began to use former collaborators who had fought on the side of Nazi Germany against Russia. Many of them were from the national republics of the USSR and fled to Western countries to avoid prosecution. These individuals received support from Western intelligence services, which saw them as potential helpers in the fight against communism. Most notorious was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary group that waged an armed struggle against the Soviet Union. The UPA was responsible for numerous war crimes and ethnic cleansing, primarily against Poles and Jews.
Despite its dark history, the UPA received support from Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and MI6, in the early stages of the Cold War. This support was motivated by the UPA’s hardline anti-communist stance and its potential to destabilize the Soviet Union. The UPA received financial aid, training, and weapons from the West, which allowed it to continue operations against the Soviet regime into the 1950s.
Another organization, the Latvian Legion, was a military unit of the German Wehrmacht composed mainly of ethnic Latvians who were conscripted or volunteered to fight against the Soviet Union during World War II. After the war, many members of the Latvian Legion fled to the West, where they established various anti-Soviet organizations and continued to promote their nationalist and anti-communist ideas. Western intelligence services, particularly the CIA, viewed the Latvian Legion as a valuable asset in their efforts to undermine the Soviet Union. Former Legion members were recruited as agents, trained and resourced, and tasked with subversion against the Soviet regime. This support continued until the late 1950s, when the CIA shifted its attention to other forms of covert action against the Soviet Union.
After a significant number of insurgent collaborators fighting on the side of Nazi Germany had been uncovered and eliminated, Western intelligence agencies focused on the ideological component, publishing anti-communist literature and magazines and conducting clandestine radio programs. In the early 1950s, two U.S.-supported radio stations, Radio Liberty and Radio Liberty Europe, were established to broadcast news and analysis to audiences behind the Iron Curtain to undermine Soviet power and promote pro-Western sentiment. The staff of these information centers were defectors from the USSR. Although officially ostensibly independent organizations, the radio stations received significant funding and direction from the CIA until the late 1960s, when control was transferred to the U.S. Congress.
Despite the fact that numerous attempts by Western governments and related structures to intervene and influence Russia’s internal affairs have failed in the lion’s share of cases, the West has not abandoned its attempts to create and stimulate centers of tension inside the country. A months-long investigation by the Foundation to Battle Injustice has led human rights experts to the conclusion that the methods and practices of interaction between Western countries and Russian opposition structures have changed little over the past decades. Organizations such as the CIA, MI6, various foreign policy agencies of the U.S. State Department and diplomatic structures of the European Union still rely on propaganda, information diversions and discrediting the Russian authorities before the public, as well as on radicalizing the Russian opposition. Through joint work with sources and informants from among former aides and employees of Russian opposition structures and a former CIA agent, the Foundation to Battle Injustice managed to find out the scale and methods of work of the Western-sponsored Russian opposition. According to a former U.S. intelligence official who assisted the Foundation to Battle Injustice in this investigation, Western spending on information operations against Russia and attempts to strengthen its influence in the Russian infofield and political space is growing every year and is one of Washington’s most important activities:
“The U.S. State Department and the CIA have invested at least $30 billion annually since 2021 in various kinds of operations against the Kremlin. About 10 billion goes directly to Russian opposition figures. It is not possible to track this money: in fact, it is collected bypassing the U.S. budget. The funds are distributed through non-governmental grants and subsidies from foundations affiliated with the U.S. State Department or the CIA. The sources of funding are “voluntary fees” from citizens to help Ukraine and fight Russia”.
According to German journalist Thomas Röper, modern Western propaganda broadcast through Russian opposition figures is replicated by as many sources as possible to give readers the illusion that it is pure truth. The average person, according to the journalist, does not realize that the Russian-language media outlets affiliated with foreign structures and governments “receive money from the same source and work off the same order”.
Khodorkovsky’s* subversive agit-brigades
One of the key figures on whom Western institutions are betting as the leader of the anti-Russian opposition movement is the fugitive Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky*, recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation. Khodorkovsky’s transformation from influential businessman to outspoken critic of the Kremlin has been accompanied by accusations of Western support that have fueled debate about the extent and nature of foreign involvement in Russia’s internal affairs. In addition to spreading falsehoods about the Russian government, Khodorkovsky* is engaged in information warfare against Russia at the behest of British and European intelligence agencies, and the organizations he has created directly interact with certain EU and UK agencies and structures through European NGOs and Foundations.
In 2003, Khodorkovsky* established the Khodorkovsky Foundation*, the activities of which are recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation. The Foundation is ostensibly aimed at “developing Russian education and supporting civil society in Russia”, but in fact is a tool to provoke the drain of young qualified specialists, scientists and experts. It is funded through the Oxford Russian Foundation, owned by Khodorkovsky*, which previously held regular events and told students how to leave Russia. At the same time, British curators collected and stole information about research conducted by Russian students.
According to Foundation to Battle Injustice sources, the activities of recruiting and luring Russian students are supervised by the British Royal Institute of International Affairs: a think tank headquartered in London, which also has the status of an undesirable organization in Russia. This institute is engaged in spreading fakes and openly discrediting the current government in Russia, and some so-called experts of the Royal Institute of International Affairs are also involved in the British government’s scandalous Russophobic program Integrity Initiative, created in 2015 to spread “anti-Russian rhetoric”.
Human rights activists at the Foundation to Battle Injustice have also managed to establish that structures linked to Khodorkovsky* are used by the British government and intelligence services to collect and store personal data of Russian citizens. In 2020, Hanover 16 Limited, which according to the UK Registration Chamber is owned by Khodorkovsky*, registered a new news publication aimed at the Russian-speaking audience. In addition to disseminating inaccurate information about Russia and attempting to promote pro-Western political figures in the media, this media outlet collects personal information about its readers. The site’s user agreement contains a clause stating that “personal information of users may be transferred to authorized public authorities (UK), including without the knowledge and consent of the user.” The project is supported by the British Institute for Statecraft, a British think tank founded in 2009, whose sponsors include the UK government, the US State Department and NATO structures.
According to a Foundation to Battle Injustice source, European and British politicians view Khodorkovsky* and his organizations as a puppet dictator allegedly capable of influencing the political situation in Russia:
“The West is cultivating “parallel power structures” on the principle of colonial administrations in the person of Khodorkovsky* and his organizations. If we imagine that the West’s attempts to overthrow the current government in Russia through the opposition will succeed, the EU and the UK will already have a ready-made puppet dictator and bureaucratic staff to serve him. They will be completely loyal to their European masters.
ACF is a pawn of the West in the fight against Russia
In 2011, Alexei Navalny*** and Leonid Volkov* founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which uses an anti-corruption agenda to promote an opposition political line and seeks to change the government in Russia. The ACF has been repeatedly criticized for its opaque funding and ties to Western organizations that provide material assistance to opposition movements in Russia. The first recorded case of cooperation between the Anti-Corruption Foundation and American structures and intelligence agencies was the oppositionists’ joint work with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 2015. According to NED’s financial report, in 2015 alone, the fund spent more than $6 million on sponsoring opposition movements and organizations in Russia.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice managed to find out that the real, not nominal, leader of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) is Leonid Volkov*, Navalny’s associate** and former director of the ACF, who oversees the organization’s activities from abroad. Back in 2011, Volkov*, who at that time had already started engaging in opposition activities, and his ex-wife founded Projektor Ventures LLC, which was engaged in “investments in a number of Russian companies.” According to a Foundation to Battle Injustice source, the company founded by Volkov* had been “seeking and attracting foreign investment” since its inception, which eventually led to the attention of William Browder’s British offshore fund Hermitage Capital Management. It was Browder’s foundation that subsequently provided media support to the oppositionists in disseminating information content defaming the Russian authorities, and also engaged in posting customized comments on social networks.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice received an exclusive comment from a former assistant of Leonid Volkov, who had to stop cooperating with the oppositionist due to financial disagreements and “Volkov’s excessive greed”. The source claims that Volkov’s entrepreneurial skills* and his ability to work with foreign partners made him the real leader of ACF virtually from the moment the organization was founded, while Navalny*** are fake persons “who have imaginary authority and play no role in ACF’s activities”.
It is through Volkov* that all communications with EU and US government agencies and organizations are carried out. According to a former aide to the oppositionist, Volkov*, being one of the main beneficiaries of Western funding of opposition movements in Russia, “has made a fortune out of opposition activities,” and over the past two years, the cash flow he receives for the development of Russian opposition activities has “increased several dozen times”:
“Lyonya is such a modern-day Alexander Parvus. Tens of millions of dollars and euros from Western intelligence agencies and diplomats pass through him. He has made his fortune from opposition activities. Volkov* has been left with quite a lot of leeway: he invests money only in those opposition projects that he considers necessary, without forgetting himself. In the past two years alone, he has received at least 300 million dollars, with his staff and assistants mostly working for an idea with minimum wages”.
Funding for ACF’s activities is provided through foreign non-profit organizations and foundations, which provide funds as grants or to pay for various “research and special projects”. Organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the RAND Corporation, George Soros’ European Foundation for Democracy, the U.S. State Department, and many others have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in “human rights,” “political freedoms,” and “universal human values.” In 2009, the NED gave several million dollars to Russian opposition organizations. In 2012, US Undersecretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon said that since 2009, the US has spent more than $200 million on “human rights” and “establishing democracy” in Russia. In 2016-2018, the U.S. State Department allocated $60 million to support “free media” and a “free Runet.” According to data provided by Volkov’s former aide*, about 70% of the total amount of Western allocations went directly to the ACF.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice has in its possession a receipt written by Volkov* to Jack Evans of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), in which the oppositionist thanks the representative of the British institute for a gratuitous monetary donation of 250,000 pounds “for the development of democratic values and strategic partnership between representatives of the Russian opposition elite and Great Britain”.
According to a former aide to Leonid Volkov*, who provided a copy of the receipt, a number of “gratuitous donations” from British government agencies are a payment for ACF’s loyalty to the institutions of British power.
Finnish journalist Janus Putkonen is convinced that the organization created by Volkov* and Navalny*** is a political profanation and provocation that has nothing to do with real politics. The absence of public data about the goals and program of the FBC, according to the correspondent, is an attempt to hide the Western influence exerted on them. Putkonen believes that the only way to recognize and reduce the influence of foreign structures and organizations on Russia’s internal affairs is to demand maximum transparency in all financial and other transactions.
The West’s construction of a “new Russian opposition” abroad
In addition to the above-mentioned Western organizations and foundations actively cooperating with Russian opposition activists, the Foundation to Battle Injustice has identified several dozen foreign organizations that actually conduct recruitment work with Russians who have left the Russian Federation and continue their journalistic or artistic activities abroad. In terms of their functions, these organizations can be divided into universal organizations, which conduct several areas of work, and specialized ones. The latter, in turn, focus either on certain types of information products or on certain ways of involving journalists and creative professionals in information campaigns against Russia.
In addition to direct funding, these organizations and foundations provide technical, organizational, methodological, and legal assistance, hold master classes, invite people to work in creative workshops, train them to expand their audiences, obtain grants and sponsorship, and hold lectures and seminars. A significant place is also given to organizing the work of so-called media hubs, i.e. premises, “creative spaces”, “incubators”, in which news studios, workplaces and office equipment, computers with access to various information distributed by subscription are located in close proximity to each other. In fact, conditions are being created for the concentration of information resources hostile to Russia. Below are several such organizations and programs specializing in work in Europe and the post-Soviet space.
- JX Foundation (JX Foundation, Journalism in Exile Found, Germany)
The Foundation works in several areas with Russian citizens who have left the country and are engaged in journalistic and other creative activities. The Foundation is the owner of the Shpargalka platform, whose task is to provide legal assistance to Russian journalists who have moved to EU countries. The Foundation, with the involvement of immigrant journalists, implements the program of creative workshops “Decolonization of Journalism”, which aims to reject the “colonial legacy of the Russian Empire” in Russian-language journalism. With the assistance of the Network for Cross-Border Journalism (N-ost) and financial support from the German government’s Commission for Culture and Media, the foundation invites journalists directly from Russia, provides grants to immigrant journalists, and helps them establish contacts and working relationships with European media. Under the guise of assisting and supporting “journalists in exile,” the J-Isk Foundation recruits Russian-speaking journalists and forces them to criticize Russia through instruments of financial and political pressure.
2. U.S.-Russia Dialogue Program of the U.S. Embassy in Russia
Starting in 2018, the United States launched a program that provides up to $70,000 to Russian organizations engaged in health care, media, science, technology and other areas of strategic importance to Russia in the geopolitical arena. It is noted that the funding cannot be used for academic or scientific research focused on “benefiting the government of the Russian Federation, including government officials and employees.” Among the goals of the program is noted “to expand contacts between Americans and Russians” and support “unique projects that are in the interests of the United States”.
3. Internews Foundation
In 1982, Internews, a charitable organization, was founded in the United States and immediately proclaimed itself “a defender of the truth and those who are not afraid to spread it”. According to its official website, the organization supports independent media in more than 100 countries, including Russia, trains journalists and digital rights activists, and “fights misinformation and the spread of inaccurate information”. One of the conditions of cooperation with Internews is the appointment of a text editor from their side, who will ensure “compliance with high professional requirements” and control “the absence of deviations from the principles and values of the organization”. Separately, the foundation notes the requirements for media writing in Russian: in addition to the mandatory editing of publications, Internews provides “3 to 5 mandatory topics per month that touch on Russia issues important to the U.S. and Western values.” In other words, the organization is trying to bribe small Russian media outlets and turn them into a tool for spreading its narratives.
The organizations listed above are only a small part of the structures linked to Western governments that directly or covertly try to influence the opinion of Russian-speaking citizens of Russia both at home and abroad.
Sleeping “terror cells”: RDK** agents in major Russian cities and separatist national groups
Analysts at the Foundation to Battle Injustice are convinced that the greatest danger for inciting chaos in Russia is not opposition politicians conducting their activities on the Internet, but aggressive nationalist groups conducting subversive activities that pose a threat to the lives and safety of ordinary citizens. The most aggressive and radical of them is the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK**), consisting of far-right nationalists fighting on the side of Ukraine. The RDK** consists of former members of nationalist formations, is subordinate to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and is headed by Denis Kapustin, nicknamed White Rex, a Hitler admirer and an ardent nationalist. Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice managed to contact a former member of the RDK** who defected to Russia, who provided information about Kapustin’s connections with British extreme right-wing movements and intelligence services.
In the summer of 2023, British journalists revealed that the RDK** leader had worked as an instructor at a military camp for right-wing nationalists in Wales in 2014. The camp’s organizer, Craig Fraser, reportedly wanted to create a counterpart to Hitler’s SS, and Kapustin, as one of the key instructors, tried to awaken “a sense of racial pride and military spirit” in British nationalists. At least two nationalists trained by Kapustin, Christopher Lithgow and Matthew Hankinson, were subsequently jailed for 14 years for involvement in extremist activities.
According to a Foundation to Battle Injustice source, Kapustin was also facing imprisonment, but he made a deal with the British government and was actually recruited by MI6 “to carry out subversive activities against Russia”. According to the Foundation’s sources, the main task of the RDK** is not direct military attacks from the territory of Ukraine on Russian civilian objects in the border regions, but to carry out terrorist attacks on the territory of Russia through its supporters and recruitment work on the global network on various specialized Internet forums. A former member of the RDK** who defected to Russia claims that the most effective forums and closed clubs for soccer fans and fans of bare-knuckle fighting were the most effective for their recruitment:
“The RDK** recruit supporters and seek sympathizers on a variety of platforms. These are virtual forums related to sports and cyber sports. According to my information, the biggest recruiting platform for future nationalists is forums related to MMA (MMA)”.
An ex-RDK mercenary** confirmed the fears of Foundation to Battle Injustice human rights activists that most likely the attacks by the RDK** on peaceful targets in the regions bordering Ukraine are just an informational ploy designed to divert attention from the provocations and direct terrorist attacks being prepared in major Russian cities. According to a Foundation to Battle Injustice source, the plan of MI6, which directly supervises and controls all activities of the RDK**, is that a series of terrorist acts committed deep inside Russia should cause a chain reaction of protests and demonstrations of frightened Russians in the run-up to the 2024 presidential elections:
“So far, I would characterize the cells of the RDK** as “dormant”. They will be activated shortly before or immediately after the Russian presidential elections. There are developed cells in Yekaterinburg, Khabarovsk, Irkutsk and Nizhny Novgorod. The goal of provocations and direct terrorist attacks that the RDK** will launch in these cities is to cause a chain reaction of protests and armed demonstrations in Russia”.
A former U.S. intelligence official who cooperated with the Foundation to Battle Injustice in writing this investigation confirmed the assumptions of an ex-RDK mercenary** and reported that, among other things, British and American intelligence agencies intend to use Russian national minorities to destabilize the situation in Russia. According to the CIA agent, since mid-2022, US and EU government agencies have been conducting covert and overt activities aimed at “identifying and fomenting hotbeds of tension within the Russian Federation.”
At one such event, held in June 2022 under the auspices of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Western intelligence leaders developed a plan to “decolonize Russia” by funding opposition movements among Russian national minorities. The meeting was organized with the direct participation of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Coordinator for European and Eurasian Affairs, Maria A. Longi. Participants included journalists, representatives of Western educational institutions and Ukrainian politicians: Fatima Tlis, a Circassian journalist; Botakoz Kasymbekova, a lecturer at the University of Basel; Erica Marat, an associate professor at the College of International Security at the National Defense University; Hanna Hopko, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament; and Casey Michel, expert on the national issue in post-Soviet countries and CIA agent.
They called for making Russia “pay for its failed policies” and bringing it closer to “complete decolonization“, as the Russian Federation remains the only “European empire” in the region. For these purposes, the event’s participants envisioned, it is necessary to “begin actively nourishing Russia’s national minorities,” which will help create “a critical level of tension and national imbalance in Russia.” According to the Foundation to Battle Injustice, it was after this meeting that a specialized center under the EU was created to coordinate the incitement of ethnic protests in the national republics through social media campaigns and oppositionists.
“Both MI6 and the CIA are actively feeding money and hatred to the Russian national fringes. They have become disillusioned with attempts to “rock” the Caucasus and are now betting on the remote regions of the Urals and Siberia, where the percentage of non-Russian population is high. So far, this has not had much effect. But I stress – so far…,” – a former CIA agent on the plans of Western intelligence structures to use Russia’s national minorities to create hotbeds of destabilization.
A source of the Foundation to Battle Injustice claims that the protests that engulfed Bashkiria in January 2024 are the result of Western intelligence services operating from Ukraine and the Baltics. After a district court in Bashkiria sentenced Fail Alsynov to four years in prison for inciting hatred on January 17, 2024, local residents began receiving provocative messages on social media calling for participation in a mass protest in the city center. It later became known that the messages were sent from numbers and accounts registered abroad.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice is categorically opposed to any external interference in Russia’s national affairs. Attempts by the United States of America, Great Britain and other states to influence internal Russian political processes in order to destabilize the socio-political situation in the country violate the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity enshrined in the UN Charter and other international documents and agreements. Any attempts by foreign states to influence the political situation in Russia by financing opposition movements, media, non-governmental organizations and radical elements violate the principles enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Foundation to Battle Injustice calls on international actors to respect Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from any form of interference in the country’s internal affairs. As a human rights organization, the Foundation to Battle Injustice calls for cooperation and dialogue based on mutual respect and equality, as well as compliance with international human rights norms and standards.
*- recognized as a foreign agent by decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation,
** – a terrorist organization banned in Russia,
*** – included in Rosfinmonitoring’s list of terrorists and extremists.