Russia funds propaganda in Europe through Pravfond – The Guardian
The leak of internal documents has revealed the activities of the Russian state-supported legal defence foundation Pravfond, which has spent millions of euros on propaganda in 48 countries in Europe and around the world.
Source: The Guardian with reference to the documents of the foundation, European intelligence services and Danish public broadcaster DR
Details: It is noted that internal documents of the Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond) show that the fund finances propaganda websites targeting Europeans, and helped pay for the legal defence of convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout and the murderer of Chechen commander Vadim Krasikov.
In addition, the documents confirm that the Pravfond has appointed a number of former intelligence officers to head its operations in European countries.
The Guardian wrote that publicly available data also showed that local partners of Pravfond had received millions in state subsidies from a number of European countries where the foundation had local branches.
"[It raises] questions about the use of public funds and national security concerns just days before elections to the European parliament," the Guardian wrote.
More than 40 Pravfond documents show that there are several former intelligence agents among the organisation's leadership.
Among them are Vladimir Pozdorovkin, an agent of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and supervisor of Pravfond's activities in Northern Europe and the Baltic States, and Anatoly Sorokin, also an agent for the same service and supervisor of Pravfond's department for the Middle East, Moldova and Transnistria.
The head of the Institute of the Russian Diaspora, which is listed in official documents as the "project implementer" of Pravfond, is Sergei Panteleyev, who was sanctioned in the EU as an employee of a Russian military intelligence unit specialising in psychological warfare operations.
In 2020, the Estonian intelligence services called Pravfond a "pseudo-legal protection system" that "in reality is an influence operations fund" and said that the Russian security service, the FSB, uses the group to recruit agents abroad, in particular among supporters of the occupation of Crimea.
Pravfond was established in 2012 by a presidential decree with the support of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the federal agency Rossotrudnichestvo, which manages foreign aid. Alexandr Udaltsov, who has been under EU sanctions since 2023 for "supporting and implementing actions and policies which undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine," was appointed as the foundation's director.
The documents show that Pravfond has spent hundreds of thousands of euros to support several websites that aimed to fight Russophobia and promote the protection of the Russian language in Europe. It also directed money to a number of "fringe publications" across Europe.
In addition, the documents showed that Pravfond had financed the activities of golos.eu, an online portal mainly critical of the Ukrainian government, particularly President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Yuriy Andriychenko, the deputy editor of golos.eu, denied that the website received money from Pravfond or had ties to Russia.
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