The most powerful and influential state body funding organisations for ‘compatriots’ abroad, the ‘Russkiy Mir’ Foundation, is officially designated as ‘a non-membership non-profit organisation established in the legal form of a foundation pursuant to the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 21 June 2007’. Its founders are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Science and Education. The chairman of the foundation’s board is Vyacheslav Alekseevich Nikonov, Molotov’s grandson and, according to some sources, an FSB general. In any case, as far back as 1991, Nikonov was an assistant to Bakatin, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR. This is the rank of colonel-general. All members of the foundation’s board are high-ranking government officials. According to eyewitness accounts, Nikonov’s assistant was a lieutenant-colonel in the GRU shortly after the foundation was established.
The name of the foundation has become a byword for Putin’s ideology, and on the foundation’s website this ideology is set out in no uncertain terms:
‘The Russian World is not just Russians, not just citizens of Russia, not just our compatriots in neighbouring and distant foreign countries, emigrants, people of Russian origin and their descendants. It also includes foreign citizens who speak Russian, study or teach it, and all those who have a genuine interest in Russia and care about its future. All the strata of the Russian World — which is multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, socially and ideologically heterogeneous, multicultural and geographically segmented — are united by a sense of belonging to Russia… The Russian World is Russia’s world. It is every person’s calling to help their homeland and to care for their neighbour. Very often one hears talk of what the country could do for its people. But it is no less important to consider what each of us can do for our Motherland. We must turn away from a mindset of dependency and towards the idea of serving Russia.” .
In other words, the Russian World is the Russian (currently Putin’s) regime and its followers and agents. And the remit of the eponymous foundation is to fund this network of agents – that is, to fund Russian organisations abroad that serve Moscow’s interests.
The foundation’s grants are awarded in two areas:
1. Projects promoting the Russian language.
2. Projects of a cultural and humanitarian nature.
These categories cover absolutely anything and everything, primarily the activities of the secret services.
Nikonov himself, in a 2007 interview—at a time when the foundation was still being set up—said: ‘We are talking about creating a strong organisation, staffed by highly professional specialists. An organisation that will act as the hub of a network, based primarily on the awarding of grants… We have set ourselves the task of supporting the Russian language, Russian culture and organisations representing the Russian world. We must do this now – and not by setting up overseas branches. We will work directly with organisations of the Russian diaspora, with organisations that are part of MAPRYAL (the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature), and other non-governmental bodies that operate through various diaspora organisations, educational centres, universities and the network of schools where Russian is taught. In other words, we will support projects aimed at strengthening the position of the Russian language and culture, and developing the ‘Russian World’. To achieve this, we need highly capable regional managers capable of covering entire continents. We need substantial grants for management structures – this is a distinct profession, one that carries great responsibility. We need powerful structures capable of creating substantial networks – including online networks, publishing networks, financial networks and so on.”
The last sentence implies that, first and foremost, the foundation will fund the training of new generations of leaders for intelligence networks and the creation of the networks themselves, “capable of spanning continents”.
‘Russkiy Mir’ has fulfilled the task of creating ‘powerful structures’; it has established its ‘Russian centres’ all over the world – there are now more than two hundred of them in 39 countries. In Germany, there are ‘Russian centres’ in Berlin, Nuremberg, Dresden and Gelsenkirchen. Furthermore, there are hundreds of Russian-German cultural associations in Germany, in virtually every city. They are all funded to some extent by the German state, but at the same time have received grants from ‘Russkiy Mir’ to finance all manner of educational and cultural projects – in accordance with programmes developed in Moscow. Today, it is difficult to imagine even a single such society in Germany that is not under the influence of ‘Russkiy Mir’ or organisations affiliated with it, or that does not benefit from their support in organising all manner of cultural programmes which also serve a propaganda purpose.
In 2024, the ‘Russian World’ website listed seven ‘Russian centres’ within Russia. Two are in Moscow – at the Peoples’ Friendship University (which makes sense, as foreign students study there) and the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. Two are in Luhansk – at Luhansk Pedagogical University and the Republican Scientific Library. Two are in Donetsk (the Scientific Library and Donetsk University) and one at the Gorlovka Institute of Foreign Languages (Donetsk Oblast).
The Russkiy Mir Foundation was established a year before Rossotrudnichestvo (2008) and a year after the creation of the World Co-ordinating Council of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad (2006). There is no doubt that the activities of all these organisations are interwoven into a single whole. Rossotrudnichestvo is a government agency (special service) overseeing work with ‘compatriots’ abroad; the World Co-ordination Council is an executive body, a sham civil society organisation carrying out this work; and the ‘Russkiy Mir’ Foundation is the official source of funding for it.
According to the ‘Russian World’ website, the ‘Russian Centre’ in Limassol, Cyprus, which existed from 2018 to 2019, was headed by Roman Viktorovich Vavilov, a man with a very interesting track record. Prior to that, from 2014, he had headed the Russian House in Limassol, Cyprus – an organisation with a strange name and mysterious funding – described as a ‘non-governmental multifunctional centre for compatriots and Russian-speaking residents of Cyprus’. In 2018, in his capacity as director of the Russian House in Cyprus, he thanked the ‘Russkiy Mir’ Foundation for its assistance in preparing for the opening of the ‘Russian Centre’.
Even earlier, from at least 2007, he served as director of the Russian House of Science and Culture in Nicosia, the official representative office of Rossotrudnichestvo. In 2012, Vavilov was the executive director of the foundation responsible for building the first Russian Orthodox church in Cyprus. And quite some time ago, in 2004, Roman Vavilov was listed as First Secretary (for Culture) at the Russian Embassy in Cyprus.
Such a career is entirely uncharacteristic for a diplomat, but it is just right for an intelligence officer. It follows from this that in 2014, Vavilov resigned from the diplomatic service, became simply a resident of Cyprus heading a certain private cultural organisation, and then disappeared from the media’s radar altogether.
The list of friendly individuals and organisations in Germany on the ‘Russian World’ website contains over 270 names and designations. These include the foundation’s official representative offices, media outlets, institutes, universities, cultural societies, student associations, church communities, higher education institutions, schools, nurseries, and so on.
The list of ‘Russkiy Mir’s’ friends in Cyprus contains 34 entries – also schools, the press, cultural and church organisations, and individuals. However, after the war began, these lists disappeared from the ‘Russkiy Mir’ website.
In July 2022, the ‘Russkiy Mir’ Foundation was added to the European Union’s sanctions list and lost the ability to operate legally in Europe. But its people, connections and organisational structure have not gone anywhere. Moreover, there is little doubt that the funding has not gone anywhere either; it has simply become illegal.