Among the organisations that, at first glance, appear exotic and have clearly espionage-related functions is the International Public Organisation known as the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society (IOPS).  The current IOPS is a rather brazen imitation of an organisation that was dissolved a century ago. 
The original Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society was founded in the second half of the 19th century with the aim of facilitating pilgrimages to the Holy Land, conducting academic research and establishing a network of Orthodox schools in the Middle East. 
Following the 1917 Revolution, the society split into the émigré Orthodox Palestinian Society (OPS) and the Soviet Russian Orthodox Society (ROS) attached to the Academy of Sciences. In 1923, the ROS was closed down, in 1925 it was officially registered by the NKVD; after 1934, although not formally closed by any authority, it ceased operations and resumed them by order of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in 1950.  There could, of course, be no question of organising pilgrimages to the Holy Land from the USSR or of any academic research into it. The Soviet authorities were interested solely in the struggle over the property in the Holy Land that had belonged to the IPPO and had passed into the hands of the émigré PPO. 
Between the 1930s and 1990s, the RPO’s existence was purely nominal. However, as early as 1992, immediately following the collapse of the USSR, the organisation reverted to its former name – the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society – and resumed the struggle to secure the return to Russia of the pre-revolutionary IPPO’s real estate. From 1989 to 2001, the chairman of the IPPO was the diplomat Oleg Peresypkin, mentioned above. In 2001, Alexei Chistyakov, a graduate of MGIMO and deputy director of the Department for the Middle East and North Africa at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – who would later become Russia’s ambassador to Sudan and, prior to that, the Russian Federation’s representative to the Palestinian National Authority in Gaza – became chairman of the IPPO. From 2003 to 2007, the chair of the IPPO was Professor Yaroslav Nikolaevich Shchapov, a historian by training. 
A new chapter in the IPPO’s history began in 2007, when a far more high-ranking figure was appointed as its chair – Colonel-General Sergei Stepashin of the FSB, a graduate of the Higher Political School of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (1973), Colonel-General of the FSB Sergei Stepashin, former director of the counter-intelligence service, former head of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, former Prime Minister of Russia and (at that time) Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. It can be stated with certainty that, from at least that time onwards, the IPPO became one of many branches of the Russian special services, operating under the guise of a public organisation and carrying out the relevant tasks. The IPPO’s interests were no longer confined to the Holy Land; its branches and representative offices have been opened in many countries. One of the first to be established, in 2009, was the Cyprus branch, chaired by Leonid Bulanov, who will be discussed below. 
The IPPO operates a Public Centre for the Protection of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, headed by Elena Agapova, as well as numerous overseas branches (in addition to those in Russia): in Cyprus, in Latakia (Syria, since 2014), in Bethlehem (Palestine), in Jerusalem (Israel), in Hungary, in Jordan, in Nice (France, since 2019),  in the Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina, since 2018), in Odessa (Ukraine), in the Pridneprovian Moldovan Republic (since 2018), in Abkhazia (since 2914), Bari (Italy, since 2017), Darmstadt (Germany, since 2018), Georgia (since 2022), the LPR, the DPR, the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions (since 2022), the UAE (since 2022), in Serbia, in Altea (Spain, since 2019), in Malta (since 2014), in London (United Kingdom, since 2019),  in Montenegro, Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, South Ossetia, and Estonia (since 2013). The IPPO’s network of representative offices bears a strong resemblance to the network of Co-ordination Councils of Russian Compatriots, but it pursues different objectives and is aimed at a ‘church-going’ audience. 
Unlike the Russian Near East Society, which keeps its activities under wraps, the IPPO organises numerous public events, celebrations, visits to places of worship and meetings between its representatives and various prominent figures around the world. It is striking that the organisation’s activity increased particularly sharply, first in 2014 and then in 2018–19, when numerous branches were opened in countries far removed from Palestine and the Middle East. At first glance, it all looks like a farce, but the presence of Stepaschin at a host of seemingly pointless meetings, coupled with the ever-increasing levels of funding associated with the opening of more and more branches in various countries, compels one to take the IPPO’s activities seriously. No less seriously than the activities of the ‘Russian World’ Foundation, headed by Vyacheslav Nikonov, and Rossotrudnichestvo, headed by Yevgeny Primakov. All three are high-ranking representatives of the security services and head powerful organisations with extensive networks of foreign offices – networks of influence. And all are tackling similar tasks. There is no doubt that the heads and members of the IPPO’s overseas offices are of undoubted interest as agents or officers of the security services. 
In this regard, a notable figure is Igor Ashurbeyli, chairman of the IPPO in Israel, who until 2011 served as director-general of the ALMAZ NGO (part of the defence-industrial complex), chairman of the presidium of the ‘non-profit partnership “Interdepartmental Expert Council on Air and Space Defence Issues” (VES VKO)’, a member of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and the holder of numerous other titles and ranks associated with the military-industrial complex, but by no means with historical research in the Holy Land. However, it would appear that, by definition, there can be no such researchers within the IPPO. 
In 2015, Sergei Stepashin officially opened a Russian general education school in Bethlehem, built with the participation of the Russian state and the support of the IPPO, which is attended by 500 Palestinian boys. Among other subjects, they study the Russian language. “A teacher from Moscow was sent to this school by a non-profit organisation, a partner of the IPPO – the ‘Russian Humanitarian Mission’ – headed by Yevgeny Primakov (Sandro), a well-known journalist specialising in the Middle East and the grandson of Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov, who was an Honorary Member of the IPPO. “Our plans also include the construction of a general Russian-language school in Damascus, for which the Syrian authorities have already allocated a plot of land,” Elena Agapova, Deputy Chair of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, told the ‘pravoslavie.ru’ portal in 2015. 
And here is a recent report: “On 29 July 2024, the head of the IPPS’s Syrian branch, Michel Abdullah Al-Tali, met with the head of the Reconciliation Centre, Major General Sergei Shashkov, in Damascus at the headquarters of the Russian forces in Syria. The meeting was attended by Captain First Rank Oleg Ignasyuk, head of the Damascus branch of the Reconciliation Centre. The meeting focused on issues of cooperation and collaboration in the field of humanitarian activities.”