International Council of Russian Compatriots

At the top of the pyramid of propaganda management among former Soviet citizens abroad are international associations of émigré societies headquartered in Moscow. There are several of the largest.

The International Council of Russian Compatriots (MSRS) was founded in 2002, following the First World Congress of Russian Compatriots held in Moscow in 2001. President Putin addressed the congress, calling for the ‘consolidation of the Russian diaspora.’ Officially, the MSRS unites 146 public organisations of Soviet and Russian émigrés from 53 countries.

The honorary chairman of the presidium is Count Pyotr Sheremetyev, a longtime Moscow agent living in Paris. The deputy chairman is Prince Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky (England), also an old ‘friend’ of the USSR. Until his resignation in 2010, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov served as the honorary chairman of the MSRS. In 2007, it was announced that a skyscraper would be built in Moscow by 2010—the headquarters of the MSRS. Apparently, some financial scam, which never took place, was behind this.

The executive body of the MSRS is the secretariat, which previously consisted of five people with educations typical of intelligence officers (Institute of Oriental Languages ​​at Moscow State University, Faculty of History at Moscow State University, MGIMO, and Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Currently, such information is not available on the MSRS website.

The Chairman of the Presidium of the MSRS is Vadim Vasilievich Kolesnichenko, a former deputy of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada from the Party of Regions, who emigrated to Russia after the occupation of Crimea and became a member of the Rodina party.

The MSRS included nine Ukrainian organisations (for comparison, there were only five German ones):

All-Ukrainian public organisation "Human Rights Public Movement "Russian-Speaking Ukraine", Kyiv. Date of establishment: 2009.

The Association of Compatriot Organisations ‘Russian Commonwealth,’ Kyiv. Founded in 2007 (this association alone consists of more than fifty individual organisations).

Ukrainian Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, Kyiv. Established in 2001.

Russian Movement of Ukraine, Lviv. Founded in 1999. Russian Society named after A.S. Pushkin, Lviv. Founded in 1988. Russian Cultural Centre of Rivne. Founded in 2005. Izmail Pushkin Society. Founded in 1993. Public Organisation ‘United Odessa.’ Founded in 2008.

Kyiv Society for the Culture of the Finno-Permian Peoples. Founded in 2007.

It's striking that seven of the nine organisations were created during the Putin era—between 1999 and 2008. The same pattern is observed in other countries. This means only one thing: over the past 15–20 years, funding for the Russian regime's propaganda and recruitment activities abroad has increased dramatically.

The MSRS comprises five émigré public organisations from Germany – from Munich, Frankfurt am Main, and Berlin. This represents a significant potential pool of Putin supporters. The MSRS presidium includes two representatives from Germany – Larisa Yurchenko and Leonid Nisman. Since Luzhkov's resignation, the MSRS's international activity has diminished, although various events continue to be held and the website remains operational.

In October 2015, the MSRS organised the International Conference of Russian-Speaking Lawyers. At the Conference, the International Association of Russian-Speaking Lawyers (IARL) was established, intended to become ‘an important legal instrument for protecting the rights and legitimate interests of Russian compatriots and the Russian Federation in various countries around the world.’ The default assumption is that ‘Russian compatriots’ in various countries are discriminated against and require the special protection of a specialised legal organisation established in Moscow. The founders of IARL are the MSRS and the Guild of Russian Lawyers. IARL has 180 members from more than 60 countries. IARL is clearly just as much of a sham, i.e., pseudo-public, organisation as the MSRS, and in reality an outgrowth of Moscow's secret services.

The situation where one dummy international organisation establishes another, also supposedly public, and so on, is very typical of the Kremlin's methods of operation abroad.

World Congress of Compatriots

On October 18, 2017, the Russian Embassy in Berlin celebrated the tenth anniversary of one of the largest émigré organisations in Germany: the All-German Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots, the German branch of the World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad. This organisation, the executive body of the World Congress of Russian Compatriots (WCCRC), was founded in 2007 in Moscow to ideologically consolidate Russian émigrés. According to the WCCRC website, it is intended to ensure ‘interaction between compatriots and the state authorities of the Russian Federation and the state authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.’ In other words, the World Congress of Russian Compatriots is another, competing organisation for the political recruitment of Russian émigrés worldwide, created shortly after Putin's rise to power in Moscow.

The First World Congress of Compatriots was held in 2001 in the Column Hall of the House of Unions and has been held every few years since. The most recent, the Seventh Congress, was held in October 2021. It was attended by 400 delegates from 102 countries. The current Council consists of 26 members from various countries. The Chairman of the WCCRC is Mikhail Drozdov, Chairman of the Russian Club in Shanghai, who, judging by details of his biography, is an intelligence officer specialising in China. The WCCRC Board includes Larisa Yurchenko, Director of the Russian Cultural and Educational Centre ‘Istok’ in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Chair of the All-German Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots, and the Board of the All-German Union of Russian-Speaking Organisations.

The All-Ukrainian Coordination Council of Organisations of Russian Compatriots (VKSORS) was founded in June 2007. Chairman – Evgeny Baklanov.

The 28th meeting of the WCCRC took place in May 2017. The text of the resolutions adopted there leaves no doubt as to the propaganda and recruitment nature of the WCCRC's activities. For example, it includes the following points:

"…Recommend that members of the coordinating councils begin work on preparing for the elections of the President of the Russian Federation, which will take place in 2018.

…Particularly note the importance of holding commemorative events in countries near and far abroad, including the Immortal Regiment and the St. George Ribbon.

…It is considered appropriate for the Institute of Russian Abroad to organise master classes for members of the VKS and chairmen of the RKS on the fundamentals of technical and information work on the Internet.

…The chairs of country and regional coordinating councils are encouraged to open pages about their activities on social media: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, and others…

…Based on the importance of preserving the continuity of generations and with the goal of further activating the activities of youth associations of compatriots, to expand the range of forms and methods of working with young people from foreign countries…

…Develop a system of moral incentives for the most active local organisations and their members."

This is a completely obvious programme to strengthen pro-Putin propaganda with the help of agents of influence in Germany.

In Germany, the WCCRC is represented in many federal states by the OKS. It's worth noting that the full name of the OKS is ‘All-German Coordinating Council of Public Organisations of Russian Compatriots and Russian-Speaking Citizens.’

In other words, the OKS is a council of organisations. And all members of the federal council of the OKS are the leaders of public (formally) Russian-German organisations.

The OKS has its own very active propaganda website, ‘Russian Field’.

The director and editor-in-chief is Yuri Viktorovich Eremenko. Eremenko also heads the Erfurt-based agency ‘Ost-Magistrale’ (‘Eastern Highway’). It provides ‘consulting in the field of international communications.’ One example of the agency's work is the organisation of the Yuri Gagarin commemoration in Erfurt in 2011.

They were financed by the Russkiy Mir Foundation. Eremenko is also one of the seven members of the OKS board.

The ‘Regulations on the OKS,’ published on the Russkoye Pole website, state that the OKS ‘represents the interests of Russian compatriots and Russian-speaking citizens at the federal level... maintains contact with the Government Commission on Compatriots Abroad, the Department for Work with Compatriots of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, and other interested state, political, and public structures of the Russian Federation, Moscow, and the regions of the Russian Federation, as well as with state institutions of the Russian Federation in Germany.’

This means that the Congress of Compatriots was originally conceived as part of the Russian state apparatus.

The focus of the Congress of Compatriots in Germany can be judged by the keynote speech of its chairperson, Larisa Yurchenko, at the World Congress of Russian Compatriots in Moscow (November 2015): ‘Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, vigorous forces of compatriots have openly declared their position on Crimea through mass protests and demonstrated solidarity with the residents of Donbas... Today, it is difficult for residents of Germany to obtain objective information. Official media are biased. But residents, sensing lies and omissions, try to obtain information through social networks, cable TV channels, online television, and join rallies and marches of Russian compatriots. Information that deviates from the official version is passed on by word of mouth. Personal contacts are becoming increasingly important... I would especially like to note the civic position taken by Russian Germans. They initiated the first rallies against the growing, seemingly hidden, Russophobia, for the right to freedom of speech, against one-sided media coverage, and against manifestations of Nazism and extremism. Rallies in support of Russia took place in Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Bonn, Frankfurt, and other cities. They collected and sent humanitarian aid to the residents of Donbas…’

‘It's gratifying that we have a partner—an organisation with significant authority in the country—the German-Russian Forum... We want to hold a conference on human rights together with the German-Russian Forum.’ The demonstrations of Russian Germans mentioned by Yurchenko are racist demonstrations directed against refugees from Muslim countries that took place in January 2015 in many German cities and attracted up to 10,000 people. Moscow propaganda played a significant role in fueling Islamophobic sentiments among Russian émigrés at the time. The unrest began after Ivan Blagiy, a correspondent for Channel One Moscow television, published a false report about a ‘girl named Lisa,’ allegedly raped by Muslim migrants. Yurchenko's account implies that the OKS also played a hand in organising the unrest in Germany in January 2015.

Also characteristic here is the praise for the ‘Russian Germans’ who ‘collected and sent humanitarian aid to the residents of Donbas’ during Russia's aggression against Ukraine. ‘Russian Germans’ are the primary target group for the All-German Congress of Compatriots. Therefore, organising aid to Russia's aggression in Donbas (which included the illegal recruitment of volunteers for military action) can certainly be considered a credit to the All-German Congress of Compatriots.

The German-Russian Forum, a partner of the OKS, deserves special mention. This is a governmental organisation and truly influential. On the German side, it is headed by former Brandenburg Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck, a longtime Putin sympathiser. Among the forum's German members are numerous Russian agents of influence. The open involvement of the German-Russian Forum in propaganda operations by Russian intelligence agencies is a very ominous sign.

It's hard to doubt that the activities of the All-German Congress of Compatriots (like other branches of the WCCRC around the world) are controlled from Moscow and constitute intelligence operations aimed at the political recruitment of Russian émigrés. The scale and intensity of these activities are astonishing, having increased sharply in recent years following the onset of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the outbreak of the conflict in Donbas, and the imposition of international sanctions against Russia.

The overall goal of the activities of both the Compatriots' Congresses and other related organisations is clear: attempts to destabilize the domestic situation in democratic countries through propaganda among émigrés who have become ideological opponents of Putin's Russia. In this way, the Moscow government is attempting to at least partially compensate for its own catastrophic foreign policy failures.

World Congress of Russian-Speaking Jewry

Simultaneously with the MSRS, another organisation was founded in Moscow in 2002. It focused on working not with all emigrants, but only with a certain segment of them: the World Congress of Russian-Speaking Jewry (WCRJ). Since 2007, the WCRJ's president has been Boris Shpigel, a member of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation representing the Penza region. Shpigel's connection to the secret services is obvious, given that he graduated from the Academy of Foreign Trade in 2002.

Dmitry Feldman, head of the German branch of the WCRJ, was a member of the WCRJ Presidium from Germany. The branch was registered in Germany under the name ‘Weltkongress russischprachiger Juden e.V.’ In addition to Berlin, WCRJ offices operated in Moscow and New York.

In 2009, the Congress hosted a gathering of Russian agents of influence from around the world in Berlin – 400 people, including friendly politicians from various countries. The Steigenberger Hotel in the heart of Berlin was rented for three days for the event. To Germany's credit, no distinguished guests attended.

The conference was officially called ‘Lessons of World War II and the Holocaust,’ but its main goal was the public adoption of five resolutions supporting Putin's policies (at the time, the focus was on Ukraine and Georgia). One can imagine the scale of funding for such conferences.

In 2010, the WCRJ suddenly disappeared, or rather, reincarnated as an entirely different organisation, called ‘World Without Nazism,’ registered in 2011 in Strasbourg. It was founded in Kyiv in 2010. Its chairman, Boris Shpigel, remains. Now, the main goal of this organisation is pro-Russian propaganda in Eastern Europe, the CIS, and the Baltic states. This primarily means promoting Stalinist and Soviet-patriotic versions of the history of World War II under the guise of fighting Nazism. The pseudo-religious organisation transformed into a pseudo-human rights organisation. This was likely due to the redistribution of resources and increased propaganda pressure on the former Soviet republics—primarily Ukraine and the Baltic states.

As Shpigel himself said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2018:

‘The international human rights movement “World Without Nazism” is a non-governmental organisation that unites 156 national anti-fascist organisations from 30 countries and shapes public opinion in support of the anti-Nazi movement worldwide.’ There is no doubt that all 156 ‘national anti-fascist organisations’ are Moscow-based spy centres.

In 2021, the organisation's head, Boris Shpigel, was arrested in Moscow on charges of offering a bribe of approximately $400,000 to the governor of the Penza region and was jailed for two months.

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The most powerful and influential state organisation working with emigration, the Russkiy Mir Foundation, is also called a public organisation. The foundation was established by decree of Putin in 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 Alekseyevich Nikonov, Molotov's grandson and, according to some sources, an FSB general. In any case, as recently as 1991, Nikonov was an assistant to KGB Chairman Bakatin. All members of the foundation's board are high-ranking government officials.

The foundation's mission is to finance Russian organisations abroad that are useful to Moscow. Russkiy Mir establishes its own ‘Russian Centres’ around the world—currently, there are over two hundred of them. In Germany, there are ‘Russian Centres’ in Berlin, Nuremberg, Dresden, and Gelsenkirchen. Furthermore, there are hundreds of Russian-German cultural societies in Germany, in virtually every city. While they are all funded to varying degrees by the German state, they have also received grants from Russkiy Mir to finance all sorts of educational and cultural projects, in accordance with programmes developed in Moscow. Today, it's hard to imagine a single such society in Germany that isn't influenced by Russkiy Mir or its related organisations, or that doesn't enjoy their support in organising all sorts of cultural programmes, which also serve a propaganda purpose.

The list of friendly individuals and organisations in Germany on the Russkiy Mir website contains over 270 names and titles. These include official foundation representative offices, media outlets, institutes, universities, cultural societies, student associations, church communities, higher education institutions, schools, kindergartens, and more.

Only in July 2022 was the Russkiy Mir Foundation added to the EU sanctions list and lost its ability to operate legally in Europe. But its people, connections, and organisational structure remain.

Rossotrudnichestvo

This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. There are other Moscow agencies that don't pretend to be public organisations, but actually do the same thing—starting with Rossotrudnichestvo. The full name of this government body is the ‘Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation.’ Rossotrudnichestvo was established in 2008, but is the successor to the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), which existed until 1958 and subsequently changed its name several times. In the USSR, relations with foreign countries were traditionally the responsibility of state security, beginning with the INO OGPU. This situation hasn't changed in the post-Soviet era, so Rossotrudnichestvo can safely be considered a departmental branch of the FSB.

Rossotrudnichestvo has 95 missions abroad, and 72 Russian science and cultural centres operate in 62 countries. The nature and scope of Rossotrudnichestvo's activities are evident from its annual reports. As stated in Rossotrudnichestvo's 2016 report:

"The Agency paid special attention to the implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy for Expanding Humanitarian Influence. <…> The Agency pays special attention to citizens of foreign countries wishing to receive a Russian education. <…> Currently, more than 6,200 Russian schools abroad are integrated into a single educational, methodological and information space. <…> More than 6,000 organisations are foreign educational institutions of all types and forms of ownership, of which approximately 5,400 organisations operate in the CIS. <…> Up-to-date data on the level of equipment, personnel qualifications and needs of educational organisations with teaching of the Russian language and education in Russian was collected from 1,000 organisations located in Hungary, Germany, Greece, Israel, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Finland, France, Croatia, Montenegro, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Cyprus. In 2016, Russian language courses are offered in 58 countries worldwide through 63 representative offices of Rossotrudnichestvo. Approximately 16,000 people completed training at their facilities. <…> Seven in-person professional development events were held, with a total of 672 participants, and 12 scientific, methodological, and expert-focused events were held, with a total of 676 participants. A total of 4,615 specialists from CIS countries received advanced training in 2016.

In non-CIS countries (Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc.), 102 events were held with a total of over 5,700 participants. <…> The annual quota for the education of foreign citizens is 15,000. The education quota has proven itself to be an effective instrument of Russian "soft power" in this area of ​​international humanitarian cooperation. <…> In 2016, Rossotrudnichestvo continued to implement the programme of short-term study tours to the Russian Federation for young representatives of political, public, scientific, and business circles of foreign countries <…> In 2016, 1,000 foreign young leaders from 100 countries visited the Russian Federation under this programme." Encouraging the study of Russian abroad using programmes developed in Russia and with the help of Russian-trained teachers is, of course, both a propaganda and recruitment effort, aimed primarily at second- and third-generation emigrants, starting from a very young age.

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The Rossotrudnichestvo office in Berlin is the Russian House of Science and Culture (RDNK) on Friedrichstrasse. Even during Soviet times, this building was known among émigrés as the ‘Dzerzhinsky House of Culture.’ It was known that the RDNK director held the rank of colonel. Major Putin was once the director of a similar house in Dresden.

The Russian House of Culture in Berlin is home to many different organisations whose ties to Russian intelligence agencies are undeniable. Among them is one particularly intriguing one: the Federal Association of German Societies ‘West-East’ – Bundesverband Deutscher West-Ost-Gesellschaften e.V. (BDWO).

The Union unites, as stated on its website, ‘more than 70 public organisations striving to deepen relations with residents of the successor states of the former Soviet Union.’ The Union's chairman is Peter Franke. The Union was founded in 1996 in Berlin, but has its own prehistory.

In 1955, a publishing house with the telling name ‘Soviet Union Today’ (Sowjetunion heute) was founded in Cologne. In 1992, it changed its name to ‘Wostok,’ and in 2002, it moved to Berlin. The editor-in-chief is Peter Franke. From 1955 to 1991, the press department of the Soviet Embassy in Bonn published its magazine, ‘Soviet Union Today,’ at this publishing house. It is quite clear that the publishing house was created by ‘Soviet Union’ specifically for this purpose. With the collapse of the USSR, both the publishing house and the magazine changed their names.

Since 1992, Wostok Publishing House has published the quarterly magazine Wostok, a ‘social, political, and cultural journal about Russia and the former USSR.’ Since 2007, the publishing house has also published a magazine for Russian language students, Po svetu (Around the World).

Peter Franke is also a member of the Petersburg Dialogue (Petersburger Dialog e.V.), a Russian-German government forum that is off-limits to the general public. What's particularly surprising is that no biographical information about Peter Franke can be found online. There's no date of birth, profession, or place of study listed, which is highly unusual for a public figure in the West.

This example clearly demonstrates how an employee of a Soviet propaganda publishing house in the West can be transformed into a German public figure, constantly appearing in the Russian press and occupying a high position in Germany, and on the basis of a former Soviet publishing house, a German quasi-public organisation can be created with more than decent, at first glance, goals and extensive connections throughout the country, but which clearly performs intelligence functions.