Fake KGB organisations masquerading as scientific organisations are fairly easy to recognise by their romantic names. They typically reference academic scholarship, the global nature of the problems they address, and a humanistic focus. However, there should be no direct references to the nature of their activities, only hints at their nobility and universal significance. Dozens of such strange new organisations have emerged in Russia and around the world over the past quarter century.
All sorts of academies—of cosmohumanism, geopolitical issues, imageology, security, safety, and law enforcement… Institutes and centres—of world civilizations, democracy and cooperation, strategic and Eurasian studies… Foundations—of strategic culture, historical perspective, historical memory, and democratic research… Most of these organisations are internationally active, funded from obscure sources, and closely monitored by the Russian secret services. If the word ‘security’ appears in the organisation's name or in the description of its mission, this can be considered a clear indication of the involvement of state security agencies in its activities. Here are a few typical examples.
One such institution was opened with great fanfare in Berlin in the summer of 2016 under the lofty name of Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, a limited liability company – Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute gemeinnützige GmbH (DOC).
Officially, this institute is ‘an international, independent, non-governmental organisation dedicated to the study of international relations and the promotion of international security. The institute's stated goal is to develop recommendations for preventing conflicts and reducing tensions in the world.’
The Dialogue of Civilizations' unique position among similar Russian pseudoscientific institutions is determined by the personality of its founder, Vladimir Yakunin. The institute was established less than a year after his resignation as president of Russian Railways.
The Dialogue of Civilizations Institute is the legal successor of another organisation, the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations (the Rhodes Forum), established in 2002. The co-chairs of the forum were Vladimir Yakunin (Russia), President of Titan Capital Corporation Nicholas Papanikolaou (USA/Greece) and Alfred Gusenbauer, former Federal Chancellor of Austria.
Wikipedia describes the Rhodes Forum as ‘an international non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting intercultural dialogue and finding ways to reduce tensions in the world. It brings together scholars, intellectuals, current and retired politicians, businesspeople, artists, and cultural figures from many countries across diverse civilizations.’
Such text almost unmistakably points to the purely intelligence functions of the forum.
The Rhodes Forum held an annual conference in the fall on the Greek island of Rhodes. The relocation of the Yakunin Forum to Berlin and its transformation into a permanent institution marks a significant expansion.
The institute's website states that it does not receive public funding, but is financed through a Swiss endowment (Endowment for the World Public Forum – Dialogue of Civilizations), membership fees, and private donations. The sources and amounts of these private donations are unknown.
In the summer of 2016, information appeared in the press that the institute had 25 million euros in funding and that the number of permanent employees was expected to reach 20 people, plus 30 to 60 external experts.
The Institute has three official founders: Vladimir Yakunin, Walter Schwimmer and Peter Schulze.
Walter Schwimmer (b. 1942) is an Austrian politician and former Secretary General of the Council of Europe (1999–2004).
Peter Schulze (b. 1942) is a German political scientist and head of the Moscow bureau of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (close to the SPD party) from 1992 to 2003.
In 2014, Schulze explained Russia's annexation of Crimea as a ‘need for self-defence.’
Vladimir Yakunin's biography is worth a closer look. He was born in 1948 and graduated from the Leningrad Mechanical Institute (Voenmekh) in 1972, specialising in aircraft production. In the 1970s, he studied at the Red Banner Institute of the KGB of the USSR (now the Foreign Intelligence Academy) and served in scientific and technical intelligence – the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR (PGU). From 1982 to 1985, he was head of the foreign department of the A.F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1981 to 1991, he served in the diplomatic service (Second, then First Secretary of the Permanent Mission of the USSR to the UN). In 1996, he co-founded the Ozero dacha cooperative with Putin. Since 2002, he has been First Deputy Minister of Railways (MPS). From 2005 to 2015, he was the President of Russian Railways, which took over some of the functions of the Ministry of Railways, which was abolished in 2004.
In 2005, Yakunin defended his candidate’s dissertation on the topic ‘The mechanism for developing geostrategies in the modern Russian state (using the transport and railway sector as an example)’ while continuing his work in the government, and in 2007, his doctoral dissertation ‘Processes and mechanisms for forming state policy in modern Russian society’).
Of course, these works have nothing to do with science. This is evident both from their titles and the defence deadlines. Such dissertations, like a professorial title, are a mandatory accompaniment to the corresponding hierarchical status in today's Russia. Since late 2010, Yakunin has headed the Department of Public Policy in the Faculty of Political Science at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Yakunin's military rank is unknown. In a letter to the British magazine The Economist, published in August 2013, Yakunin denied claims that he held high positions in the KGB or FSB. According to Yakunin, his military rank is ‘engineer captain.’ The latter seems unlikely, given his high position in Putin's government hierarchy and 22 years of intelligence service.
Since 2010, Yakunin has been a member of the board of trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. This state-owned foundation, headed by another high-ranking intelligence official, Molotov's grandson Vyacheslav Nikonov, is engaged in propaganda campaigns against Soviet-Russian émigrés worldwide.
Yakunin's professional biography is that of a state security officer who spent his entire life working undercover. It's clear that Vladimir Yakunin's only real profession is foreign intelligence.
The head of research at the Dialogue of Civilizations Institute was Arabist Alexei Malashenko, who died in 2023. According to his official biography, he, like Yakunin, had direct ties to the Soviet secret services. Malashenko graduated from the Institute of Asia and Africa in 1974, served in the army in Algeria from 1974 to 1976 (as a member of the Soviet advisory staff), and was part of the Soviet expedition to Libya from 1979 to 1980. From 2006 to 2008, he was a professor at MGIMO. Malashenko is a member of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, another pseudo-public organisation created in 1992 and closely linked to the Russian government and the security ministries.
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It's worth taking a look at the situation as a whole. In 2014, Russia committed aggression against a neighboring country in the very centre of Europe. It occupied Ukrainian Crimea and Donbas, where it is waging a poorly disguised war. As a result, it has found itself a political pariah in the modern world. The international community is trying to bring it to heel with economic sanctions, but with little success. In the midst of these ‘troubles,’ a colleague of Putin's from his original profession and a top figure in his inner circle established a scientific institution in Berlin with the goal of ‘promoting international security’ and ‘developing recommendations for preventing conflicts and reducing tensions in the world.’ Foreign specialists—professors, politicians, and journalists—are actively invited to work there. Yakunin's own position was clearly expressed in his interview with TASS in the same year: ‘The West is waging a systematic, well-staged, and well-funded information war aimed at the theological destruction of the Russian people.’
It is quite obvious that Yakunin's institute has nothing to do with scientific activity in the direct sense of the word; it was created, just like its predecessor, the Dialogue of Civilizations forum, to serve Moscow's propaganda needs and recruit agents of influence abroad.
In this regard, the list of German directors and experts at the institute is interesting. It is striking that, despite the institute being located in Berlin, only three of its leadership members are German: Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis; Peter Schulze, head of the Moscow office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation from 1992 to 2003 and a member of the German-Russian Forum; and Andrea von Knoop, who served as the representative of the Association of German Economy in Russia from 1993 to 2007 and is also a member of the German-Russian Forum. Andrea von Knoop was awarded the Order of Friendship by Putin in 2003.
Among the first members of the institute's leadership was also General Harald Kujatt, a former Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, but by the spring of 2017 his name had disappeared from the institute's website.
Recruiting foreigners working or studying in Russia (journalists, students, scientists, employees of Western organisations and firms, businessmen) has always been a key part of the KGB and GRU's activities, and continues to be so for today's Russian intelligence agencies. The Dialogue of Civilizations Institute is a case in point. The institute's extensive list of experts includes 56 names from around the world. However, it appears there are only two German representatives: Dirk Löhr, a professor at the University of Trier, and political scientist Alexander Rahr.
There was talk that when the Yakunin Institute was just being created, many German specialists in Russia received an invitation to work there, but almost all of them refused.
The DOC Institute's first conference in Berlin took place on December 1, 2016. Since then, conferences, receptions, and roundtable discussions have been held there regularly, once or twice a month.
The long list of foreign participants in the Dialogue of Civilizations Institute's events is also a list of ‘friends of Moscow.’ It's difficult to get caught up in this by accident. For any Western politician or scholar, the situation with Yakunin's institute and Yakunin himself is completely transparent. In any case, it can be clarified very easily and very quickly today. Therefore, the very fact of participating in the activities of Yakunin's institute indicates a conscious decision to cooperate with the Putin regime and represent its interests.
It's no secret to any of the institute's employees or partners that Yakunin is a high-ranking official of the Russian intelligence services and that the institute itself cannot be anything other than a branch of the Russian intelligence services disguised as a public organisation. It can also be assumed that the institute's specific tasks are carried out in parallel with money laundering through a Swiss endowment fund.
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In July 2013, Yakunin and his wife, Natalia Yakunina, co-founded and chaired the World Public Forum ‘Dialogue of Civilizations’ Endowment Fund, registered in Geneva. Natalia Yakunina serves as the fund's president, and Vladimir Yakunin serves as vice president. An endowment fund is a special-purpose foundation established for non-profit purposes. In this case, it is intended to finance the activities of the Berlin-based Dialogue of Civilizations Institute.
In fact, in July 2013, the Yakunin family founded not one, but two endowment funds in Switzerland. The second is the St. Andrew the First-Called Endowment Fund.
The foundation's official goal is ‘to support research and the preservation of Russian national heritage, as well as to promote the peaceful coexistence of various peoples and religions.’ Natalia Yakunina became the foundation's president, and Vladimir Yakunin, its vice president. This endowment fund is intended to finance the activities of the Russian St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, established in 1992. The foundation implements ‘projects aimed at fostering a positive public attitude toward the traditional, binding foundations of Russia—the state, the church, and the army.’ In 2001, ‘at the initiative’ of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, the Centre for National Glory was established, which ‘dedicates itself to preserving the cultural foundations of society through an appeal to Russia's historical destiny.’
Vladimir Yakunin is the chairman of the board of trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and the Centre for National Glory. The director of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation is Vladimir Vladimirovich Bushuev (b. 1957), a KGB officer and colonel.
In March 2013, Vladimir Yakunin established the Istoki endowment fund and chaired its board of trustees. The fund is registered in Moscow.
The mission of the Istoki Endowment Fund is to strengthen the spiritual foundations of Russian society and promote moral education based on Orthodoxy and worthy examples of Russian history and culture. Investment income from the Istoki Endowment Fund is used to develop existing programmes of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and the Centre for National Glory, which help draw public attention to issues of Russia's spiritual and moral revival and the appreciation of Russian history and culture. Based on the amount of endowment capital raised, the fund is among the five largest endowments in Russia.
In 2016, alongside the opening of the Dialogue of Civilizations Institute in Berlin, it was announced that the Istoki Foundation would launch a project to train students from the Moscow State University's Political Science Department at major foreign universities—in France, the UK, Singapore, China, and Hong Kong. The Moscow State University's Political Science Department was established in 2008 with the goal of training ‘political analysts who could provide objective, serious, and thorough analysis and forecasting of the political process.’ It's more than likely that Yakunin's project is aimed at training future intelligence officers abroad.
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All three Yakunin foundations are interconnected. Ekaterina Gerus, executive director of the Istoki Foundation, also serves as a manager at the Berlin-based Dialogue of Civilizations Institute. Sergei Evgenievich Shcheblygin, director of the Istoki Foundation, has been president of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation since 2006. Shcheblygin is a member of the Federation Council of Russia and a historian of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From 1983 to 1992, he taught history at the Higher Party School. Since 2002, he has been a regular participant in conferences of the World Public Forum ‘Dialogue of Civilizations’ in Rhodes.
In Moscow, the Dialogue of Civilizations Foundation is registered at the same address as the Istok Foundation and the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation: 42 Pokrovka Street.
Thus, Vladimir Yakunin simultaneously appears to be the head of several fundamentally different, ostensibly public organisations, all linked to endowment funds in Switzerland and Russia. It's entirely possible that Yakunin now controls state funds intended to finance the various activities of the intelligence services. Each area has its own fund.
The St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation is engaged in imperial and chauvinistic propaganda within Russia.
The Istok Foundation finances the education abroad of Russian political science students from Moscow State University, future employees of government agencies, and specialists in ‘international security.’
The Dialogue of Civilizations Institute was created to simulate international scientific activity abroad and to infiltrate intelligence agencies into German political circles.
The Berlin Institute for Dialogue of Civilizations ceased to officially exist in February 2023.