The liquidation of ABOP and the severing of the connections it had created in the political and business world of Germany and other countries, one must assume, caused great damage to this type of activity by Russian special services.

It can be assumed, however, that it has not ceased, especially since, in addition to ABOP, many related organisations exist and operate, including a large number of ‘academies.’

Hanover, for example, is home to the European Academy of Natural Sciences (EANW), registered on December 17, 2002. It was originally established as a branch of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, one of many Russian ‘public academies’ that have no connection to science.

The President of the EANW is Vladimir Tyminsky, and the Vice-President is Professor Helmut Hahn. Unlike the émigré V. Tyminsky, who has no scientific credentials, Helmut Hahn is a true professor, a renowned scientist, President of the R. Koch Medical Society of Berlin, and Director of the Institute of Immunology at the University of Berlin. Tyminsky's own fascinating biography is available on his personal website.

The Academy does not engage in any visible scientific activity, but it actively distributes awards, of which there were already over forty in 2008. Among them is even the ‘European Order of Peter the Great,’ a counterpart to the Order of Peter the Great awarded by the ABOP. Currently, the EANW holds over 24 medals, 18 orders, and three personal medals. The EANW also confers the titles of ‘Honorary Doctor of the Academy,’ ‘Honorary Professor of the Academy,’ and ‘Honorary Inventor of Europe.’

In 2003, General Viktor Shevchenko, president of the ABOP, was admitted to the academy. In 2006, Shevchenko was awarded the EANW Order of the Senator, which was announced on the EANW website. The congratulatory letter was signed by Vladimir Tyminsky and Helmut Hahn.

The Robert Koch and I.I. Mechnikov Forum, headed by Helmut Hahn, is a fully official German-Russian organisation, established at the initiative of the also-official government organisation, the St. Petersburg Dialogue, to ‘develop international ties in medicine and healthcare’ and operates ‘under the auspices of the German and Russian Ministries of Health within the framework of the Modernization Partnership... The goal of the Koch-I.I. Mechnikov Forum is to improve the level of medical care in Russia.’ Professor Helmut Hahn is also a member of the German-Russian Forum, headed by former Brandenburg Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck.

Until its liquidation in early 2009, ABOP was on the list of partners of the EANW, along with various other more or less strange organisations.

The first among the EANW honorary professors is General Valentin Varennikov, one of the initiators of the 1991 coup against Gorbachev. He is also on the list, along with many other Russian military officers. In appearance, behavior, and language, the EANW is very reminiscent of the ABOP. There are no indications of its funding sources on the EANW website.

Over the course of 15 years, the European Academy of Natural Sciences has acquired a whole host of branches, seemingly independent, but all connected to the same Tyminsky and his family.

Here are the main ones:

European Scientific Society (Europäische Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft); International Medical Congress ‘Euromedica – Hannover’; European University EANW; International Knightly Union; International Authors' Rights Bureau; International Association of Authors of Scientific Discoveries; International Academy of Authors of Scientific Discoveries; Euroclub.

EANW is also a co-founder of the Mobile University of Self-Development (Moscow).

The Euroclub has, for example, a ‘Section for the Revival of the Knightly Movement’ with subsections:

1. The Order of Malta

2. Teutonic Order

3. The Order of the Templars

4. Order of the Knights of Cyprus

5. Order of Saint Mary

6. Order of Saint Lazarus

All of these are purely charlatan, pseudo-social organisations, imitating scientific activity, behind which stands a very small group of people.

At first glance, their main activity is the sale of self-made orders and pseudo-scientific titles. They also organise paid conferences for officials from the former Soviet republics, complete with tours of Europe and the presentation of titles and orders. The EANW even issues personalized postage stamps featuring individual figures.

Back in 2007, one LiveJournal blogger drew attention to the purely charlatan nature of the EANW's activities and the fact that their website was located not in Hanover, but in Moscow.

According to some sources, some EANW medals were awarded for a fee of one thousand euros. Examples of such awards, along with the exotic biographies of the recipients, can be found on the EANW website. However, this income hardly explains the funding of such a complex network of front organisations and their connections to official German organisations and genuine professors like Helmut Hahn. It's even more difficult to explain Helmut Hahn's willingness to collaborate with obvious charlatans.

It is clear that behind the creation of a structure that at first glance appears purely clownish, there is a well-thought-out programme and quite powerful funding.

The mere production of these medals (which, according to eyewitnesses, are quite high-quality and little different from Russian state medals) is quite expensive. The system created is extremely convenient for cultivating both officials and other important figures from the former Soviet Union, as well as Soviet émigrés in Germany, who are often ignorant and eager for awards and titles. And the partnership with ABOP reveals the approximate sources of this funding.

The Presidium of the EANW consists of President Tyminsky, Vice-President for Germany Professor Helmut Hahn, Vice-President for the CIS Professor R.G. Melik-Oganjanyan and Doctor of Sciences, poet M.A. Pekelis.

Mikhail Abramovich Pekelis is a rather curious figure. Here's his biography from the website of the Union of Russian Writers.

"Pekelis Mikhail Abramovich (pseudonym - Mikhail Plastov) (b. August 2, 1947) is a writer and scientist of world renown, a famous Moscow poet, prose writer, journalist, publisher, playwright, physicist, mathematician, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, doctor of philosophy, professor at the European University, founder of the literary movement "New Renaissance".

He is a member of the Union of Writers of Russia, the Union of Journalists of Russia, the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RANS), the Presidium of the European Academy of Natural Sciences (EANW), a full member of the Academy of Russian Literature; chairman of the Section of Literature and Propaganda of Knowledge of the RANS, and co-chairman of the Union of Writers of Russia.

Mikhail Plastov is the President of the Union of European Writers and the President of the International Awards Union of the UN Council on Public Awards.

<…>Laureate of the international Gianni Rodari Prize, the Golden Griffin, and the Artiada of the Peoples of Russia; recipient of four orders of the International Awards Union and six government and public awards." This is the biography of a textbook charlatan. Pekelis is indeed an engineer and physicist; his dissertation, defended in 1997, can be found online. The nature of his professional activities and sources of income over the next 20 years are unclear.

All the organisations of which he is a member, including the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the European Academy of Natural Sciences, and others, are pseudoscientific. All the awards are self-made, dreamed up by charlatan ‘academies’ and awards agencies.

Of interest are two organisations that he heads.

The Union of European Writers and the International Awards Union of the UN Public Awards Council were established in 2005 in Poland during a literary conference organised by the Russian Centre for Science and Culture (RCSC) in Warsaw, the Union of Polish Writers, and the Institute of Russian Studies at the University of Warsaw. ‘Writer and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Academician Mikhail Plastov was elected president of these unions, the need for which had long been felt in the European cultural space.’

The second congress of the Union of European Writers was held in February 2011 in Berlin ‘at the Modena and Oskanisher hotels.’ In 2013, an ‘international congress within the framework of the Union of European Writers’ was held in Istanbul. Plastov's LinkedIn page states: ‘The Union of European Writers is the first creative pan-European union uniting the heads of European writers', literary, and journalistic organisations, prominent European writers, publishers, and literary figures, including authors of scientific, technical, and educational literature.’ It is quite obvious that this organisation is a sham, designed to cultivate (attract, recruit) Russian émigrés who write and are interested in publications and awards. It has no real members and no real structure, other than a few individuals simulating public activity with funds from an unknown source.

Their tactics can be judged by an incident that happened to a Berlin poet and at the same time a successful chemical engineer.

The award ceremony for him with the Union of European Writers Prize took place at the Russian House on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.

Even during the Soviet era, this place served as the centre of public activity for the KGB in East Berlin and has not changed its specific nature to this day.

Any organisations that maintain headquarters there or hold events there are undoubtedly connected in one way or another to Russian intelligence agencies. The director of the Russian House is believed to hold a colonel's rank. Before the dissolution of ABOP, the then director of the Russian House was a ‘professor of ABOP’ and participated in its activities. Specifically, he attended the aforementioned awarding of the ABOP Order to Bavarian Interior Minister Beckstein in Munich.

So, after being awarded a seemingly innocuous literary prize, the laureate was called into the next room, where the cultural attaché of the Russian embassy presented him with a watch from the Russian president. The following exchange ensued: ‘But I didn't do anything to deserve it.’ ‘Never mind, you'll earn it.’ In this case, the recruitment failed, but presumably as a rare exception.

In Berlin, the Union of European Writers has a twin organisation: the Union of Writers of Interethnic Harmony of the Federal Republic of Germany (Schriftsteller Vereinigung Bundesrepublik Deutschland für Völkerverständigung e.V.). This is also a fictitious public organisation, although formally registered in 2010. It is run by a single person, who also serves as its president: writer Vladimir Sergienko. Sergienko, a Soviet émigré originally from Lviv, lives in Berlin but regularly appears on Moscow-based propaganda television and radio programmes and presents awards in various countries on behalf of his Union of Writers of Interethnic Harmony. This happened, for example, in Ukraine in 2014. Sergienko and his organisation will be discussed below, in the chapter on pro-Russian media.

The International Awards Union of the UN Public Awards Council, also headed by Michael Pekelis, is an even more absurd entity. Naturally, it has no connection to the UN. It also has no structure or address. It's pure bluff. Its awards are also awards from the European Academy of Natural Sciences, as evidenced by the information about one of the awards:

‘For significant contributions to scientific research in medicine, Anatoly Vitalyevich Malykhin was awarded the Grand Silver Cross with Crown and an honorary diploma by the European Academy of Natural Sciences and the International Council on Public Awards of the United Nations (UN) on March 15, 2007.’ All of the above-described structures—the ‘academies,’ awards unions, and writers' unions—are very similar in both their essence and their goals. They are fakes, masquerading as public organisations. Their main activity in Germany is establishing connections and recruiting agents within various strata and groups of the German and émigré communities by distributing awards and feigning public activity. This does not exclude the possibility of generating additional income from selling mock medals. These organisations represent no one in reality (except Moscow employers) and could not have arisen without secret government funding.