In Moscow, another remnant of the old Soviet propaganda apparatus continues to exist posthumously – the International Association of ‘Twin Cities’ (MAPG). From 1964 right up until the collapse of the USSR, the Association for Relations between Soviet and Foreign Cities operated within the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (SSOD) from 1964 to 1991. It linked 289 Soviet cities with 530 cities and regions in 71 countries around the world.  
In 1991, the USSR broke up into 15 independent states and the association was renamed an international organisation. This was apparently an attempt to preserve the Soviet-era structure, which had been managed from Moscow. The attempt failed; today, among the MAPG’s partners, one can find a single related organisation – the Belarusian Public Organisation of Sister Cities (BOOPG). All the others are a wide variety of organisations with strong links to the security services – ranging from Rossotrudnichestvo and the ‘Russian World’ Foundation to the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) – 24 in total. The association comprises 164 Russian cities ‘twinned’ with foreign ones. 
The President of the MAPG is Andrei Yuryevich Vorobyov, Governor of the Moscow Region. The Executive Vice-President is Sergei Vasilyevich Paramonov, who worked in the 1970s as head of the international organisations section of the USSR Committee for Youth Organisations. Strangely enough, this is the only available detail of Paramonov’s biography.  Among the twenty members of the board, consisting mainly of officials and deputy mayors from various Russian cities, is Georgy Lvovich Muradov, whom we are familiar with – Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Crimea to the President of the Russian Federation. 
The association does not appear to be engaged in any visible international activities. In its programme of events for 2024, apart from domestic conferences and round-table discussions, only one international event was listed – the First Meeting of Sister Cities of Serbia and Russia in Belgrade (and even that is in doubt).  
It appears that the MAPG, like the RAMS and the MSOD, has fallen victim to the reorganisation of the security services’ overseas activities and their refocusing on work with émigré communities, which are now under the authority of Rossotrudnichestvo and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Judging by the MAPG’s current lack of ties with its former foreign partners, the latter have come under a new line of command. However, some residual funding still trickles in to maintain the appearance of public activity.