Whilst the ‘International Union of Charitable and Humanitarian Public Associations – Soviet Peace Fund’ is officially designated as a ‘peacekeeping charitable non-governmental organisation’, the Russian Middle East Society fund is not defined in any way in official documents; it is simply referred to as a ‘fund’.  It is unclear whether this organisation is government-run or not, or whether it is a commercial entity or not. The foundation was registered in July 2017; its main area of activity is ‘scientific research and development in the field of social and humanitarian sciences’, plus 18 others.   Its registered address is 18 Begovaya Street, flat 2, Moscow. However, this address is home to a block of flats and several innocuous public establishments. It appears that the foundation is registered at one of the flats. 
The actual address cited in various sources is 10 Prechistenka Street, Moscow.  This 18th-century building, known as ‘General Orlov’s House’,  houses, amongst other organisations, the Russian and Soviet Peace Funds,   the Union of National and Non-Olympic Sports of Russia, and JSC ‘Zarubezh-Expo’, which organises industrial exhibitions in roughly the same countries where the Soviet Peace Fund is engaged in the struggle for peace.  Between 1942 and 1948, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was based here – a front organisation created by the NKVD and later dissolved by Stalin as redundant, along with all its members. During the Khrushchev era, the Committee for the Defence of Peace and the Committee for Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia and Africa were based here; they were engaged in much the same activities as today’s peace foundations, such as the Russian Middle Eastern Society. As John Barron writes in his book *The KGB Today*, ‘The Committee for Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia and Africa used a significant proportion of its donations to purchase weapons and military equipment for so-called national liberation movements in Africa and the Middle East’.  The Soviet Committee for the Defence of Peace was dissolved in 1991; it was replaced in 1992 by a similar front organisation, the Federation for Peace and Harmony (FPH), which officially operated from June 1999 to May 2024, but was based at a different address.  
Following the collapse of the USSR, the Committee for Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia and Africa became the ‘Russian Committee for Solidarity and Cooperation with the Peoples of Asia and Africa’ (RKSCAA) and is located at the same address – 10 Prechistenka.  
Apparently, this building has been at the disposal of the OGPU-NKVD since the 1920s, and subsequently the KGB, and has not changed hands to this day. 
The Foundation’s website describes its objectives as follows:
‘The main aim of the Foundation is to carry out scientific, social, cultural, educational and other socially beneficial activities related to the development of the Russian Federation’s relations with the countries of the Middle East, the Mediterranean region, Central and South Asia, as well as with sub-Saharan African countries.
The Foundation’s activities include:
carrying out and funding scientific research and development—including in the fields of cultural studies, geopolitics, socio-politics and socio-economics—aimed at establishing and strengthening the Russian Federation’s ties with the countries of the Middle East…
developing mechanisms to assess security levels and the risks associated with the Russian Federation’s interaction with countries in the Middle East… 
conducting expert reviews of scientific, scientific-technical and cultural projects aimed at establishing and strengthening the Russian Federation’s ties with the countries of the Middle East… the implementation of which will be, or is being, financed in full or in part from the Fund’s resources’.   
Translated from the language of the secret services into plain English, this means that the fund is engaged in operational activities typical of the secret services in the Middle East – intelligence gathering, recruitment and the establishment of agent networks. Moreover, it finances these activities itself – either in full or in part. There is not a word on the fund’s website about its sources of funding. 
The biographies of its leadership provide no grounds for doubting the Fund’s affiliation with the security services. The Fund’s president, Igor Iosifovich Spivak, graduated from the Faculty of International Relations at MGIMO in 2005 and from the Faculty of International Economic Relations in 2008. That is the extent of his biography on the foundation’s website. Strangely enough, no further information could be found anywhere else regarding Igor Spivak’s career, places of employment or diplomatic ranks. This in itself suggests that his career did not follow a diplomatic path. 
The official biography of the foundation’s vice-president, Maxim Vasilyevich Shashenkov (born 1966), is far more fascinating. A graduate of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University (1983–1989), he managed to spend more than a year between 1987 and 1989 serving within the Ministry of Defence, as part of the USSR’s advisory group in Libya, presumably as part of a pre-graduation placement. His specialisation was ‘Arabic Language and History of Central Asia’. From 1990, on a grant from the Soros Foundation, he studied at the University of Oxford, graduating in 1994 with a PhD in International Relations. From 1997 to 2000, he was Managing Director at Alfa Bank, and subsequently Managing Director at Alfa Capital Markets.  Here, his background in the security services is simply glaringly obvious. 
The Chairman of the Foundation’s Board is Oleg Gerasimovich Peresypkin (born 1935), a distinguished Soviet diplomat, a 1959 graduate of MGIMO, who served as a diplomatic officer and ambassador in various Middle Eastern countries; from 1986 to 1993, – he served as Rector of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1989 to 2001, Peresypkin was Chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, which will be discussed below – the ‘elder brother’ and counterpart of the Russian Near Eastern Society. Within the foundation, Peresypkin is clearly a figurehead, simply by virtue of his age.
The board of trustees, however, includes far more active figures: Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and African countries; Leonid Slutsky himself; Sergei Stepashin, former Director of the FSB and Chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, plus several figureheads, including Anatoly Karpov and Mikhail Piotrovsky. 
The foundation has only four partners – the Imperial Palestinian Society headed by Stepashin, Slutsky’s Soviet Peace Fund, the All-Russian Public Organisation of Veterans ‘Russian Union of Veterans’, and the International Public Organisation ‘International Commonwealth of Public Associations – Societies of Friendship with the Peoples of Foreign Countries’ (MSOD), which will be discussed later. “The ‘Russian Union of Veterans’ is the former Soviet Committee of War Veterans. All four organisations are linked to the army and the security services, and, with the exception of the Union of Veterans, are engaged in active international work of roughly the same nature. Traces of this can be found on the website of the Russian Middle East Society. 
In July 2024, Spivak was in Beirut, where he met with Jacques-Jean Sarraf, chairman of the Russian-Lebanese Business Council. Judging by the phrase ‘J.-J. Sarraf actively participates in events organised by the Russian Embassy and the Russian Cultural Centre in Beirut, providing them with the necessary support. He pays particular attention to cultural events bringing together graduates of Soviet and Russian universities living in Lebanon and representatives of the Russian-speaking community’, this refers to a long-standing Russian agent of influence in Lebanon. Sarraf is an Honorary Consul of the Russian Federation, having been awarded orders by Patriarch Kirill, Putin and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.   Among other things, the establishment of a Russian university in Lebanon was discussed, 
In April 2024, Spivak visited Tripoli and met with Muammar Gaddafi’s daughter, Aisha Gaddafi. They agreed to hold an exhibition of her paintings in Moscow. 
In February 2024, Spivak visited Saudi Arabia and was received by Prince Naif bin Abdullah bin Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and Sheikh Abdullah ibn Adel al-Faghir. With the latter, he discussed the prospects of establishing a Russian-Saudi Friendship Society.
In October 2023, Spivak visited Egypt, where he spoke with Ibrahim Kamel, a businessman and a long-standing friend of the USSR, Russia and Yevgeny Primakov, and also met with the Russian Ambassador to Egypt, H.E. Borisenko. 
In July 2023, Spivak visited Syria, where the ‘world’s first large-scale symbol dedicated to the Second Coming of Christ — the sculptural composition “I Have Come to Save the World” — was officially unveiled. As stated in the foundation’s press release, ‘This sculpture, erected on the initiative of General of the Army V. I. Varennikov and on the instructions of the President of Russia in 2013 at an altitude of 2,100 metres above sea level on the historic pilgrimage route from Constantinople to Jerusalem, represents Russia’s most important civilisational message to the whole world.’  The design for the structure was created at the Moscow Theological Academy. At the same time, Spivak announced another of the foundation’s projects – the establishment of a Russian university in Syria. 
In July 2022, Spivak visited Jordan, signed a cooperation agreement with the firm ‘Talal Abu-Ghazaleh’ and visited the Rossotrudnichestvo representative office in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. 
In July 2019, Spivak – who looked noticeably slimmer than he did in 2024 – met in Moscow with a representative of the League of Arab States in Russia. 
This is the little that can be gleaned about the Russian Middle East Society’s international connections from its website. It is clear that the bulk of the information regarding the foundation’s activities is not made public. However, interestingly, unlike other ‘public’ foundations and associations, information about this foundation hardly ever appears in the press. This suggests that the foundation itself and its leaders have absolutely no interest in publicising their activities.
It is worth noting the attempts to establish Russian universities in Lebanon and Syria. The idea of a Syrian university was discussed as early as December 2022 with the leadership of St Petersburg State University, which was planned to be involved in the project. By now, the matter may well have progressed quite far. As stated on the SPbU website, ‘the foundation, with the support of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in collaboration with the Centre for International Strategic Initiatives, is implementing a project to establish a Russian university in the Damascus suburb of Ma’arad Sa’idna, to educate Syrian students under Russian curricula… this project is set to become a key initiative for promoting Russian culture and education not only in Syria, but also in Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and other neighbouring countries”. 
Such a university could prove to be a successful alternative to attracting individual foreign students to Russia. In this case, the recruitment base would expand dramatically. 
As for the foundation’s research activities – which should be its primary objective – no visible evidence of them has been found. This does not mean, however, that they do not exist. But they are not intended for the public, including the academic community.