The Russian Association for International Cooperation has a ‘little brother’ at the level of the Moscow City Government with a rather tongue-twisting name – the International Public Organisation ‘International Commonwealth of Public Associations – Societies of Friendship with the Peoples of Foreign Countries’ (MSOD), established in 2011.   It is the successor to the Regional Public Organisation ‘Moscow Union of Public Associations – Societies of Friendship with the Peoples of Foreign Countries’, established in 2005. As stated on the MSOD website, it ‘brings together 20 public associations active in the field of people-to-people diplomacy’. MSOD’s main objectives are: to develop friendship and cooperation with the public in foreign countries; to participate in the implementation of a programme to support compatriots living abroad; to promote the Russian language and the achievements of Russian culture, science and education abroad; and to support Russia’s international initiatives’.  
All of the above constitutes the standard vocabulary used to describe the activities of pseudo-civil society organisations serving state security interests. 
According to the MSOD website, in November 2015, V.A. Zolotaryov, an Actual State Counsellor of the Russian Federation, 1st Class, Doctor of Historical and Legal Sciences and Professor, was elected president of the MSOD. Vladimir Antonovich Zolotarev, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Major-General, former head of the Institute of Military History at the Ministry of Defence, and member of the Scientific Council of the Russian Military-Historical Society. This society was established in 2012 under the chairmanship of Vladimir Medinsky, Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, specifically to falsify military history in a manner favourable to the Putin regime. At the same time, Zolotarev is Deputy Chairman of the Cyprus branch of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society.  
Alexander Petrichko was elected Executive Director at the same time; he has headed the MSOD from 2019 (?) to the present day.  The biography of Alexander Fedorovich Petrichko, a member of the Presidium of the International Public Chamber for the 2020–2025 term, is no less telling than that of Zolotarev. 
‘Born in 1947 in Ufa, Bashkir ASSR. Graduated from the Kazan Suvorov Military School. In 1971, he graduated from the Dobrolyubov Gorky Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages as a translator-adviser.
1971–1974 – served in the Soviet Army personnel department as a French translator in the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.
1977–1981 – State Committee for Vocational and Technical Education, senior French translator, People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.
1982–1988 – Deputy Director of the ‘Golubaya Rechka’ holiday camp, Ministry of Construction of the USSR.
1989–2008 – Executive Secretary, Head of Department, Deputy Head of the Department for Cultural, Educational, Scientific and Technical Programmes at the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship with the Peoples of Foreign Countries (SSOD), Roszarubezhcentre under the Government of the Russian Federation, and Rossotrudnichestvo under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
He has been working in friendship societies from 1989 to the present day.
He was the initiator of the establishment in 1991 of the ‘Filia’ Association for Cultural and Business Cooperation and Friendship with the Peoples of Greece and Cyprus (AKDS ‘Filia’), and was actively involved in it until May 2016. In 2016, he took the initiative to establish the ‘Filia’ Society for Friendship and Cultural Co-operation with Greece and Cyprus (OKDS Filia) and is chairman of its Board of Directors.”  
This is the biography of an officer of the GRU or the KGB who worked in Algeria, then in the field of ‘cultural ties’ with foreign countries, and subsequently headed an entire network of front ‘friendship societies’ established by the MSOD. The list of MSOD member organisations is relatively short but geographically extensive:

Regional Public Organisation ‘Society for Friendship with Albania’ (ROO ODA); 
Interregional Public Organisation ‘Society for Friendship and Cooperation with Armenia’; 
All-Russian Public Organisation ‘Union of Friends of Bulgaria’; 
International Public Organisation ‘Russia–Germany Society’; 
Regional Public Organisation ‘Society for Friendship and Cultural Ties with Greece and Cyprus “FILIA”’ (ROO ODKS “FILIA”);
International Public Organisation ‘Association for Cultural and Business Cooperation with Italy’;
Interregional Public Organisation ‘Russian-Chinese Friendship Society’;
Interregional Public Organisation ‘Russian-Lao Friendship Society’; 
Interregional public organisation ‘Society for Friendship and Cooperation with the Republic of the Union of Myanmar’; 
Regional public organisation ‘Society for Friendship, Cultural, Scientific and Business Cooperation with the Netherlands’; 
Regional public organisation ‘Society for Friendship and Cooperation with the Republic of Nicaragua’; 
Regional public organisation for the promotion of Norway’s cultural heritage: ‘Society of Friends of Norway’; 
Regional public organisation ‘Society for Cultural and Business Cooperation with Poland’ (ROO OKDSP); 
Regional public organisation ‘Society for Friendship with Slovakia’; 
Regional public organisation ‘Association of Friends of France’ (ADF);
All-Russian public organisation ‘Russia–Japan Society’;
International Association of Public Organisations ‘International Association for the Promotion of Culture’;
Regional public fund for the support of veterans and disabled people in sport;
Public International Foundation for Slavic Literature and Cultures;
Regional public organisation working with children and young people ‘UNESCO Youth Club “Unity”’; 
Regional branch of the International Public Organisation ‘Union of Orthodox Women’ in the city of Moscow. 
However, judging by their names, all these organisations are purely Russian; they were established by Russia and in Russia, and are presumably based there. According to its reports (the latest being for 2019), the activities of the MSOD boil down to holding meetings and ceremonial events. There are no visible signs of international activity. Presumably, there is none, as can be inferred from Petrichko’s tragic letter of 29 October 2020 to the head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Yevgeny Primakov, who had only been appointed head of Rossotrudnichestvo in June. 
Petrichko complains to Primakov that ‘during the reorganisation of the SSOD into RAMS, RAMSIR, Roszarubezhcentre and, finally, into Rossotrudnichestvo, due to objective (or formal) as well as subjective reasons, public participation in the organisation’s activities has ceased to be regarded as an essential component, and the Friendship Societies have been deprived of the support that is vital to them”, citing a lack of funds, the lack of a registered address, and calls for ‘decent social, medical and pension provision for the organisation’s former staff. Many of the current veterans of the SSOD system worked for long periods in countries with difficult sanitary, epidemiological and political conditions. This has led to them developing chronic illnesses’. Petrichko requests that SSOD veterans be registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ polyclinic. 
Of particular interest is the phrase: ‘Dozens of our partner NGOs and non-governmental organisations abroad had no contact with the Agency’s leadership following the departure in 2004 of V.V. Tereshkova from her post as Head of the Roszarubezhcentre. Furthermore, Rossotrudnichestvo’s representative offices abroad do not always pay due attention to either the initiatives of the Russian public or the activities of our foreign partners. This gives them the impression that either their activities have been compromised, or that they are no longer of interest to the Russian Federation. And this is despite the fact that in a number of foreign countries there are still non-governmental organisations that actively cooperate with us on civil society matters.” 
It follows from this that sometime after 2004, the government changed its tactics, and work with foreign agencies was concentrated in new state organisations subordinate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the security services – Rossotrudnichestvo, the ‘Russkiy Mir’ foundations and others – whilst leaving the remnants of Soviet-era, still-ineffective structures such as the MSOD and RAMS without funding or the capacity to do anything at all.