Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond), a Russian legal foundation, has been the Kremlin’s front to fund propaganda activities across 48 nations with former Russian intelligence officers residing over its management positions, recent investigations discovered.
According to The Guardian, citing Pravfond’s leaked internal documents, the foundation has spent millions of euros financing pro-Russian websites in Europe and subsidized legal defense fees for arms trafficker Viktor Bout and assassin Vadim Krasikov, the latter convicted for murdering a former Chechen commander in Berlin in 2019.
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The leaked documents showed that Pravfond paid €60,000 ($65,000) in legal fees to Krasikov’s defense lawyer for the Berlin murder trial and “significant sums” for Bout’s arms trafficking trial, The Guardian said.
Founded by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Federal Agency Rossotrudnichestvo in 2012, Pravfond said its goal is to “provide Russian compatriots with comprehensive legal and other necessary support in cases of violation of their rights, freedoms and legitimate interests in accordance with the generally recognized principles and norms of international human rights law.”
However, the leaked documents showed the group’s deep ties with the Kremlin’s wider operations, which extend far beyond the legal protection of Russian nationals abroad.
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The Guardian said the 40 leaked documents originated from a European intelligence source, which was obtained by the Danish public broadcaster DR and shared with numerous news organizations, including The Guardian.
The leaked documents reportedly contained information about Pravfond’s leadership and affiliated personnel, which included multiple former Russian intelligence officers, including some who specialize in psychological warfare operations (commonly known as psyops).
Among those listed were Vladimir Pozdorovkin, a Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR) according to European intelligence sources, who served as a coordinator for Pravfond’s Nordic and Baltic operations; and Anatoly Sorokin, also an SVR agent, who coordinates Pravfond’s Middle East, Moldova and Transnistria operations.
Sergey Panteleyev, a Russian intelligence officer under EU sanctions who belongs to a Russian psyops unit, serves as the head of the Institute of the Russian Diaspora, one of Pravfond’s project implementers.
The Institute of the Russian Diaspora itself serves as a front for Russia’s Unit 54777, also known as the 72nd Special Service Center, which operates as a specialized psyops unit under Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU), as per a 2018 Washington Post report; the institute called for Russian intervention in Ukraine in February 2014, during Euromaidan.
Pravfond also reportedly financed a number of groups and publications in Europe that hold pro-Russian and often anti-Ukrainian views, though some recipients denied the connections in response to The Guardian’s inquiries.
Yuri Andriychenko, deputy editor of golos.eu, a Belgium-based Russian site named in the leaked documents that’s critical of the Ukrainian government, denied ties to the Kremlin and said someone probably tried to apply for Pravfond’s funding using the site’s name.
“We are not surprised that someone in Russia is trying to make money on our name, because it is much easier than creating your own project,” said Andriychenko.
Euromore, another site in Belgium named in the documents that disseminates pro-Russian news, reportedly received just over two million rubles ($22,400) in 2024 alone from Pravfond and is secretly operated by groups in Moscow, according to an investigation by French news outlet Le Monde.
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