Putin’s men
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For a long time, the Kremlin has generously sponsored its puppets in Belarus. This was demonstrated by the significant data leak from Pravfond, the Russian Fund for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad.
The Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) accessed the secret documents and shared them with investigative journalists from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Buro reviewed hundreds of files, including grant applications and financial statements, correspondence with overseers, and bank statements. The documents illuminate the extensive history of soft power-style support in Belarus. The grants total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As Buro discovered, the Kremlin foundation financed various projects in Belarus, including the publication of propaganda literature, roundtable discussions, the operation of the Legal Advice Centre in Minsk, compensation for legal aid for a detained activist, and the creation of a museum of Soviet monuments removed from Europe. The situation intensified after the large-scale protests of 2020 were suppressed.
UNDERCOVER CONSULTANTS
The inconspicuous office of the Soyuz (Union) movement in the centre of Minsk is a bastion of the "Russian world" in Belarus. Not far from the Government House and the KGB headquarters, its members hand out St. George ribbons to passersby and collect humanitarian aid for the Russian military. Siarhei Lushch, the head of the Soyuz movement, personally delivered food, medicine, stretchers, and a generator to the front line.
Siarhei Lushch (pictured third from the right) delivers humanitarian aid to the Russian military based in Zaporizhzhia. Source: souyz.by
The good-looking activist, who has a neo-Nazi past, is open about his pro-Russian views. However, there's something he chose not to discuss with us, specifically, the grants from Pravfond. To be fair, he did not receive the money from the Kremlin straight away. In the early days of his activism, Lushch was involved with marginalised groups.
Nasha Niva reported that he was a member of the Russian neo-pagan religious sect “Skhoron Yezh Sloven” in his youth. The name translates as “preservation of all Slavs”. This sect’s ideology was described as far-right and anti-Semitic by human rights activists. During the rituals, the sect members raised their hands in a Nazi salute. Lushch held a high position in this sect – he was a sorcerer and performed rituals.
In 2011, Lushch headed the Belarusian youth public association Young Russia (also known as Rumol), whose activists distributed St. George ribbons and participated in the “Immortal Regiment” manifestations. Both of these are symbolically connected with the so-called Russian world. In 2019, the pro-Russian activist attempted to stand in the parliamentary elections, but could not gather enough signatures. In 2021, he tried to set up a political party called the Union that favoured Russia, but the Ministry of Justice wouldn’t let him register it.
Siarhei Lushch at the “Immortal Regiment” action in Minsk. Source: t.me/slusch
Lushch now frequently attends the shows of the Belarusian propagandist Ryhor Azaronak and travels to Ukraine's occupied territories on behalf of the Soyuz movement. The Legal Advice Centre, which Pravfond sponsors, is also located in the office of this organisation in the heart of Minsk.
“The legal aid centres… serve the purpose that you need to know who needs help: You need to know who's vulnerable. It's based on the logic that if you scratch my back, then I'll scratch your back too. If I do you a favour and help you with your legal issues, then you will be more inclined to do me a favour in the future", a European intelligence source told DR.
The Kremlin allocated over $60,000 to launch the Legal Advice Centre in Minsk. Another organisation co-founded and headed by Lushch, the Association for the Promotion of Integration, International Socio-Cultural and Business Cooperation, is listed as a grant recipient in the documents. However, things did not always go smoothly for him at the beginning of his career.
We have obtained a letter written by Lushch to the Russian Ambassador to Belarus, Evgeny Lukyanov, in October 2021. In the letter, the head of the recently opened Legal Advice Centre in Minsk complains that Aleksandr Lukashenko’s administration is making things difficult.
The thing is that the Department for Humanitarian Activities of the Lukashenko Administration must approve any grant support. The official time frame for processing appeals is 14 days.
“In fact, the association is constantly experiencing delays in processing applications, which harms the Centre's work and hinders its systematic activity", Lushch complained.
Siarhei Lushch (pictured in the centre) at a reception at the Russian Embassy in Belarus. Source: t.me/slusch
The Lukashenko Administration approved the first tranche only three months after the Centre opened and only after direct intervention by the Russian Embassy. The second tranche was not authorised at all. Lushch's embassy connections proved unsuccessful on this occasion. Half of the annual budget was at stake. But the pro-Russian activist found a way out of the situation. He suggested that Pravfond should conclude a contract with him personally rather than with the Association for the Promotion of Integration, International Socio-Cultural and Business Cooperation.
Subsequently, Pravfond allocated funding for the Minsk Legal Centre directly to Lushch. The foundation's contracts specified the activist's account at Raiffeisenbank in Moscow, and it is more difficult to track money movements on this account from Belarus. In a phone conversation with Buro, Siarhei Lushch declined to comment on his cooperation with the foundation.
We estimate that the Legal Advice Centre's budget for the 2022-23 financial year exceeded $160,000. More than half went to employees' salaries, including a manager, a lawyer, a secretary, and a system administrator.
Lushch provided the foundation with detailed reports describing the centre's activities during these years. Its staff advised compatriots on how to file lawsuits or petitions with the police and other official bodies. They also monitored legislation and prepared analytical notes for Russian officials. Furthermore, they strengthened ties among their supporters.
Over the past two years, the centre has received around 1,500 appeals. The main topics relate to the rights and opportunities of Belarusian and Russian citizens in each other's countries. These topics cover everything from educational and employment procedures, moving between countries and regularisation of stay, to establishing a permanent residence, conducting business and acquiring property. The centre recorded each application and transferred the applicants' personal data to Pravfond.
“If you are in touch with these people, even if you provide some very basic legal advice, you just collect intelligence and build up your networks”, said Andrey Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence services, in a conversation with OCCRP.
Following the outbreak of war, the Minsk Legal Advice Centre started receiving questions from Russian citizens living in Ukraine regarding how they could travel to Belarus and Russia via the Ukrainian-Polish border. In addition, the centre provided entrepreneurs with guidance on conducting business in occupied Ukrainian territories, particularly regarding business travel to these regions, border crossing regulations, and the specific customs and logistics procedures.
Lushch has requested more than $60,000 from Pravfond for the centre’s operation in 2024. But this is not the only Kremlin-funded project.
Siarhei Lushch (pictured on the left) met with Pravfond Executive Director Alexander Udaltsov (pictured third from the right). Source: pravfond.ru
Pravfond paid the head of the Legal Advice Centre to carry out propaganda activities. For example, in November 2022, he organised a roundtable discussion in Minsk entitled "The Right to Historical Memory" to “counter attempts to falsify the history” of the Second World War. About 30 people attended the event, including: Alexander Udaltsov, the Pravfond director, Stanislav Makarenko, Senior Counsellor at the Russian Embassy in Belarus, and Belarusian and Russian propagandists Aliaksei Dzermant, Piotr Piatrouski and Nikolay Mezhevich, among others. Organising the roundtable cost nearly $6,000.
Russia regularly paid for Lushch's frenzied activities. And not just his.
RUSSIA’S SOFT POWER
Before the 2020 protests, the activities of the "Russian World" proponents in Belarus were confined mainly to propaganda events, such as conferences, readings, forums, biker rallies and festivals of Cossack art. Such events frequently welcomed representatives of the Russian Embassy in Belarus.
The Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots (CCRC) is an organisation that operates under the Embassy. This council comprises around three dozen organisations, including the aforementioned Soyuz movement and lesser-known pro-Russian groups such as the Russian House, the Russian Society, the Donbass Association of Fellow Countrymen, the Crimean Association of Fellow Countrymen, and the Cossack Culture Centre.
Andrei Herashchanka, a former history teacher, a Vitsebsk official, and a member of the Union of Writers of Belarus, heads the CCRC. He has a long history of working with Pravfond. Thanks to financial support from Russian donors, Herashchanka was able to fulfil his ambitions as a writer. Since 2018, Pravfond has provided him approximately $70,000 to publish five books on the Second World War.
Andrei Herashchanka (pictured first from the left) and Pravfond executive director Alexander Udaltsov (in the centre). Source: pravfond.ru
Pravfond’s activities in Belarus extend beyond supporting propaganda publications and public events. Herashchanka and his associates are quite active online.
The CCRC has a website aptly named "Together with Russia", which publishes Russian propaganda. In 2022, the Kremlin Foundation allocated approximately $10,000 to establish a legal section on this website, comprising a dedicated subsection for citizens of Ukraine, the Luhansk People’s Republic, and the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Andrey Lopatsky, Deputy Chairman of CCRC and a lawyer, submitted the application for the grant. A native of Sevastopol, he established the social and cultural centre “Crimean Association of Fellow Countrymen” in Belarus. On behalf of this centre, he signed a cooperation agreement with officials from the occupied Crimea.
In 2023, Lopatsky’s appetite intensified. He asked Pravfond for double the amount of money he had previously received in order to keep paying the legal team working on the website. In an interview with Buro, the pro-Russian figure confirmed that he was cooperating with the Kremlin Foundation.
“We cooperate with Pravfond in various ways, including pro bono. We submit applications religiously, but that doesn't mean they are granted", Lopatsky told Buro.
His boss and colleague, Herashchanka, received an honorarium as a technical specialist for the "Together with Russia" website from a Pravfond grant.
Herashchanka did not respond to our calls or email requests.
The interests of Pravfond in Belarus encompassed more than merely the council at the Russian Embassy.
MUSEUM MONEY
A couple of years ago, as part of Poland's decommunisation programme, a decision was taken to dismantle Soviet monuments. However, Natallia Ilnitskaya, a businesswoman from Brest, saw an opportunity to save them. She started taking monuments to Belarus to create an open-air museum called "Memory Alley" near Brest.
In Belarus, Ilnitskaya is known as both the director of the Brest market and the "Goddess of Photoshop". Her image, wearing a medal-studded uniform, was clumsily "pasted" onto various corporate photos using a graphic editor. The images went viral and became memes. Ilnitskaya insisted that the pictures were real, but nobody believed her.
Doctored image featuring Natallia Ilnitskaya (on the left). Source: onliner.by
Her project, Memory Alley, which Pravfond supported, was a great success. Natallia Ilnitskaya told Buro that the museum now has 30 monuments, 26 of which were brought from Poland. According to the businesswoman, the museum has been visited by more than 10,000 people from 36 countries.
“We tried to bring the monuments from Latvia, but we failed”, said Ilnitskaya.
According to her, the Russian Embassy in Belarus supported the museum's creation. The agency asked Pravfond to provide financial support for Ilnitskaya to "bring the opening of the unique exposition, the only one of its kind in the post-Soviet region, closer."
In June 2022, the Russian foundation granted Ilnitskaya almost $13,000.
“We received 795,000 Russian rubles. We used that money to build a fence and lay tiles. When it comes to the monuments, nothing was covered. The Embassy said it would help us to get a grant, but so far we have not received anything", said the Brest businesswoman.
Natalya Ilnitskaya (pictured third from the right) in the Memory Alley museum. Source: sb.by
However, in her report to the foundation, Ilnitskaya stated that the grant had been spent on compensating for the costs of transporting and restoring monuments, improving the museum space, conducting educational and patriotic events, and developing themed tours.
HIGH-PROFILE ARREST
Buro also discovered a grant intended to provide legal aid for Sofia Sapega, an opponent of the Belarusian regime, in the leak. In May 2021, she and her boyfriend, the blogger Raman Pratasevich, were detained when a Ryanair airliner flying from Athens to Vilnius was forcibly boarded in Minsk. This scandalous incident has been labelled “air piracy”.
The Belarusian authorities accused Sapega of managing the “Black Book of Belarus” Telegram channel, which published the personal data of law enforcement officers. She was facing up to 12 years in prison. Human rights activists in Belarus recognised Sapega as a political prisoner.
Sofia Sapega is a Russian citizen. Vladimir Putin discussed her detention with Aleksandr Lukashenko.
“Of course we care about her fate”, said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Pravfond has awarded over $7,000 to cover the Russian national’s legal fees.
One year after her arrest, she was sentenced to six years in prison for inciting hatred and unlawfully gathering private information. Sapega was pardoned by Lukashenko in June 2023, after which she was released. The head of Primorsky Krai, her home region, personally collected the young woman from the Homel correctional facility.
Oleg Kozhemyako, the head of Primorsky Krai, is meeting Sofia Sapega at the correctional facility. Source: belta.by
“RUSSIA DOES NOT ABANDON ITS PEOPLE”
The recent wave of detentions of pro-Russian activists in Belarus is the subject of a more recent grant from Pravfond. Elvira Mirsalimova, who regularly organises "Immortal Regiment" marches in Vitsebsk, was one of the first to be detained.
She is a vocal proponent of the rapid integration of Belarus and Russia. With her associates, Mirsalimova emphasised the need for the Belarusian authorities to officially recognise Russia's control over Crimea. She also advocated the removal of criminal prosecutions for Belarusians who had fought alongside separatists in the Donbas region.
Elvira Mirsalimova. Source: reform.news
In February, Mirsalimova was detained by police officers in Vitsebsk over her social media posts. In one case, it was a repost of a post by the Russian war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky in which a Russian soldier was pictured standing on the flag of Ukraine’s Armed Forces featuring a swastika sign. In the other case, it was a historical photo of people carrying white-red-white flags and portraits of Hitler welcoming fascist occupiers in Belarus. The court found Mirsalimova guilty of “violating the order of organising and holding mass events” and “propagandising, manufacturing, displaying and distributing Nazi symbols or paraphernalia”, and fined her $800.
“Two days in detention on a bare metal bunk in February, numerous checks with my hands cuffed behind my back, giggling and jokes from the staff, a huge fine, and subsequent prolonged consequences that will haunt me and my family for the rest of our lives if I am not rehabilitated. But on the upside, I learned that Russia does not abandon its people. That's really true. Thank you", Mirsalimova wrote in her Telegram, summarising the past year's results.
Pravfond compensated Mirsalimova for this fine and her lawyer's services. The activist's husband, Dmitry Rubanik, received the $1,100 grant in his account at Russia's Tinkoff Bank.
Rubanik declined to comment by phone. Mirsalimova did not respond to our calls or online messages.
The Russian foundation has previously helped to pay for the legal defence of Viktor Bout, a former Soviet officer and businessman sentenced to 25 years in a US prison for arms trafficking, and FSB agent Vadim Krasikov, who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin.
“Pravfond is also an insurance help. If you ask people to do questionable work, then you need to show them that they won't be left behind if they're caught doing said questionable work. If you leave people behind, no one will want to work with you in the future. That goes for spies as well as influence agents. You need to finance their lawyers and assure them that they won't lose anything", a European intelligence source told DR.
INFLUENCE OPERATION
The Foundation for the Support and Protection of Compatriots, established by Putin's decree, and its executive director, Alexander Udaltsov, are under sanctions by the European Union. They were blacklisted because they "play an important supporting role in the Russian government's foreign policy objectives and coordinate efforts to mobilise support for the war against Ukraine".
The Estonian security services consider Pravfond to be a pseudo-human rights organisation that is used for influence operations abroad, such as propaganda, disinformation and recruitment.
“It is an extension of the Russian intelligence services, enabling the control and [the desired] direction of the Russian-speaking diaspora in foreign countries. It is important to understand that Russia does not genuinely care about Russian-speaking people abroad; rather, it uses them as tools for its influence operations – in other words, as a means of non-military attacks”, Marta Tuul, spokesperson of Estonian Security Services, told Delfi.
According to the British media outlet The Guardian, several of Pravfond’s executives were intelligence agents. The Belarusian programme is overseen by Vyacheslav Yelagin, the foundation's senior advisor, who previously worked for many years at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“This particular fund's connection with the environments controlled by Russian intelligence services has existed virtually from the very beginning of this fund's establishment. We have seen in relation to our security space that in connection with this fund, individuals who present themselves as independent, let's say, experts, researchers, employees of this fund, are actually staff officers of Russian intelligence services”, Normunds Mežviets, director of the Latvian State Security Service, told our colleagues from TV3 Latvia.
According to our calculations, Pravfond has allocated approximately $400,000 to projects in Belarus over the last five years. Pro-Russian activists in Belarus, backed by the Kremlin, are threatening the independence of our country.