
A guide on Putin’s experts
If one watches Russian TV, it may seem that the president of Russia is almost constantly surrounded by intelligent people. Russian and foreign experts, academics and prominent journalists are always curious about Vladimir Putin’s opinion on current events, interviewing him and sometimes even politely polemicising with him. Who are these experts? How do they end up close to Putin and how valuable is their expertise? Finally, why does the Kremlin need these people? The results of Proekt’s large-scale investigation clearly show that this is a mutually beneficial symbiosis: the Kremlin needs to present the head of Russia as a wise and public ruler, while Putin’s experts are driven by self-interest and hypocrisy.
Katya Arenina, Alexei Korostelev, with contributions from Mikhail Rubin, Mikhail Maglov, Roman Badanin and other Proekt journalists
December 20, 2023
1. How much Channel One is paying the son of Soviet dissidents
2. What ties the expert who called for Europe’s bombing to it
3. The place of residence of Sergei Kirienko’s favourite expert
“None of your statements about Ukraine causes as much annoyance in the ‘collective West’ as the statement that Nazi forces play a major role in Ukrainian politics. They respond to you by saying: ‘Zelensky is a Jew’. What is your response to this?“
Vladimir Putin received this question along with numerous compliments from the moderator of the main session of the St Petersburg Economic Forum in June 2023. The announcer in the audience introduced the moderator as Dmitry Simes, honorary president of the American Centre for the National Interest and Channel One anchor. To emphasise Simes’ connection to America, his name on the plaque was spelled in the English style: ‘Dimitry’. Given the fact that foreign leaders and businessmen, with very few exceptions, ignored the meeting in St. Petersburg, it was important for the organisers to show that a US citizen was participating in the main session.

Simes’s question was obviously staged. In response, Putin not only said that he “has many Jewish friends” who consider Vladimir Zelensky “a disgrace to the Jewish people,” but also showed the audience a pre-made documentary about the brutal massacres of Jews by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. The audience nodded; Simes not only nodded, but played along with Putin. He said – citing people he knows – that it wasn’t that long ago that Zelensky “did not identify” as a Jew in any form. “Dmitry, thank you for our collaboration,” Putin said at the end of the session. The audience applauded.
Some of those who saw this performance knew the American expert as Mitya Simis, the son of Soviet dissidents – legendary lawyer Dina Kaminskaya and lawyer Konstantin Simis

However, those who had known both Simes and his parents for a long time were not surprised by this performance. “Alas, he was always like this, even in the Soviet times,” Alexander Daniel, a human rights defender and son of Kaminskaya’s client, dissident Yuli Daniel, commented
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Episode 1

Raised amid searches and surveillance, Dmitry Simis may have become disillusioned with his parents’ views in his early years. While still a student, he called himself a “statist”

After graduation, thanks to his father’s connections, Simis took a job studying the American labour movement at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), which was called “the cesspool of the KGB’s First Directorate,” referring to its close ties to the Chekists
In 1973, at the beginning of Jewish emigration from the USSR, Simis, who had just run a Komsomol cell, moved to America. “It would seem that Simis was facing the prospect of a career as a successful researcher. Suddenly, he submitted to the directorate a discouraging application for dismissal from the institute,” says a book on the history of IMEMO. “Such cases were seen as a blow to the authority of the team, these people were practically kicked out of the institute with a ‘wolf ticket’,” recalls Galina Rogova. – That was not the case with Simis, though. In a closed meeting of the Komsomol committee he was timidly persuaded to think about it! And then, Mitya departed safely and without delay. “‘Isn’t he under custody of the KGB?!’ – we said in unison.” “In a matter of months, he managed to get locked up for fifteen days, face the police several times, and put his signature on various petitions,” writer Kirill Henkin, who knew Simis, recalled the circumstances of his departure.
Henkin himself, as well as dissidents Alexander Gribanov and Alexander Daniel, who knew Simis, believed that the reason for his departure was that his parents’ human rights activities were interfering with his career. Others, like Galina Rogova, suspected Simis of having connections with the KGB. His Moscow acquaintance of those years, who asked not to be named, recalled the following episode: after a Jewish demonstration, Simis was kept separately from other detained protesters. Also once during a conversation with the authorities, Dmitriy allegedly said the phrase “I was promised after all”.
After arriving in the USA, Simis himself said that he had dreamed of living in America since he was 13 years old – it was at that age that he allegedly noticed the contrast between what was written about the USSR in books and what he saw in reality. In the States, Simis became Simes and, by boasting of his connections in his homeland, became an expert on Russia
“It makes a lot of sense to ask how most Americans would react if a group of dissidents showed up in the U.S. pretending to be busy monitoring compliance with the Final Act [of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe]
Dimitri K. Simes, «Human Rights and Détente»
Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 1978
The article was so “successful” that it was quoted in the Soviet propaganda book “CIA vs. USSR” by Nikolai Yakovlev, an Americanist working for the KGB, with the comment: “This is correct and to the point.” Yakovlev used Simes’s words to illustrate his point that the CIA was using dissidents to its advantage.
As a result of such writings, Simes also gained a reputation abroad as a KGB agent, at least among some of the emigrated dissidents

After that, Simes also became the publisher of The National Interest, a magazine that pro-Kremlin media love to cite. It has published articles by Putin, Maria Butina, Valery Solovey and other odious authors. As soon as Donald Trump emerged in American politics, Simes found himself a new idol.
In 2016, the political scientist became an unofficial adviser to the campaign of Trump, then a US presidential candidate. Simes not only organised Trump’s address to the foreign policy elite in 2016, but also helped draft a speech in which the candidate called for a “fresh start” in relations with Russia. As a result, when America began investigating Russian interference in the election, Simes also became the subject of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe. After two years of investigation, Mueller deemed that the political scientist, despite having close contacts with Russian officials, had not passed any secret messages from them to Trump.
Over the course of the investigation, the Simes-led centre spent more than $1 million on legal services, and the centre’s main donor, businessman Maurice Greenberg
As a result, Simes’ centre has been left virtually bankrupt
It was then that Simes became co-host of The Big Game talk show on Russia’s Channel One. In 2019, he received 14 million rubles ($217,000) from Channel One (i.e., de facto from the Russian state and Kremlin-connected oligarchs), and in 2021 he got 37.8 million rubles ($512,000), an amount comparable to his salary at the American foundation

Simes’s Channel One co-host Vyacheslav Nikonov, grandson of Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s closest associate, receives half as much as the son of Soviet dissidents – about 10 million rubles ($155,000) in 2019 and 14 million rubles ($217,000) in 2021
“When I was a student, I got involved in the dissident movement for a while. The reason I moved away from it was not because I was afraid, but because I understood the nature of the choice that was in front of me. I could get interesting work, comfort, a decent salary, and various pleasures. The second option was to give it all up and it was not clear to me what I was supposed to give it up for,” Simes admitted in the same 1973 interview where he spoke of his love for the USA from an early age.
A logical outcome of Dmitry Simes’ career was the fact that in 2022, he resigned as head of the Centre for the National Interest and, according to the data at Proekt’s disposal, was granted Russian citizenship

Simes did not respond to messages and calls from Proekt’s correspondent, and later blocked him altogether
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Episode 2

“I have more than once been present at the speeches of the ‘Valdai people’, who, assuming a solemn pose and changing the pitch of their voice, looking sympathetically at us who are not close to the Kremlin throne, would say to the hushed audience: ‘As Putin told me recently…’ or ‘Let me explain it to you now…’ And the Kremlin began to speak through their mouths,” political scientist Lilia Shevtsova recalls
Established in 2004, the Valdai Discussion Club – named after the site of the first conference near Putin’s favourite residence in the Novgorod Oblast – offered Western experts from Harvard, the London School of Economics and other renowned academic centres a unique opportunity to talk to the Russian president in private, without cameras. It was founded by the state news agency RIA Novosti and the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (SVOP), a formally non-governmental organisation closely linked to the authorities

At first, the Valdai Club looked like a logical part of the Kremlin’s policy at the time: to charm the West with Putin, his openness and willingness to talk. Moreover, in the first years of the club’s work, Putin was clearly interested in communicating with the guests.
However, the backstage life of the Valdai Club was already following the Kremlin’s favourite pattern. Money for the club’s work came from oligarchs and state companies close to the president. At various times, these included Sergei Chemezov, Putin’s KGB colleague and head of Rostecn, Ziyavudin Magomedov, a now-disgraced businessman close to former President Dmitry Medvedev, companies of billionaires close to Putin – Alisher Usmanov, Viktor Vekselberg, Alexei Mordashov – as well as banks such as Alfa-Bank and state-owned Vnesheconombank (now VEB. RF) and VTB
Putin was quite talkative at first, too. “My Russian friends were miffed of us, western experts, because we had the opportunity to talk with Putin for three or four hours, without any assistants and prepared help. We could ask any question,” Andrew Kuchins, who worked at the Carnegie Endowment at the time, recalled in a conversation with Proekt. Russian colleagues wondered why Western experts would agree to participate in a project that “is being used as a blunt instrument of Kremlin propaganda” (this is a quote from former Chatham House political scientist Nikolai Petrov from 2008), but foreigners still kept coming to see Putin.

Here’s one telling detail. The first meeting of the Valdai Club was held in early September 2004, during the days of the terrorist takeover of the school in Beslan. The experts who had already flown in, having learnt the news, thought that Putin would not have time for them. But just three days after the storming of the school, where hundreds of children and adults were killed, the president spent almost four hours with foreigners. His visit to Beslan was twice as short. This did not prevent some Western guests from claiming that Putin was receptive to their arguments about the wrongness of Moscow’s policy in the Caucasus Alexander Rahr claimed that about 80% of the members of the Valdai Club allegedly agreed with the Russian position Hubert Seipel, who wrote several books about Putin, was receiving money from Alexei Mordashov, an oligarch close to the Kremlin, during the exact years that he was participating in the club’s meetings

With the beginning of Putin’s third term in 2012, the Valdai Club began to change dramatically. It was obvious that Putin was no longer interested in socialising, even purely for show. “In the early years, 40-50 people would be invited, but as time went on, the number of participants grew larger and larger, and Putin seemed more interested in speaking from the stage than in discussion,” remembers Valdai Club guest Daniel Treisman, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. That boredom culminated in a real show at the 2013 Valdai Club meeting. In the past, guests would first engage in several days of discussions, ending with a private meeting with Putin. That time, the meeting with the president was not closed at all – it was televised and all the forum participants, some 250 people, were invited, including even representatives of the Russian opposition, such as Vladimir Ryzhkov. Ryzhkov, at the suggestion of Putin himself (the president called him “Volodya”), asked a question about the fate of those involved in the Bolotnaya Square case. The president promised on camera to consider amnesty, which was granted exactly three months later

At the same time, the Kremlin also began to make organisational changes to the Valdai Club. The club’s founder, Svetlana Mironyuk, was fired from RIA Novosti, and the agency was disbanded – just because of RIA’s coverage of the Bolotnaya Square rally Andrei Bystritsky, a former top manager of VGTRK, became the head of the Valdai Foundation
Who comes to Valdai
Surprisingly, neither all these changes, nor even the annexation of Crimea, which happened soon after, made foreign experts refuse to participate in this Putin theatre. Only Ariel Cohen, an expert at the Institute for Global Security Analysis, publicly refused to attend the 2014 meeting, saying that participation in the event would send the “wrong signal” that Russia was “immune from international condemnation.” At the same time, the Kremlin was padding the guest lists with participants from China, India, Latin America and Africa.

While at the end of the noughties, almost all guests were from Western countries
By 2023, the logical outcome of the club’s existence was the following: important roles in it are now played by Russian experts who have long since found themselves close to the regime. Apart from Bystritsky, among those playing important roles are former top manager of the Rossiya TV channel, Fyodor Lukyanov, Valdai Club’s director of research, and Sergei Karaganov, Valdai Club’s co-founder and former dean of one of the departments of the Higher School of Economics. In the autumn of 2023, Karaganov asked Putin the following question at the Valdai Club meeting:
“Isn’t it time for us to change the doctrine of the use of nuclear weapons in the direction of lowering the nuclear threshold and to walk down the ladder of sobering up our partners? They have gotten so brazen that they are directly saying: ‘your doctrine is such that you will never use nuclear weapons’.”

Before that, Karaganov published an article in which he actually suggested that Russia should launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Europe, arguing that “the emergence of nuclear weapons is the result of the intervention of the Almighty.”
“This is a morally terrible choice – we use the weapon of God, condemning ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if this is not done, not only Russia may perish, but most likely the entire human civilization will end”.
Many of Karaganov’s acquaintances were shocked by his article and subsequent speeches. In the past, the political scientist held quite different views. Here is what he wrote in his article for Rossiyskaya Gazeta in 2010:
“I am a Russian European and I believe in the great European values of rationality and reason. In the world of the future, Russia and Europe acting separately are doomed to degradation and weakening”.
His acquaintances explain this evolution of views in different ways. Vitaly Dymarsky, an old acquaintance of Karaganov’s, is sure that the political scientist acted in the Kremlin’s interests: “I think they wanted to see the reaction, including that of the West.” This version is probably close to the truth. Responding to Karaganov at the Valdai Club meeting, Putin noted that he sees no reason to change the doctrine: “Another thing is that, for example, I’m already hearing calls to start testing nuclear weapons. The USA has signed a treaty banning nuclear tests, and Russia has both signed and ratified it, while the USA has signed but not ratified it
“I assure you, this was not a call to drop a nuclear bomb on Europe, and Karaganov himself hardly wants that,” Dymarsky believes. This is probably true – after all, Karaganov was not kidding when he called himself a Russian European. As Proekt found out, he and his wife own a two-storey flat in Venice, one of the most beautiful European cities, in the Castello district, a popular tourist destination.
However, Karaganov cannot use it now – a few days after the publication of that very article about a nuclear strike on Europe, he fell under EU sanctions. But this does not prevent Karaganov from receiving income from his Venetian flat – it is now available for rent on Booking.com – also the doorbells have a corresponding registration number next to the sign with Karaganov’s name on it.
There is another reason for Karaganov not to want nuclear war: it would probably upset the family of his daughter Alexandra, who is married to UK citizen Gwynne Hopkins, founder of the law firm Perun Consultants, and has two children from him. They now live in Hong Kong
Episode 3

In addition to Western experts, there is, of course, a considerable number of Russian experts who are also needed by the Kremlin, mostly for “internal use,” i.e., to justify its policies to the citizens of their own country. In its relations with these people, the Kremlin also uses money, but with far less concern for external decency. The experts reciprocate – many of them do not even try to hide their own hypocrisy.
October 2023. Press centre of the Rossiya Segodnya agency, the Kremlin’s main propaganda mouthpiece. The event is devoted to how Russia influences foreign elections. It’s organised by the Social Research Expert Institute (EISI). Behind this complicated name hides the Kremlin’s key think tank, which was created under domestic policy supervisor Sergei Kiriyenko when he joined the presidential administration in 2016. Formally, the foundation is independent of the Kremlin, but political strategists and officials familiar with its work refer to it simply as “a branch of the Presidential Administration”

At the round table, experts spoke in unison about how ordinary European citizens are fed up with the “Ukrainian case”, which is why they are now electing politicians who can be described as “pro-Russian”. The meeting could have been considered a passable propaganda routine, were it not for one striking oddity. One of the experts, none other than Gleb Kuznetsov, head of the entire EISI expert council and long-time acquaintance of Alexander Kharichev, deputy head of the internal policy department of the presidential administration, was for some reason absent from the room, his face looking at the audience from a large screen behind the speakers.

One might have assumed that Kuznetsov was on a business trip to the Russian regions. Вut his EISI colleagues have long known that one of their leaders rarely visits the institute in person. The thing is that Kuznetsov has been living in two countries for a long time – in Russia and in Portugal, a NATO member country. So when he said in October 2023 that everyone in Latin America “holds views loyal to Russia,” he probably was in Portugal. However, Kuznetsov said even more remarkable things from Portugal – for example, after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, he mocked the “disappointment of the foreign opposition and their expertise,” whose hopes for the “collapse of Russia” had once again failed to materialise and claimed that Europe was run by “elites from Assholeburg”.

Kuznetsov’s wife Karine Sarkisyan received a Portuguese passport in October 2022, as she herself wrote on Facebook. After moving to Portugal no later than 2014 with four their children, Sarkisyan started restaurant business in Lisbon. One of the restaurant companies she once owned jointly with her husband
Kuznetsov and Sarkisian told Proekt that their marriage is now a mere formality, which is necessary because of their child’s illness. Both spouses claim that Kuznetsov did not participate in the business or invest in it, and that the period of their joint ownership of the same company had “no legal or financial implications”. Kuznetsov asked Proekt to quote him in full as follows: “As the number and duration of the child’s hospitalisations increased, there was a risk that the tourist visa might not be sufficient in terms of time and duration of stay. I applied to the embassy for an unlimited stay national visa, which was refused and I was asked to apply for a residence permit “for family reunification” instead, which I did.”
In any case, even if Kuznetsov did not receive any income from the restaurant business, he was hardly upset. The thing is that his main income comes from Russia, or rather from the Kremlin, which pays the expert substantial amounts of money every year through the EISI, as follows from the financial documents of this and some other Kremlin organisations handed over to Proekt by a source and studied by the editors. For example, in 2019, the EISI paid its expert almost 10 million rubles (about €140,000)

The pattern of the Kremlin’s interaction with domestic political experts becomes clearer if one examines the financial records of the EISI.
In March 2018, Pavel Grudinin, the CPRF presidential candidate, made a scandalous statement: right during a debate on Channel One, he called it a “bazaar” and refused to participate in it. The Communist had every reason for this decision: the channel decided that the debate participants should only answer the host’s questions, and that the presidential candidates were forbidden to argue with each other, as is the norm for debates. Pro-Kremlin media lambasted Grudinin for this refusal. For example, Ura.ru published two articles about the debate, in which Grudinin was outright ridiculed by prominent experts – political scientists Yevgeny Minchenko, Oleg Matveychev, Anna Fedorova, Dmitry Gusev, and Alexei Martynov Vyacheslav Smirnov and Pavel Danilin
Abbas Gallyamov’s comment
In response to Proekt’s inquiries, Gallyamov referred to his own interview, in which he said that people from the Presidential Administration sometimes asked him to write about something and he would do so if that matched his own opinion. According to him, in 2018, the approach of the Presidential Administration changed, they started requiring him to say only what they would approve, after which the political scientist completely fell out with the Kremlin.
Almost immediately, the Kremlin was suspected of organising this anti-Grudinin campaign, but there was no evidence of this at the time

These files show that all the experts who criticised Grudinin on Ura.ru signed contracts with the EISI in the same year for some kind of “expert and consulting services” as well as “preparation of reports and analyses”. Even the contracts for reports informally oblige political scientists to publicly express the point of view desired by the authorities
Naturally, the above-mentioned experts are by no means the only recipients of the EISI’s money. Over the course of its existence since 2017, the foundation has received almost 12 billion rubles in “donations” and has further transferred money to dozens of political scientists and sociologists, including those with a reputation for liberal views.
People who received money from the Kremlin through the EISI



























The situation is similar with two other organisations of importance to the Kremlin, which are also responsible for commercial “interaction” with experts and media personalities. Proekt studied the financial documents of two other organisations with similar goals – the Foundation for Civil Society Development (FCSD) and the little-known but very important company DA TEAM (a contractor of EISI and the Kremlin’s Institute for Internet Development).
The FCSD is no less prominent than the EISI. It is run by Konstantin Kostin, former head of the Kremlin’s domestic policy department, famous for his long-running campaign against Alexei Navalny. The Kremlin also uses the FCSD to finance political analysts who are important to it, and to “thank” loyal people for special favours.
People who received money from the Kremlin through the FCSD







“Don’t demonise me, but I have another mission here. So, [Demyan] Kudryavtsev said that he would close down this media outlet [“Vedomosti”]. And the people who bought it put me here as a representative to prevent this media outlet from being closed down. And this piece is fraught. It is fraught with lawsuits, which there have been threats of.”
This is how newly appointed acting editor-in-chief Andrei Shmarov explained at a meeting with the editorial board of the Vedomosti newspaper on 13 April 2020 why he had removed Konstantin Sonin’s column about Rosneft from the website. That state-owned company had by then taken control of the newspaper
In some cases, however, Kostin simply pays money to companies related to himself or his family members. For example, in 2021, the FCSD ordered some “work or services” worth 14 million rubles from the Centre for Humanitarian and Political Technologies, in which Kostin himself holds a major stake. At the same time, another 10 million went to the Crime Victims Support Foundation, whose board is headed by Olga Kostina, the wife of FCSD head. These contracts may have been among the reasons why the couple was able to afford a house worth about €1 million in Tuscany
The extent of inefficiency with which the Kremlin’s contractors spend their money is well illustrated by another example.
“When you look at Ukraine, you look in the mirror… We are one nation. And what is happening there is a rehearsal of what is being prepared for us,” – this phrase was said by blogger and film translator Dmitry “Goblin” Puchkov in the studio of the programme of a political scientist named Mark Arkadyevich. The latter agreed in a squeaky voice. This is what Mark Arkadyevich looks like – it’s a not very well-made puppet.

The propaganda show Mark Arkadyevich would not be worth our attention if it weren’t for one thing. On Youtube, the interview with “Goblin” literally bombed, barely gaining a thousand views.
The strange show with the puppet is a joint product of the Institute for Internet Development (the main state customer for online military propaganda, headed by former Kremlin official Alexei Goreslavsky) and the hitherto little-known company DA TEAM

On each floor there is a lock with a fingerprint scanner Stepan Kovalchuk, one of VK’s executives and the grandnephew of Yuri Kovalchuk, a friend of the president

According to DA TEAM’s financial reports, the company spent 10 million rubles on the production of Mark Arkadyevich, which means that it cost an impressive 2.5 million rubles to produce one interview

The DA TEAM documents reveal more high-profile recipients of the money, including video producers with reputations as independent bloggers. For example, in early 2022, Alexei Pivovarov, the author of the Redakciya YouTube channel known for his slogan “You can draw your own conclusions,” received 2.5 million rubles from a Kremlin contractor.
Alexei Pivovarov’s comment
Pivovarov told Proekt that the state company Russian Railways paid him through DA TEAM for the purchase of the raw footage of the film about the Baikal-Amur Mainline. He specified that the contract was concluded before the invasion of Ukraine and before he was recognised as a foreign agent
Azhur Media, the publisher of Fontanka, received almost 5.6 million rubles from DA TEAM in 2022-2023
People who received money from the Kremlin through the DA TEAM





Where do the Kremlin institutions themselves get their money from? After all, all of them are formally unrelated to the state. However, financial records show that all three are actually funded from the budget, receiving billions of rubles for their activities from state-owned companies. For example, in 2018, the EISI received 1.25 billion rubles from Techsnabexport (a subsidiary of Rosatom – the structure that Sergei Kirienko headed before moving to the Kremlin), Rusgidro, and VTB Bank. In 2019, it received 1.2 billion from Rusgidro, the Russian Regional Development Bank, Transneft and VTB. The overall budget of the FCSD is lower than that of the EISI: in 2018 it received 853 million rubles, in 2020 – 350 million, in 2021 – 460 million. This money came from the same Tekhsnabexport, Transneft and the Russian Regional Development Bank (a subsidiary of Rosneft), as well as unofficial foundations of United Russia. The third company, DA TEAM, is also funded by the Kremlin. It is especially actively supported by projects related to Sergei Kirienko – his son Vladimir heads VK, where the probable owner of DA TEAM, Stepan Kovalchuk, works. As such, in 2021 DA TEAM received at least 200 million rubles from the EISI and other Kirienko-related projects
However, there are also those among Putin’s experts who work not only and not so much for money. We are talking about the fanatics who aspire to become the nation’s ideologues.
Episode 4

“Hello, my dear! During a recent meeting, there was not enough time to touch on the most important issue. I just wanted to pour out my heart.
The adopted course towards negotiating a settlement of the Ukrainian crisis will not bring Russia the desired result. The Americans have long adopted their plan to “work” on us. Our Russian people are dying in the Southeast. […] With all the understanding that we are being provoked, we cannot limit ourselves to Lavrov’s vague statements. Everyone is ready. Kadyrov is one of the few who regularly voices the mood of the majority, demonstrating 100% readiness. […]
Now the fear that we won’t survive the fight with NATO is working against us. There is not much time. Could it be that we are trying to postpone the beginning of World War III and prepare ourselves? Maybe. But, apparently, the decision to hit us (indirectly at first) has already been made across the ocean. We need to strike at the criminal junta (the army, the guard, the [Right] Sector). We cannot delay […]
What are your thoughts on the subject? We could discuss it verbally sometime… I realise that it’s not easy for you to make personal conclusions on this matter either. Or maybe I don’t understand shit, due to the lack of accurate information…”.
Original spelling and punctuation retained, the letter is given in abridged form
These are excerpts from a lengthy and convoluted letter Georgy Filimonov, who was a guest at the wedding of Shamalov and Putin’s daughter. As it is clear from the quotes, Filimonov was already proposing to launch a large-scale aggression against Ukraine at that time, and probably wanted to convey his thoughts not only to his friend, but also to the friend’s high-ranking relative. The invasion wouldn’t happen until eight years later, but Filimonov’s ideas had etched into the soul of the ruling family. Shortly before that letter, Filimonov had been made director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Predictions at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, and then put in the chair of the deputy governor of the Moscow Oblast.

Could Filimonov’s aggressive views have played a role in his rapid career rise? Most likely, as is suggested by one episode from Shamalov’s correspondence. In the same 2014, when blood was already being shed in Donbass, Putin’s daughter Katerina, Shamalov’s wife, revealed herself to be an admirer of the same views as Filimonov. She sent her husband a collection of scholarly articles titled Eurasian Arc of Instability. Its editor was Nikolai Kolotov, head of the department at the Oriental Faculty of St Petersburg University (where Katerina Putina (Tikhonova) studied). Putin’s son-in-law forwarded it to his other address – probably to read it later. In addition to Kolotov’s own article on the harm of “orange revolutions,” the collection also includes a work by retired general Leonid Ivashov on “the crisis of the liberal West. Filimonov, Kolotov and Ivashov have something else in common besides their wild views: they all participate in the so-called Izborsk Club, an association of conservative experts established in 2012 to counterbalance the “liberal” Valdai Club

The Izborsk Club was conceived by two of the most prominent figures on the conservative spectrum – writer Alexander Prokhanov and philosopher Alexander Dugin

By 2012, both Prokhanov and Dugin were already known in the Kremlin, albeit mostly in a negative light. Dugin, who had begun his career as a philosopher in the esoteric circle of writer Yuri Mamleyev, had met journalist and writer Prokhanov, then nicknamed “The Nightingale of the General Staff,” in the 1980s

In 2002, Dugin met the Kremlin’s domestic policy supervisor, Vladislav Surkov, and tried to interest him in his projects, such as the nationalist Eurasia party. But Surkov did not take the Eurasianist seriously

With the beginning of Putin’s third term, when the concept of “spiritual staples” was proclaimed, the situation began to change for the better for the marginalised. The Izborsk Club, founded by Dugin and Prokhanov, immediately received support from the authorities. Economist Sergei Glazyev, who was then Putin’s advisor, was among the club’s members; Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky and Governor of the Pskov Oblast Andrei Turchak took part in its first meeting. The meeting was held in Izborsk, a territory under Turchak’s jurisdiction, and the regional authorities provided the patriots with accommodation, transport and food
However, the Izborsk Club conceived by Dugin and Prokhanov has been implementing much more important projects than some old list of foreigners for the Simonyan-led media for several years now. In 2017, the club established an educational centre that develops courses and manuals for schools, including those in the occupied territories of Ukraine. This centre produces “multimedia complexes” for children, consisting of videos, posters and study guides. The complexes “United History with the Donbas Heroes”, “Heroes of the Motherland XX Century” and “My Russia” have already been released, the latter is recommended by the official portal of the Russian Electronic School, one of its parts is called “Crimea and Russia – a Common Destiny”. It is easy to guess what they will help to teach children just from their titles. For example, the film “Together with Russia”, which is part of the “United History with the Donbas Heroes” complex, begins with the following words: “Russia has long tried to negotiate and solve everything peacefully. Today, the collective West has risen against the Russian Federation. Nevertheless, we are standing up for the Russian world”. These “complexes” are ordered not only by schools, but even kindergartens

In 2023, after the death of Alexander Dugin’s daughter Daria, he began to receive invitations to meetings in the Kremlin

Nevertheless, money and political calculation are not the only things that drive experts in Putin’s Russia. There is also love.
At one of the first Valdai Club meetings in 2005, Russian political scientist Nikolai Zlobin, who has lived mostly in the USA for many years, asked Putin if he would run for a third term. Putin tried to avoid answering, but Zlobin suddenly pounded his fist on the table and exclaimed: “I’m the one asking the questions here!” The president then promised not to seek a third term and not to amend the Constitution. After the meeting Zlobin asked Putin if he could write a corresponding acknowledgement. Putin did not chicken out

On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Zlobin published the name of his own Telegram channel Absolute Evil on Facebook in case the social network would stop working in Russia. But over the next 1.5 years, Zlobin never posted anything on either Telegram or Facebook. Neither did he write a single article about the war in Ukraine; it was as if the prominent expert simply disappeared.
It is likely that the author of the sharp question to Putin decided to avoid unforeseen consequences for himself and his family. Such consequences could happen both in the USA, which Zlobin has good reason to consider home, and in Russia, where he has a wife. The name of Zlobin’s wife is Anna Revyakina, she is a Donbas poetess who supports the war and member of the Civic Chamber of Russia from the DPR
You know, I really do not need much
In my life, just letters and pictures,
To wake up in the morning and put cream in my coffee
In a world where God has banned war forever.
But in March 2022, Revyakina published
Editors — Roman Badanin, Mikhail Rubin
Fact-cheking — Mikhail Maglov