Articles with a tag: Георгий Мурадов

Russian propagandist «International Association of friends of Crimea» continues its destructive work even under the Russian full scale invasion into Ukraine. Members of the Association from various countries complain about persecution, accuse Kyiv of initiating the war, urge to cancel sanctions against Russia and to stop international assistance to Ukraine, and to recognize Crimea as the legitimate part of Russia.

We monitor their activity as we did in our previous special project «Friends of occupation of Crimea».

The main task of «the Friends of Crimea International Association» is to legitimize annexation of Crimea by Russia and to lift Western sanctions. It has been reported that «national clubs» from 30 countries were members of the Association. The Center for Journalist Investigations described each of them in the special project «Friends of the Occupation of Crimea» as it is very important to know: who supports Russia in its war against Ukraine; who are Moscow agents in the West and who lobbies Kremlin agenda in any given country and how this activity is financed.

Those «friends of Crimea» who answered information requests or calls by Center’s journalists persuaded that they covered their trips to Crimea from their own pockets and that Russia did not pay them for their pro-Russian activity. If these Kremlin agents pay themselves for their flights through Moscow to Crimea and for expensive hotels of the Southern Shore of Crimea, then, who are recipients of hundreds of millions of the Yalta Economic Forum Fund? It is within this Forum friends of Crimea meet. How is their Association financed if it does not exist de jure? We explored Russian public procurement and registers, and now we can tell what «fuel» feeds this propaganda machine.