♦ A Kremlin-backed fund, Pravfond, has operated in Ireland for more than 10 years.
♦ It has worked with an Irish-based lawyer. Its work here is limited to funding legal services for Russians in difficulty.
♦ EU security agencies say in some countries it acts as an extension of Russia intelligence.
In September 2023, a year and a half into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an intriguing advertisement appeared on the website of Nasha Gazeta, a Russian-language newspaper based in Ireland. Elizaveta Donnery, a Russian-speaking solicitor with a practice on the third floor of an office building in Clontarf, north Dublin, was offering legal consultations to compatriots on the subject “of violations of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of compatriots living in Ireland”, according to the ad which was printed in Russian.
Unusually, there would be no charge for these services. As long as they made an appointment, the consultations were free. What the ad did not mention is that these consultations were being funded in large part by a Russian organisation established by the Kremlin to increase Russian “soft power” overseas.
The Foundation to Support and Defend the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, known by its Russian acronym Pravfond, was founded by presidential decree in 2012 with the stated goal of protecting the rights of Russians living abroad, primarily by offering assistance in legal matters.
In the view of the EU and the intelligence services of its member states, Pravfond does much more than this in some countries. According to the European Commission, it is used to influence public opinion in western countries, particularly in relation to Russia’s war in Ukraine, by funding websites, social media accounts and publicity campaigns.
While Pravfond, as an international fund supporting Russians abroad, is used in Ireland solely for funding the provision of legal advice to Russian expats, it is used for different purposes in other countries. In these countries, it is designed to act as a safety net for Russian intelligence assets – agents or spies – who get into legal trouble abroad, according to western security services. In some countries, it also provides cover stories for these spies.
Pravfond and similar organisations allow Russian agents to pose as lawyers or human rights specialists, said Normunds Mežviets, director of the state security service of Latvia, the Baltic state bordering Russia. “The information at our disposal suggests that this fund has long been used to achieve the goals of Russian intelligence services. And the staff of this fund has also purposefully employed people whom we associate with belonging to Russian intelligence services,” Mežviets told the Latvian television station TV3, a partner to The Irish Times in a major new investigative journalism project.
The extent of Pravfond‘s operations and its presence in Ireland are detailed in an archive of 55,000 emails and 20,000 attached documents from Pravfond, obtained by journalists from Danish public broadcaster DR and shared with The Irish Times and more than 20 other international media outlets including Le Monde in France and Der Spiegel in Germany.
The investigative project, which was co-ordinated by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an independent network of journalists, reveals for the first time the activity of Pravfond across dozens of countries, activity that has continued despite the imposition of EU sanctions in 2023.
Unlike certain Pravfond-funded operations in other countries, there is nothing to suggest that Donnery or other Russians in Ireland supported by Pravfond engaged in intelligence gathering, influence operations or illegal activity.
Pravfond is seen by the Russian government as part of its toolkit to increase support for the regime of President Vladimir Putin among the overseas Russian-speaking population and wider western society. The Kremlin, and in particular Putin , has long viewed the Russian diaspora as an asset that could be leveraged to increase Russian power and influence.
In a speech in 2014, Putin said Russia would use “the entire range of available means” to defend the rights of Russians abroad.
The process began in the early 2000s when Putin began setting up various commissions and councils to strengthen the links between Russia expatriates and their native country. In 2003, a special working group connected to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, started systematically mapping the diaspora in every country, according to an EU intelligence source.
In 2005, the television channel Russia Today was founded to connect with expatriates and improve the country’s overseas reputation. This was followed by the Russkiy Mir Foundation, which Putin created by decree in 2007 to promote Russian language and culture abroad.
In 2012, Pravfond joined this growing network of GONGOs – government-organised non-governmental organisations – when it was established by the Russian ministry for foreign affairs.
“[Russians abroad are] an army, a force that is very important to us,” said Pravfond‘s current executive director, Alexander Udaltsov, in an unpublished promotional video.
Russian intelligence
According to security services from the Baltic States, the links to Russian intelligence were built in from the beginning. Many of its senior officials were serving or former members of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency; the FSB, the country’s state security agency; or the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency.
This includes its current deputy director Vladimir Pozdorovkin, who has been identified by European intelligence sources as a SVR agent.
“The foundation was created to fund influence operations under the cover of combating discrimination,” said Marta Tuul, a spokesperson for Kapo, Estonia‘s security service.
“It is an extension of the Russian intelligence services, enabling the control and direction of the Russian-speaking diaspora.”
From the start, one of Pravfond‘s main tasks was providing legal support to intelligence assets or those with ties to the Kremlin who got in trouble abroad, a number of high-profile cases suggest.
One of the early people to receive legal assistance was, according to previous Pravfond records obtained by the OCCRP, notorious Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout – known by the nickname the “Merchant of Death” – after he was arrested in a sting operation by US authorities in Thailand in 2008.
Bout, who provided the inspiration for Nicolas Cage’s character in the film Lord of War, was later deported to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange for the American basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained in 2022 for possessing cannabis oil.
[ Footage released of Brittney Griner-Viktor Bout prisoner swapOpens in new window ]
The same tranche of records showed that other beneficiaries of Pravfond funding include FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of murdering Chechen military commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a Berlin park in 2019, Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko and many other less prominent figures linked to Kremlin activities.
Recipients do not even need to be Russian to get funding, they just need to have acted in the Kremlin‘s interests. In 2023, Pravfond funded the defence of Latvian taxi driver Sergei Sidorov, who was arrested on espionage charges and accused of plotting to blow up a drone base near Riga, according to the email records.
There is nothing in the records to show that any Pravfond contact in Ireland had knowledge of these activities.
Pravfond also began funding propaganda operations, designed to improve the country’s reputation abroad and, later, disparage Ukraine and its claim to territorial integrity, records show. In Greece it funded the Dialogos Club, whose website says its goal is to “form a positive image of Russia in Greece and Greece in Russia”, the Pravfond records show.
In Latvia, it provided funding to the IMHOClub, which published articles promoting Russia and disparaging Latvia, the European Union and Ukrainians, according to the email records. Three of its staff were later charged with “conducting activities in an organised group directed against the rule of law”, the latest leak of Pravfond records show.
The third strand to Pravfond‘s activities was establishing a global network of “legal support centres” to provide free legal advice and legal representation to Russian expatriates, according to the newly disclosed records.
Ireland became one of the first locations for these centres when, in 2013, Donnery entered into an agreement with Pravfond to provide legal advice to Russians “as part of legal aid information days”, records show. A now deleted 2013 blog post on the website of Donnery’s law firm provided details of the information days and stated they were “supported” by Pravfond.
Helping Russians in Ireland – even as far as Kerry
Donnery (47) was more than qualified to offer legal advice to Russians in Ireland given her background and professional training. She was born Elizaveta Eduardovna in the city of Krasnodar in southwest Russia. Her father was a well-known scientist and her mother was a university lecturer.
After a five-year course, Donnery qualified as a lawyer in her home country.
On graduating, she came to Ireland in 2000, planning to stay for just a few months, she said in an 2020 interview uploaded to Facebook. However, once here, she decided to stay permanently, despite being told by the Law Society that her legal qualifications would not be valid in Ireland. She married and took her husband’s name, Donnery.
She earned her Irish qualifications before landing a job as a corporate lawyer with law firm Matheson in 2005.
In 2009, she opened her own practice in Clontarf on the northside of Dublin. As one of a tiny number of Russian-speaking lawyers in the country, she quickly developed a successful niche practice, focusing on immigration and family law and picking up several legal awards.
Russian speakers travelled from all over Ireland to her practice “even from as far away as Kerry”, according to an article published in the Law Society Gazette, the publication for solicitors, in 2020.
Donnery qualified as a public notary and as a lawyer eligible to practise in England and Wales before, in 2022, being appointed to the Law Society‘s committee on family and child law.
She also practised corporate law, particularly in the area of immigrant investment and became a council member of the Irish Russian Business Association.
“I just wish there was more business between Ireland and Russia but we are trying to develop links,” she said in an interview with the Law Society Gazette.
The solicitor also forged strong links with the Russian embassy and wider diaspora community. According to an email sent by the Russian embassy in Ireland to Pravfond in 2017, she provided pro-bono legal advice to the embassy.
Donnery’s social media features several photographs of her with Russian ambassador Yury Filatov and in 2021, she received an award from the embassy “for successful work in protecting the rights and legal interests of Russian compatriots in Ireland”, according to a Facebook post on Donnery’s account.
Email correspondence shows that on at least one occasion, on March 27th, 2017, the embassy contacted Igor Panevkin, the now deceased director of Pravfond and a one-time senior Russian diplomat, to support her application for funding.
Donnery also became a member of the Co-ordinating Council of Russian Compatriots in Ireland and was part of the organising committee for the yearly “Immortal Regiment” march in Dublin, which commemorates the Soviet Union‘s victory in the second World War. A photo from Donnery’s social media shows her at the head of the 2019 march, a few metres from the ambassador Filatov.
“We try to keep the memory of them alive. It‘s a really lovely thing,” she said in a video discussion with a friend posted on social media website Facebook in 2020 about her role in the commemorations.
“They had this idea of protecting their motherland. And they were ready to lose their lives.”
Aside from this, people who know Donnery said she rarely, if ever, discusses politics or Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine.
“She is very career-focused, very focused on her practice,” said one solicitor who knows Donnery.
“From what I can tell she would be studiously apolitical.”
This is supported by a review of her social media posts, which often concern her Russian roots but never veer into any topic that might be considered political or nationalistic.
One common theme is her support for To Children with Love, an Irish charity that assisted children in Russian state orphanages.
“I love Ireland but I love Russia too,” she said in the 2020 Facebook discussion .
Activity
According to the copies of contracts and funding applications, Donnery received support from Pravfond every year, except in 2019 and 2020.
An application for funding for the year 2017 lays out exactly what activity was funded by the organisation. Donnery sought €35,000 to be used to continue the operation of the legal advice centre, which by that point had already provided a large number of free consultations to Russians.
“As previously noted, with the help of the Fund for Supporting the Rights and Compatriots Abroad, free initial consultations have been provided to hundreds of compatriots in Ireland since 2013,” Donnery wrote in an email to Pozdorovkin, Pravfond‘s deputy director and former SVR agent, on May 27th, 2020. A copy of the email has been seen by The Irish Times.
The money would also fund radio and television appearances on legal matters and the “monitoring of the legal situation and co-operation with other lawyers’ jurisdictions regarding the infringement of the interests of the rights of compatriots”, the 2017 funding application stated.
Additionally, Donnery would provide “emergency legal assistance” to Russians, as long as funds were available and Pravfond gave its permission, she said in the 2017 application.
Over the years, Donnery published legal advice columns in Nasha Gazeta and appeared on the Russian Show on Dublin City FM. She also occasionally appeared in the mainstream media, including on the national broadcaster RTÉ, to discuss matters relating to Russia and immigration.
As part of her agreement, she reported back – up to twice a year – to Pravfond on her work, detailing the types of cases she was dealing with.
“Consultations primarily concerned serious violations of rights and discrimination against compatriots in Ireland,” she wrote in a two-page report sent to Pravfond on October 6th, 2023 and titled “Ireland information for the site”.
Issues included Russians being prevented from using their native language in the workplace, conflicts in marriages between Russians and non-Russians, and children being discriminated against at school.
In 2020, Donnery described her relationship with Pravfond in an interview with Russian World, an organisation that was later also sanctioned by the EU as a tool of Russian soft power.
“I have received grants from the Compatriots Support Fund several times, thanks to which I can conduct free consultations for compatriots,” she told the organisation.
“This year we had two blocks of such consultations. One took place in September, and the other will be in October.”
On at least one occasion, on December 13th, 2023, Donnery provided Pravfond with a partial list of names of clients and the reason they had come to her. Reasons for consultations include “assistance in drafting a statement of claim”, “preparation of documents for social services” and “preparing documents for the police”.
In the four-page document, Donnery states she is only providing names of people who consented to their information being shared.
On one occasion, she asked Pravfond for funding for a specific case. On October 22nd, 2014, Donnery sought €12,000 to represent Sergey Tarutin, the editor of Nasha Gazeta.
Translations
Donnery was not the only lawyer in Ireland in contact with Pravfond. Olga Shajaku (46) is a prominent Russian solicitor and businesswoman who has been living in Ireland for nearly 30 years. There is no documentary evidence showing that Shajaku ever received funds from Pravfond but in one email, sent in 2016, contained within internal Pravfond records, she provided Pravfond with the bank details of her firm‘s client account.
In addition to being the principal at MS Solicitors in Temple Bar in Dublin 8, she co-owns Word Perfect Translations on Ormond Quay in Dublin, one of the largest translation services in the country. In 2019, it recorded a profit of €3.1 million.
Word Perfect regularly provides translation service for Government agencies, including An Garda Síochána, with which it signed a contract in 2007. However, on its expiry, the Garda later awarded the next contract to a rival service, prompting Word Perfect to lodge a High Court challenge to the tendering process in 2015, which was unsuccessful.
Like Donnery, Shajaku specialises in immigration law but in the past has also focused on generating business between Ireland and Russia.
In 2017, she helped organise an Irish delegation, which included former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, to travel to Moscow and St Petersburg to discuss business opportunities. Ahern told The Irish Times at the time that he was involved in peace talks in Kyiv. During one event, some of the delegation discussed hotel investments in Crimea, one of the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia in 2014 and then subject to extensive international sanctions.
“Sanctions won‘t be there forever and we do believe these barriers may be lifted shortly. We think there is a phenomenal opportunity between our two countries,” Shajaku said in an Irish Times article in December 2017.
One of Shajaku’s first interactions with Pravfond occurred when she was approached by Tarutin, the Russian language newspaper editor, to represent him in his legal troubles involving a Russian businessman. On November 13th, 2015 she wrote to Pravfond requesting €60,000 to represent Tarutin, according to an internal Pravfond email seen by The Irish Times.
In response to queries from this newspaper, Tarutin confirmed Shajaku represented him in one set of legal proceedings involving a Russian businessman who was suing him but that his applications for funding from Pravfond were denied.
He said Nasha Gazeta never received any payment for advertising from Pravfond.
“I have very limited knowledge of the Foundation to Support and Defend the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad,” he said.
Shajaku, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment by email and phone, continued to keep in contact with Pravfond.
On December 13th, 2015, she sent a fax to Pravfond on behalf of her firm MS Solicitors stating that it “looks forward to a fruitful partnership” with the fund and that their priority is the protection of the rights of Russians living in Ireland.
“We are confident that our collaboration will help to bring this message to the wider Irish public and the international community the need to comply with all basic civil rights for all Russian compatriots living abroad,” she said.
The following year, Igor Panevkin, Pravfond‘s then director, sought to speak to Shajaku by phone “regarding the co-operation agreement”, the documents show.
In 2017, Shajaku asked for €30,000 in Pravfond funding to represent a mother who alleged her child had been abducted from Russia by the child’s father.
Invasion
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it became more difficult for Russia to conduct operations in the EU. Embassy staff were expelled or denied visa renewals, including in Ireland, and Pravfond had significant difficulties in getting funding to its legal support centres.
In Ireland, Donnery’s legal advice columns continued to appear in Nasha Gazeta. Before the invasion, Donnery mentioned at the top of her columns that her writing and legal advice was supported by Pravfond. Following the invasion, references to Pravfond no longer appeared.
Shortly after the invasion, Pravfond held a video conference with the heads of its legal support centres “[who] were informed about the reasons and goals of Moscow’s decision to conduct a liberation mission in Ukraine”, according a letter from the fund to Russia’s foreign ministry.
Some centres, including in the Baltic States, Ukraine and Sweden were forced to cease operations while others reported local authorities taking “repressive measure” against them.
In an attached summary, seen by The Irish Times, Pravfond said legal centres in Ireland, Georgia and Belgium were reporting Russophobic activities by the authorities.
“However, they are forced to refrain from public statements and actions [in] condemnation of the anti-Russian course, since otherwise they risk [being] banned by local authorities,” the document stated.
According to an internal Pravfond record of complaints from fund recipients in various countries, on April 12th, 2022 Donnery told Pravfond that due to EU sanctions, local banks were refusing to release funds to her which had come from Pravfond.
In the record, a Pravfond official confirmed that the first tranche of the fund’s grant had been transferred to Donnery’s account in Moscow with the note: “The funds were successfully received by the recipient.”
Later that year, Donnery reported to Pravfond a 210 per cent increase in requests for legal consultations, the fund’s internal records show.
Things became more difficult again in June 2023 when the EU imposed specific sanctions targeting Pravfond and its then director, Alexander Udaltsov.
The EU said Pravfond “represents a unique structure of ‘soft power’ which plays an important supporting role in implementing the Russian government politics of division”.
It said the organisation “is responsible for supporting materially and benefiting from” the Russian government.
Donnery continued to engage with the fund, according to Pravfond‘s internal records. In November 2023, she sent her yearly report to Pravfond, which has been seen by The Irish Times. In March 2024, she signed a contract for another €25,000 in funding.
Donnery did not respond to repeated requests for comment by phone and email. The Irish Times called to her law office in Dublin on Monday. A receptionist said she was in the building but unavailable due to work. He agreed to pass on a letter from The Irish Times containing a detailed list of questions from this newspaper. Donnery did not respond to this latest request for answers.
Confidential contact
As is the case with Donnery, there is nothing to suggest that Shajaku engaged in intelligence gathering, influence operations or illegal activity as documented in other countries where Pravfond has a presence.
In fact, all of the work by the two Ireland-based lawyers detailed in the documents appears to conform with Pravfond‘s stated purpose of simply providing legal assistance to emigrants who are having legal trouble.
According to security sources, this is not unusual.
“Often recipients of funding are acting entirely in good faith and have no idea they are part of this network which originates with the Russian intelligence directorate,” said one source attached to a western European intelligence agency.
In intelligence speak, people funded by Pravfond may be known as “bridgeheads” who are used, often unwittingly, to influence communities of emigrants and establish a network of people who are favourable to the Kremlin‘s worldview.
A leaked Soviet-era KGB field manual called these people “confidential contacts”, according to a leak of the manual to the Free Russian Foundation, a US non-profit organisation set up by expat Russians. Unlike paid intelligence agents, “confidential contacts” may be aiding Russian aims while believing their actions are entirely innocent and apolitical, the manual states.
Irish security sources say they are aware of Pravfond and its presence in Ireland.
One source connected to the Irish military intelligence service, known as J2, said the majority of this information had come from co-operation with other EU intelligence agencies, “which has increased significantly in recent years”.
However, they stressed Pravfond is just one of a number of ways Russia is attempting to promote its aims in EU countries.
“It‘s part of a much wider ecosystem,” said an Irish intelligence source speaking on condition of anonymity.
Security services in countries closer to Russia tend to be more willing to talk openly about the alleged risks posed by Pravfond. In fact, the organisation is regularly mentioned in the annual reports of the intelligence agencies in the Baltic States.
The main function of Pravfond “is to finance projects to spread Russian influence abroad”, the Lithuanian state security department said in response to queries from journalists working on the OCCRP project.
In addition, it “is very likely to be used as a cover for the activities of Russian intelligence services and their employees”, the department said in the context of his own country.
“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,” Tuul of the Estonian intelligence service told the OCCRP project.
She said organisations such as Pravfond are designed “to divide the societies of other countries and interfere in their internal affairs and foster a narrative about discrimination of Russians and Russophobia in western countries”.
Mežviets said the Latvian state security service has been monitoring Pravfond “for many years”.
“And in the assessment of the state security service, this fund is nothing more than an instrument of Russia’s humanitarian influence, which for many years has been very purposefully used, exploited, to increase Russia’s influence here and to directly carry out Russia’s influence activities here,” he said.
The internal Pravfond documents show that despite the impact of sanctions, the fund shows no sign of reducing its overseas efforts. The fund is in the process of financing a new legal advice centre in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, its officials are more convinced than ever in their mission.
[ EU and Britain go ahead with new Russia sanctions without waiting for WashingtonOpens in new window ]
In an email to a friend sent shortly before his death on August 25th, 2024 at the age of 74, Panevkin, Pravfond‘s long-time director, said he believed many Russian expats living abroad have “stopped believing in western democracy and in [its] goals, which distort the very essence of humanity”.
“I write this not as propaganda,” he wrote. “I truly believe that Russia has a more correct historical path.”
In a statement issued after publication, the Russian embassy in Dublin said it “firmly rejects preposterous allegations made against the Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad.
“The Foundation provides comprehensive legal assistance in cases of violations of the rights, freedoms, and legitimate interests of compatriots, in full accordance with universally recognised humanitarian principles and norms of international human rights law,” it added.
“The activities of the Foundation are similar to those of the Irish Abroad Unit at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland, which has been operating through the Emigrant Support Programme since 2004, in partnership with the Ireland’s diplomatic missions and other Irish organisations abroad.”
- This article was amended on May 21st, 2025 to correct the misspelling of a name and to add the response of the Russian embassy in Dublin in a statement issued after publication
