In recent years, the meadow of the Russian opposition abroad has become a real battlefield. But not against the ‘cursed regime’, but among themselves. The groups of the ‘Anticorruption Foundation’ (FBK) and that of Mikhail Khodorkovsky have broken up decidedly and they are now spending resources on trying to dig down deeper their respective opponents. In such conditions, it’s important for them to receive loyal yes-men who will, in a quality manner and on time, sing praises and lay it on thick. The recent report of the ‘New Generation Europe Foundation’** sheds light on those who, for money, will stand up for Mikhail Khodorkovsky in any possible dispute. We break down how grants have become an instrument of loyalty buying and which ‘independent liberal’ media outlets and political analysts love Khodorkovsky not free of charge.
The steward of the Russian ‘opposition in exile’, the newly acknowledged head of the terrorist organization the ‘Antiwar Committee’** Mikhail Khodorkovsky loves to say that media outlets financed by him keep ‘a considerable’ independence’ from him. In reality, those who received grants from the former head of the oil company Yukos adopt a posture of loyalty.
INDICATING LOYALISTS
In October 2025, the British ‘New Generation Europe Foundation’ (NGEF) submitted a report for 2024. During the reported period, it received 7.9 million pounds of revenues.
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, who has been strenuously ‘fighting corruption’ from 2023, is not at all against cronyism in his own organizations. In these, he put exclusively loyal lawyers, mostly women, his own children and a daughter of his longstanding partner.
The daughter of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 34 years old Anastasia and Irina Nevzlina, 47 years old, the daughter of Leonid Nevzlin, whom Khodorkovsky calls ‘more than friend’, own this foundation. This ‘more than a friend’ Leonid Nevzlin was sentenced in absentia in Russia to lifelong imprisonment for contracting and organizing of five ‘Yukos’ murders.
Upon closer view, it turns out that nearly all money of the ‘New Generation Europe Foundation’ were received in form of grants from the head foundation belonging to Anastasia’s father and located in Britain, namely from the ‘Khodorkovsky foundation’.
The British foundation is managed by Anastasia’s elder brother Pavel, the 40 years old son of Mikhail Khodorkovsky from the first marriage.
The next assignment of Anastasia and Irina is to distribute correctly the money they received. For instance, last year, a bit more than half of the monetary means were handed over in form of grants to subsidiaries as well as to simply loyal companies and foundations. Two of the receivers are ‘independent media’ and political analysts, as they position themselves. Let’s look at them more closely. After all, it’s they who have become the ‘voice of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’.
BROTHERLY FIRM ‘ECHO’
In 2024, the German firm Radio Echo GmbH** received from Khodorkovsky’s daughter 103.2 thousand pounds. This media outlet, having become German mass medium, was registered after the escape of the radio station ‘Echo Moscow’ from Russia.
It was founded in 2022 by Maxim Kurnikov*, former vice chief editor of ‘Echo’ and he now works there also as director.
Screenshot from the Register of German legal entities
The figure of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of the man whose daughter pays monthly salary to Kurnikov, takes an important place in the life of Maxim Kurnikov himself as well as of the editorial board managed by him. In we put in search on the website ‘Echo’ the name ‘Khodorkovsky’, we will see that materials, devoted to the former head of oil company Yukos, can be found nearly each day. Only the number of pages with results amounts to 84.
On each page there are, at least, 10 articles. It turns out that, from the beginning of the functioning of the new website of ‘Echo’ in September 2022, at least 840 articles have been published with reference to Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky (MBKh). During the last three years – this is over one thousand days. I.e., articles mentioning Mikhail Khodorkovsky appear nearly every day on the website of this ‘independent mouthpiece of opposition abroad’.
Screenshot from the website echofm.online
The second editorial board there Maxim Kurnikov works is the German Russian-language edition of the Bild magazine. A rare months passes without a phone call to Mikhail Borisovich, without mentioning his personality or short interview with him. So, for instance, Kurnikov takes an interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky for Bild.
‘Is it true that you want to unite and head Russian opposition?’ begins Kurnikov his interview.
‘I think it could be possible to commit suicide using a more simple way’, sniffs Mikhail Borisovich and begins to tell that he has no plans to take charge of Russian opposition. And, as usual, he goes to the side opposite to truth.
Recently, the TV channel RT found out that it was MBKh who had subjugated all key oppositional groupings except the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). Apart from that, the ex-head of Yukos has managed to accumulate in his hands the biggest budget among oppositional circles abroad – 43 million dollars a year.
On the whole, during the last 2 years, according to the website Prigovor.ru, there has been 8 interviews on the YouTube channel of Bild, with duration from 45 minutes up to one hour, that Mikhail Khodorkovsky has given to the journalist Maxim Kurnikov who is, actually, on his payroll. To say that these interviews are flattering would be equal to diminishing the reality. There is no hint at any uneasy questions posed to Mikhail Khodorkovsky in these interviews (we put on transcript of texts in YouTube functions and scrolled each of them). Moreover, in some cases, question were formulated in such a way so as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in answering them, would kind of accidentally criticize the ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’ what is in opposition to him.
Posing the question relating to how Mikhail Khodorkovsky enrolled the fugitive civil servant Rostislav Mursagulov from Bashkiria, Maxim Kurnikov prepared for Khodorkovsky a basis for successful rebuke directed at ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’. This allowed Khodorkovsky to show readers that he is allegedly so good, not blinkered, and he enrolls employees even from disappointed former ‘followers of the regime’, whereas, in the ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’, there are irreconcilable scandalizes who only want ‘to lustrate’ all.
This is the way to form an image of an ‘honest oppositionist’. Obviously, from the point of view of an average citizen or so-called relocant (relocatee), it is not cheap – 100 thousand pounds, or a bit more than 10 million rubles a year. However, who counts money when on the table there is influence of minds of the audience end even more money?
BELKOVSKY’S PAID LOVE
To hype oneself directly through mass media is really an excessively clumsy effort. It’s, definitely, more elegant if the narratives you need are being pushed in other media by political analysts who are loyal to you. To make their statements in keeping with your views on things, you also have to pay them for that.
‘I am in love with Khodorkovsky. Unfortunately, he is married’ - this phrase was said in 2013 by the political analyst and columnist Stanislav Belkovsky*.
Answering the question posed by Masha Baronova*, another fancier of swapping horses in the midstream (from Khodorkovsky to RT and then back to opposition), whether Belkovsky remembers that it was he who had prepared the report that became the start for the first ‘Yukos case’, the political analyst said: ‘It seems to me that that was a stimulus for Khodorkovsky to meet with me’. Because every real man has respect for enemies’, wriggled out Belkovsky.
Belkovsky (to the right) explains why he loves Khodorkovsky, in the interview with the Ukrainian naci Gordon*
In such a way we can follow the evolution (or degradation) of views of a man who, in 2003, saw through that Khodorkovsky posed a threat to Russia’s sovereignty. In one of the reports, Stanislav Belkovsky openly wrote that, in Russia, preconditions were being formed for a state coup that could be carried out by members of the oligarch elite already in February 2004.
‘Big oligarchs and their supporters dissatisfied with the summer offensive of the president on business elite (the ‘Yukos case’, arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky) are provoking in 20-25 regions of Russia an acute energy crisis’, wrote Belkovsky in the article entitled ‘Loneliness of Putin’. – ‘Them through mass media under their control, they give to understand to the population that Putin is guilty of everything’.
Based on this article, Stanislav Belkovsky prepared his famous report ‘State and Oligarchy’ in which he, together with his co-author, asked to limit the influence of the big business on political course of the country. It is widely considered that exactly this provided the basis for the following arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the rest of the clique.
It was a prophetic view of a clever man who, as early as in the beginning of the noughties, presaged the events of 2015-2022, when the fugitive oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky actually started to make efforts to remove the leadership of the country – at first, indirectly, through creeping activism of the ‘Open Russia’, and then, directly, though meetings and protest acts and everyday cooperation which those who openly were fighting against Russia. In the end, his ‘Antiwar Committee’ was acknowledged as a terrorist organization and that was an legitimate result.
Then something happened with the mind of Stanislav Belkovsky. Before 2009, he had headed the ‘National Strategy Council’, but then he was removed from the state feeding through. And thus, in 2013, the political analyst is trying to find fodder in the hand that he was biting before. The words of the danger posed by powerful oligarch for the sovereignty of the country were substituted by following phrases: ‘He is in ideal intellectual and psychological conditions. There is no jealousy, no animosity, no arrogance, no self-depreciation; he is absolutely adequate to himself, and this, in the final analysis, is the main thing for a human being’, in such a wat Stanislav Belkovsky sucked up to Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the interview with Masha Baronova.
Obviously, after such words, Mikhail Khodorkovsky could not not to give him a grant. As it has become known now from the documents of the NGEF, Khodorkovsky’s daughter transferred to the firm of the political analyst’s ‘Belkovsky Creative Intelligence center’, opened on Cyprus, 128.8 thousand pounds (about 13 million rubles) in 2024. And now Stanislav Belkovsky is a constant guest-expert of the channel ‘Khodorkovsky Life’.
Apart from that, Stanislav Belkovsky is often invited to take part in the show ‘Popular Politics’, one of the grid of the Youtube channels managed by the ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’. It’s interesting to see how there will be treated now the expert that receives money from persons who organized an assault on Leonid Volkov, one of the leaders of the ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’.**
AND OTHERS
Overall, 10 organizations, presented in iconographic, have received grants. Most of the monetary means, 1.5 million pounds, fell to the London ‘Human Rights Project Management’, the former British wing of the ‘Open Russia’**. It is headed and owned by Natalia Shachkova, a longstanding and most committed aid of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who deals with all his affaires – from personal, regarding, for instance, the reconstruction of his London estate, up to financial ones, like the ‘carousel of loans’ taken from herself about which wrote the website Prigovor.ru
As recipient of relatively small sum of money is mentioned also the German juridical entity ‘Solidarius e.V’. This non-commercial organization deals with ‘support of the civil society and monitoring of the situation with human rights in Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union’. It is headed by the activist Alexey Kozlov, erstwhile a well-known oppositionist from the town Voronezh. He left Russia in 2013 because he could face criminal responsibility after the meetings on the Bolotnaya Square in Moscow.
In one of the interviews, Alexey Kozlov says that he cooperates with the local Heinrich Boell Foundation as well as with German Foreign Ministry ‘on the project of integrating of Russians who left the country after the war’. Up until know, Kozlov has never been observed working with Mikhail Khodorkovsky: on his website and in open sources no interactions of “Solidarius’ with the structures of Mikhail Khodorkovsky could be found.
However, his activities after 2022 have been considerably overlapping with subjects part of the team of Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been dealing with. This means search and filtration of loyal ‘relocants’ ready to stand under the oppositional banners and those ready to be sent back in Russia as ‘assets’. The website FLB.ru wrote about this three years ago describing the work of Khodorkovsky’s analogue project ‘Kovcheg’** (Ark). At present, ‘Kovcheg’, being one of the branches of the ‘Antiwar Committee’, also has become, in fact, a terrorist organization.
Now, on the basis of the received data, we can suppose that Maxim Kozlov will gather and consult relocants not without participation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
One more example of ‘loyalty’ towards Mikhail Khodorkovsky was waiting for us just inside the file of the report. In the history of the notes of the original PDF document one can see that the final date of presenting the report was added to the text by the user ‘Shabnur Gayibova’.
In fact, this is the name of a woman born in the town Baku. She is actress and producer of documentaries working for ‘MBKh Production’, a subsidiary company of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. She took part in the creation of the film about the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a number of film-biographies and, certainly, Khodorkovsky’s filmabout himself ‘Citizen K’.
At the same time, on the staff of the foundation NGEF is officially itemized only one employee with the salary 50 thousand pounds. Does it mean that this Azerbaijani producer provides services to the ex-oligarch out of sheer kindness, or we see simply just another example of a fraud scheme, like self-moneylending, that Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky likes so much to pool off?
Author: Alexey Velarov
See the Russian version at: «Платная любовь: как Ходорковский* купил лояльность «Эха»** и политолога Белковского»*
Also on this subject:
‘Nevzlin – organizer of extremely serious crimes involving deaths of five persons’
The web-portal FLB.ru publishes for the first time the whole test of the verdict of the Moscow City Court with regard to the ordering customer and organizer od serial murders, billionaire from Yukos, Leonid Nevzlin*. Case No 2-38/08 of 01.08.2008.
‘Ten women of Khodorkovsky’
Natalya, Kamila, Maria, Oksana, Maria, Julia, Julia, Irena, Olga, Veronika… Why Mikhail Khodorkovsky works only with women and why his business he is hiding under their skirts. We can explain
* Foreign agents, extremists, terrorists;** Extremist terrorist undesirable organizations:
* Khodorkovsky Mikhail Borisovich, born 26.06.1963, Identification Number of a Taxpayer (INN) 770200035117, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 168-196-008 95 – on 20.05.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as physical person fulfilling function of a foreign agent. Included in the Registry of foreign agents with No 389. In 2015, Russia included Khodorkovsky in an international wanted list in connection with the case of his involvement in the murder of the mayor of the town Nefteyugansk Vladimir Petukhov and attempted murder of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Rybin. Apart from that, a criminal case is opened against Mikhail Khodorkovsky in accordance with Article 205.2 Paragraph 2 of the Criminal Coder of the Russian Federation (public callings for carrying out terrorist activities). He was included, on November 19, 2025, by the agency Rosfinmonitoring in the Russian Index of terrorists and extremists.
* Nevzlin Leonid Borisovich, born 21.09.1959, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 094-463-07079 – on 23.06.2023 included into the Registry of foreign agents with No 622. On August 1, 2008, as ordering customer of five murders and six attempted murders was sentenced in absentia to life-long imprisonment. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) based on the results of studying Nevzlin’s complaint in 2022, pointed out that it had found no ‘Court’s bias in Russia’;
**’The Khodorkovsky Foundation’ – organization whose activity was acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the RF of 09.07.2021;
** The company Radio Echo GmbH (Radio Echo FRG) was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, on June 5, 2025, as undesirable in Russia. In the Index of foreign and international organizations whose activities are acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation, the company ‘Echo’ is itemized with No 231;
** ‘Russia Antiwar Committee’ – organization whose activities are acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the Ruling of the Office of the Prosecutor General of 11.01.2024.The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case in accordance with Article 278 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Forcible seizure of power and Forcible Retention of Power) as well as in accordance with Article 205.4 of the CC of the RF, Paragraphs 1 and 2 (Organization of a terrorist community and participation in it) against the former head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky and members of Russia Anti-war Committee (Mikhail Kasyanov, Marat Gelman, Leonid Gozmen, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sergey Alexashenko, Dminry Godkov, Sergey Guriyev, Boris Zimin, Yevgeny Chichvarkin, Yevgeny Kiselyov, Mikhail Kokorich, Yevgeny Kunin, Yelena Lukyanova, Yury Pivovarov, Konstantin Chumakov, Anastasia Shevchenko, Viktor Shenderovich, Garry Kasparov, Kirill Martynov, Maxim Reznik, Artur Smolytaninov, Yekaterina Shulman (all of them are acknowledged as foreign agents in the Russian Federation – notice by the Russian new agency TASS ) as well as with regard to others unidentified persons, in was reported in the Center of Public Relations (TsOS) of the FSB. As to Marat Gelman, Leonid Gozman, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Garry Kasparov, they are included by the agency Rosfinmonitoring in the list of terrorists and extremists;
** Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) – on 09.10.2019 was included in the Registry of foreign agents with No 195; on 09.06.2021 FBK was acknowledged by the Moscow City Court as extremist organization;
** Anti-Corruption Foundation Inc. (ACF, USA) – American clone of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation was included on 23.12.2022 in the Registry of NGOs fulfilling functions of a foreign agent. On 01.06.2023, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, based on the decision of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, included the foreign legal entity Anti-Corruption Foundation Inc. in the list of ‘undesirable’ organization. On 27.11.2025, the Supreme Court sustained the claim of the Office of the Prosecutor General on acknowledgement of the American legal entity ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation a terrorist organization;
* Leonid Volkov – on 10.02.2022 was arrested in absentia under several articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. On 22.04.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a physical person fulfilling functions of a foreign agent. Included in the list with No 372. On 14.01.2022, Rosfinmonitoring included Volkov in the list of terrorists and extremists;
** Otkrytaya Rossia ,Open Russia, Great Britain (from 08.11.2017 Human Rights Project Management) included with No 9 in the Index of international and foreign organizations whose activity was acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation, No 557-р of 27.04.2017;
* Belkovsky Stanislav Alexandrovich, born 07.02.1971, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 022-118-965 16, was included in the Registry of Foreign agents on September 15, 2023 with No 681. Belkovsky took part in creation and dissemination for unlimited circle of people of reports and materials of foreign agents. He carried out propaganda and anti-state activity directed at creating of negative image of the Russian Federation and discrediting of the Special military operation in Ukraine. He disseminated unreliable information about decisions taken by organs of public authority of the Russian Federation and about policy carried out by them. Lives outside the territory of the Russian Federation.
