Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation appoints new director as Ivan Zhdanov exits after 7 years

Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), one of Russia’s leading investigative organisations, has announced the appointment of a new director, according to a statement posted on the foundation’s Telegram channel on Monday.

Ivan Zhdanov, the FBK’s director since 2018, decided to step aside to focus on his YouTube channel Samoe Vazhnoe (Most Important), the statement added.

Vladislav Romantsov, who joined the FBK as a volunteer in 2013 to work on Navalny’s Moscow mayoral campaign and who has been the foundation’s head of IT since 2020, is to begin his new role with immediate effect.

“It is a great honour and a huge responsibility for me to continue Alexey’s work, now together with Yulia Navalnaya. The main thing is not to give up, stay true to your ideas and values and believe in the team, otherwise what’s it all for?” Romantsov wrote on X following the announcement of his appointment on Monday.

The FBK was founded in 2011 and immediately began publishing investigations into high-level corruption in the Russian government, including landmark reporting on the unprecedented corruption schemes connected to former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2017, which led to mass protests across the country.

In 2021, the FBK was officially deemed an “extremist organisation”, having released damning investigations into the FSB poisoning of its founder Alexey Navalny and an exposé of Vladimir Putin’s vast Black Sea palace, both of which were watched by tens of millions of people.

The FBK thanked Zhdanov “for everything he has done for the development of the foundation, for his professionalism, responsibility and loyalty”, noting that he had led the FBK through “very difficult” years that included “unprecedented pressure from the authorities, criminal prosecution, forced evacuation of the team from Russia, the poisoning, arrest and murder of Alexey Navalny” and the war in Ukraine.

“Ivan guided the FBK through this most difficult period with honour. He himself was arrested multiple times, his father served three years in prison on false charges — simply in retaliation for his son’s work. None of this led Ivan astray.”