Not-so-useful idiots: How the International Russophile Movement consolidated the Kremlin’s European influence networks

Kornilov is a member of the Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots in Estonia. Until 2018, he was a publisher and the editor in chief of the Baltnews news agency, whose editorial agenda he secretly coordinated with the state-controlled Rossiya Segodnya (lit. “Russia Today”) media group. In 2022, Estonia revoked Kornilov’s residence permit and barred him from entering other Schengen countries for five years. He challenged the ban, but Estonian courts rejected his appeal. Local police describe him as “a link in Russia’s influence network.”

The IRM website mirrors content not only from Baltija but also from the Good News portal, a joint project by Kornilov and the Moscow House of Compatriots, a subsidiary of the Moscow city government. The site’s design resembles that of the Russophiles and Baltija portals. Good News mostly republishes material from Russkiy Mir and the Moscow House of Compatriots. Although the IRM proclaims as its goals uniting Russophiles worldwide and “combating disinformation,” its website contains almost no content in English or French.

“Russia is not my enemy”

“You arrived at a time of dramatic events taking place around the world. We are truly fighting, and everyone has their own front line,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told participants at the Multipolarity Forum in February 2024. The gathering of Dugin followers was organized by the IRM with support from the Foreign Ministry and Putin’s presidential administration. Russophiles, members of Dugin’s International Eurasian Movement, conspiracy theorists, and political consultants from multiple continents gathered to discuss their shared pursuit of resisting Western hegemony and defending “traditional values.”

The next day, the IRM held its second congress, where it discussed its work plan. Malinov outlined the goal of the European Russophiles: to collect 1 million signatures in the EU of people who support lifting sanctions on Russia. That aim, in place since its foundation, has come to naught, but the movement’s activities in the areas of informational and hybrid warfare have indeed made a few modest gains.

In the summer of 2024, posters reading “Russia is not my enemy” appeared on the streets of Verona and several other Italian cities. The campaign was organized by the Veneto-Russia association, a partner of the IRM’s Italian branch. Months later, at a Russkiy Mir congress, branch chairman Eliseo Bertolasi shared the “success story,” describing how the initiative had “spread to other countries.” Bertolasi is a propagandist who filmed a movie in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Mariupol. In November 2025, Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship. His Italian Russophile branch was the first to open.

Just a week after the movement was founded, Italian participants held a rally in Modena with support from Malofeev’s Two-Headed Eagle society, the pro-Russian Vento dell’Est (lit. “Eastern Wind”) association, and the Christian group Una Voce Nel Silenzio (lit. “A Voice in the Silence”). “The International Russophile Movement, created in Moscow last week, is expanding its ranks. About 150 Italians…took to the streets last weekend with pro-Russian slogans,” Malofeev wrote on Telegram. He said they protested arms deliveries to Ukraine and called for Italy to leave NATO.

The branch holds conferences and roundtables grounded in the ideas of Dugin and Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s favorite philosopher. Bertolasi has also presented propagandistic books in Italy, including “From Gorbachev to Putin: Russia’s Geopolitics” by Russian Senator and conspiracy theorist Alexei Pushkov and “The End of Europe: Together With Russia on the Path to Multipolarity” by Valery Korovin, Dugin’s deputy in the Eurasian movement.

The Cypriot Russophile branch promotes the pro-Kremlin agenda even more bluntly. It is led by Mikis Philaniotis, a translator of Russian literature who graduated from a university in Odesa. Philaniotis has visited Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine and claimed on behalf of local Greeks that they were “happy to return to Russia” and asked Greece and Cyprus “not to send any military aid to Ukraine.”

In the fall of 2025, Cypriot members organized the propaganda film festival “RT.Doc: Time of Our Heroes” in Nicosia and Limassol. The audience was greeted by Russia’s ambassador to Cyprus, former security services officer Murat Zyazikov. The program featured two films — one about the “atrocities of Ukrainian troops against civilians in Mariupol,” and another about Italian propagandists in the Donbas who “challenged Western censorship.”

“Protecting the traditional family” as a pretext

At its second congress in February 2024, the Russophiles discussed another area they had previously barely addressed: defending “traditional values.” A year later, the movement became more active in opposing abortion and LGBTQ rights.

The first step was a declaration on “family protection” signed by the IRM in January 2025 in cooperation with Malofeev’s groups and 13 other organizations from Russia, Belarus, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. They called for banning the promotion of “anti-family ideas and values” such as “gender” and “gender diversity.”

Later, Malinov and French “Russophile” representative Tatiana Bokova met with Ekaterina Lakhova, head of the Union of Women of Russia. Lakhova previously co-authored the so-called Dima Yakovlev law, which banned U.S. adoptions of Russian children, and she also famously presented a complaint to Putin about the “LGBT propaganda” content of Raduga (lit. “Rainbow”) brand ice cream. The Russophiles announced plans to cooperate with Lakhova’s organization and to create a “women’s branch,” likely to be headed by Bokova. Judging by the family protection declaration, its agenda will not be feminist.