Last March, we wrote about the “Indian concerns” of Crimean collaborators when the illegal “state council” suddenly decided to “publicly discuss the dangers” allegedly associated with “foreign students” at the fake “Crimean federal university,” where there were “about 3,000” of them, 2,470 of whom were in the “medical institute,” 90% of whom were from India.
The situation with the Indian “students” was publicly discussed by the occupiers, allegedly regarding their “closed quarters,” “isolation,” “living in close proximity to university dormitories or apartments,” and so on; however, no evidence of the creation of an “Indian mafia” or even domestic crimes by this contingent was cited.
At the time, we wrote that this feigned “concern” was in fact unrelated to any “antisocial events.” It meant that, despite their desire to save money and obtain a fake “medical diploma” without much effort, despite the rampant corruption at the “medical institute,”
Indian citizens in Crimea, to put it mildly, were reluctant to participate en masse in propaganda campaigns “supporting the Russian authorities,” and especially not the aggressor army, which is what the “university administration” “insistently wants” of them.
We previously described the role of officials from the “international relations departments” of the aforementioned “institute” and “university” in other subversive projects of the Russian intelligence services, including industrial espionage involving drones and artificial intelligence.
This also concerned the activities of the “head of the international affairs department” Gevorg Gabrielyan, the offspring of Oleg Gabrielyan, the “dean of the philosophy faculty” of the same “university,” who had been promoting the “ideals of the Russian world” in Crimea since the late 1980s and was closely connected to the relevant structures of Communist China.
In addition to the guidelines approved by security service curators on “the specifics of working with foreign applicants, students and graduates, and legal entities from “friendly” and “unfriendly” countries” as well as on “the impact of sanctions on international academic mobility,” Gabrielyan Jr. recently made his mark on such a seemingly “innocent” project as the “Silk Road – from India to Crimea” exhibition in occupied Simferopol.
In the absence of any actual Indian figures, even those qualified for “public diplomacy,” the aforementioned “Indian students” were herded there, mostly to dance and cook masala. But since dancing and masala have little impact on the criminal objectives of the Russian special services in sabotage and subversive activities, this event actually became an excuse for the occupiers’ propaganda to present a new “talking head,” telling of the supposedly “unbreakable Russian-Indian friendship.”
The “appointed” person for this role was Yedavalli Ajaya Prakash, a native of Hyderabad,
who has lived in Crimea for the past forty years and once graduated from a medical university on the peninsula.
Now, the occupiers’ propaganda calls this figure not only a “professor” but also the supposed “head of the Indian diaspora,” and they will now use him to conduct both propaganda campaigns and related scams targeting “applicants” and “graduates” from India.
It’s noteworthy that before Prakash was “appointed” by Russian intelligence as the “chief Crimean Indian,” he lived with his family and children in Sevastopol, where he attempted to rent out campsites. But in May 2025, Prakash suddenly changed his role to “services in higher education” and “established” the company “Doctors Queries,” also focused on “educational mediation.”
An earlier attempt by Russian intelligence to use Prakash in a similar role was noted in 2016, through the mediation of “old governing person” Boris Balayan, but that project was “put on hold” at the time. What kind of “Crimean-Indian” provocations will be carried out now – remains to be seen.
