On April 22, the aggressor’s propaganda machine announced the arrival in the occupied territories of Ukraine of so-called “representatives of foreign media outlets”, allegedly hailing from “Japan, Turkey, China, the Congo, North Macedonia, Ecuador, and other countries.”
These figures, some of whose names were, “for some reason,” left undisclosed, were transported to Donetsk, Mariupol, and occupied Crimea. There, they participated in PR events hosted by the occupation gauleiter Sergey Aksyonov and collaborators from the “state council,” including Sergei Tsekov, Edip Gafarov, and Anastasia Gridchina.
The nominal “organizers of the visit” have been variously identified as either “Zakhar Prilepin’s team” or Ivan Andreev, a figure associated with the Russian propaganda outlet “Vashi Novosti”.
The motley crew of “journalists” brought to Crimea, at least the portion of the group publicly acknowledged by the aggressor, is quite telling.
For instance, the group includes the Uruguayan Walker Fernando Vizcarra Gaibor, who previously worked as a private photography tutor and a prison educator, and who, in 1994, attempted to secure a seat on the Quito City Council as a candidate for the fringe leftist group “Partido Liberación Nacional”.
Another member is Irfan Bin Mohamad Fairus, a graduate of the Faculty of Sharia and Law at the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia who allegedly represents the channel Astro Awani, whose only prior public appearances seem to have been as a competitor in online Rubik’s Cube-solving championships.
Crispian Kabasele Chimanga Babanya, whom the occupiers have touted as the leader of the “Union of Social Democrats” political party from the Congo, is entirely absent from the public sphere; moreover, in his home country, this party is a marginal entity with virtually no representation in government, essentially a clone of the leftist “Pan-African Union for Social Democracy.”
Özgür Altınbaş, a Turkish national brought to Crimea, is presented as a representative of the “Aydınlık” newspaper. We have previously reported that this media outlet serves the equally marginal, pro-Russian “Vatan” party. The party’s perennial leader, 80-year-old Doğu Perinçek, was implicated in the “Ergenekon” conspiracy case regarding an alleged coup plot; although sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013, he was subsequently granted amnesty by Turkish authorities.
Altınbaş himself, a graduate of Peking University, has previously appeared in various Turkish publications extolling Beijing’s communist regime, and he has been featured in Russian propaganda segments since 2023.
Meanwhile, the Macedonian national Goran Dimov, who previously made a brief appearance as an “election observer” in Russian-occupied Abkhazia, is ostensibly an “advisor to the foreign policy department” of the leftist “Levica” (“The Left”) party, an organization actively promoting anti-European narratives within North Macedonia.
Notably, Dimov and other alleged “leaders” of the “Union of Social Democrats” were also recently trotted out in Moscow at a “forum” hosted by yet another plaything of Russian intelligence: the so-called “International Socialist Network”, “SocIntern”, which is being constructed in the worst traditions of Soviet-era “knights of the cloak and dagger.”
Thus, the current “visit” demonstrates that, when selecting their “talking heads,” Russian intelligence agencies are not above recruiting anyone and that a significant portion of their “personnel pool” consists of Soviet-era assets cultivated within leftist organizations across various countries.
How this “socialism” squares with Russian imperialism, and with the nepotistic brand of capitalism the Kremlin is currently fostering, is a question that is rhetorical at best; after all, as is well known, for “true communists,” money has no smell.
