Lawyers working with a retired Lithuanian general and various pro-Russian and fringe politicians are under direct payroll from the Kremlin, LRT Investigation Team has found as part of an international report spanning 30 countries.
The Foundation for the Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, known as Pravfond, was established by a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2011 and is officially overseen by Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
It is led by Alexander Udaltsov, a former Russian ambassador to Lithuania, and has been confirmed by the intelligence services of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other Western nations to have direct ties to Russia’s security services.
The organisation provides funding to individuals working abroad on behalf of the Kremlin, including spies, propagandists and various other pro-Russian activists, as well as lawyers defending them in court cases.
Pravfond paid for the defence of Viktor Bout, the Russian arms trafficker known as the Merchant of Death, who was imprisoned in the United States before being exchanged for American basketball player Brittney Griner. Since June 2023, Pravfond has been subject to sanctions for its role in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and activities targeting Western nations.
A cache of 49,000 emails and 22,000 attached documents from five Pravfond email accounts was obtained by Danish public broadcaster DR and shared with an international group of journalists coordinated by investigative journalism network OCCRP.
Over several months, LRT reviewed and analysed emails detailing individual requests for funds to bankroll their activities and legal costs. The cache also included the foundation’s internal decisions, reports and records of payments to applicants.
Hints that Kremlin-aligned activities were being funded by Pravfond had previously surfaced in investigations by Lithuanian media outlet 15min.lt and the Centre for Investigative Journalism Siena. But journalists now have access to evidence showing the precise sums the Kremlin’s foundation granted to favoured activists or to lawyers defending figures important to the regime.
The correspondence also shows that individuals supported by Pravfond opened accounts with Russia’s Sberbank even after the European Union imposed sanctions on the bank.
Between 2012 and 2024, Pravfond distributed more than $6 million to various operations in Western countries, including the Baltic states.
Among Lithuanian citizens supported by or who submitted applications to Pravfond is lawyer Ryšardas Burda, known for defending individuals in the January 13 case.
In 2019, dozens were convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the January 1991 events, when Soviet forces attempted to overthrow Lithuania’s newly independent government. Fourteen people were killed.
In 2022, police received an official warning that Burda – who previously held senior positions in Lithuania’s internal affairs system and anti-corruption watchdog STT – may pose a threat to national security. The warning was based on a security assessment citing his frequent appearances on pro-Kremlin Russian media where he spoke about the January 13 events.
He also maintains contact with Valdas Tutkus, a retired Lithuanian general who ran in last year’s European Parliament elections with the Peace Coalition.
“Yes, I am in close contact with Ryšardas Burda,” Tutkus confirmed to LRT.
Burda received payments from the Kremlin’s Pravfond for his activities dating back at least to 2018.
Other Lithuanians who have benefited from Kremlin funding include Stanislovas Tomas, who has fled Lithuanian law enforcement, and Edikas Jagelavičius, an associate of Algirdas Paleckis, imprisoned for spying on behalf of Russia.
Funding was allocated to support Paleckis’s legal defence. Profound also supported pro-Russian figure Viačeslavas Titovas, a former Klaipėda city councillor.
Kazimieras Juraitis, a known disseminator of Russian propaganda on social media, also requested funding for legal costs incurred by Erika Švenčionienė. In 2022, both travelled to Belarus with the now-defunct International Forum for Good Neighbourhood to meet with President Alexander Lukashenko. A few weeks ago, they were seen at Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius alongside other activists defending Soviet-era monuments.
Burda, now deputy chair of the political association Alternative for Lithuania – headed by the retired general Tutkus – applied for at least €60,000 in funding from Pravfond since 2018.
He submitted applications for the defence of three individuals important to the Kremlin. These included two defendants in the January 13 case: FSB officer Mikhail Golovatov, who died in 2022 and who led the KGB Alpha unit’s assault on the Vilnius TV tower and Radio and Television Centre, as well as tank officer Yuri Mel.
Another client of Burda’s was Valery Ivanov, head of the pro-Soviet organisation Jedinstvo, who has been convicted multiple times in Lithuania for denying Soviet aggression against the country in 1991.
A separate trial concerning defamation related to the January 13 events is ongoing.
Email correspondence shows that Burda and Pravfond disagreed over the financing of Ivanov’s defence, with the foundation allegedly reluctant to cover his legal fees. This was referenced in a 2019 email from Pravfond’s executive director Vladimir Pozdorovkin.
“Alexander, I’ll tell you personally: although Burda claims the foundation refused to subsidise lawyers in the January 13 case, he somehow fails to quote the response informing the lawyers of the decision to subsidise defence in the appeal stage. Odd. Perhaps the subsidy amount didn’t satisfy him?” Pozdorovkin wrote.
Public sources and European intelligence reports link Pozdorovkin to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Like Udaltsov, Pravfond’s head, he is a former Russian ambassador to Lithuania.
Documents show that during this time, Burda was representing Golovatov in the January 13 case and submitted compensation requests to the foundation in 2018 and 2019.
Any disagreement appears to have been short-lived.
“I spoke with Ivanov and learned that Burda, who is representing him, received payment for participation in the 13.01 case. This concerns fees for defending Valery. Based on your response, I hope this matter will be resolved positively,” reads a 2019 Pravfond email.
Subsequent payment records show that in 2020 and 2022, Pravfond paid Burda at least €40,000 for defending Mel, including proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
After EU sanctions were imposed on Pravfond in summer 2023, Burda opened an account with Russia’s Sberbank, according to emails he sent to the foundation.
“Recipient bank – Swedbank, but following the sanctions, transfers in roubles – via Sberbank,” Burda wrote in an October 2023 application, requesting €15,000 to represent Mel before the ECHR in 2024.
That same year, Burda also asked Pravfond to pay €15,000 via Sberbank for his legal services representing Ivanov. In a letter, he not only requested the transfer but also asked to receive the funds on a bank card.
“Hello, I’m sending the signed contract. I changed the account number to a Sberbank MIR card,” he wrote in April 2024, adding: “Best wishes for the upcoming May holidays. I understand that using Gmail is a challenge, so I suggest switching to Yandex.ru.”
Burda refused to speak to the LRT.
“I’m telling you again, I’m not speaking with you about this matter. I don’t discuss lawyer business with others,” he said by phone. Written questions also went unanswered.
However, the fact that Burda held an account with a sanctioned Russian bank and requested payments from Pravfond for defending Kremlin-linked individuals did not trouble Tutkus, the retired general turned politician who founded a new association, Alternative for Lithuania.
“He has a bank account in Russia. So what? Is he the only Lithuanian with a Russian bank account?” said Tutkus.
“I don’t know much about banking, but legal work, like yours or a camera operator’s job, must be paid. How one chooses to receive their wages – as an honest Lithuanian citizen – is none of my business,” Tutkus said.
“If there’s no way to make a payment, well, then there’s no way. Sanctions don’t mean a Lithuanian citizen can’t have a bank account in Russia,” he added.
Lawyers may have breached sanctions
Tutkus believes Burda is paid solely for legal work, and every individual has the right to legal defence. He also claimed neither he nor journalists could confirm whether Burda actually received the funds transferred in roubles to his Sberbank account after sanctions were introduced in 2023.
“Everyone keeps saying ‘if he cashed out’. Maybe he didn’t and instead donated the money to some Russian charity,” Tutkus said.
Burda is not the only lawyer to receive such funding.
Lawyer Julija Asovskaja, who defended Soviet officers Eduard Roskov and Gennady Ivanov in the January 13 case, had submitted funding requests to Pravfond since at least 2017. From 2021, she also defended Aleksej Greicius, a Klaipėda-based activist convicted of spying for Russia, whose defence was similarly funded by Pravfond.
In 2024 – after sanctions were in place against both Sberbank and Pravfond – Asovskaja submitted an invoice for €15,000 to the fund for representing Ivanov at the ECHR. Like Burda, she requested payment be transferred to Sberbank.
“I don’t know if I even want to talk. I’m driving and can’t speak,” she told LRT, before hanging up. Written questions also went unanswered by the time of publication.
Nikolajus Voinovas, who worked with Pravfond since 2017, mainly handled the defence of Soviet military commander Albertas Galinaitis, charged with crimes against humanity in the January 13 case.
Voinovas, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament in 2016 with the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Puteikis and Krivickas political organisation, told LRT that he submitted applications to Pravfond while active in the trial, declared the funds and paid taxes. However, he said he never received the final payment.
“Due to the geopolitical situation, the money sent to me was frozen by the bank. I provided an explanation, but the money was returned,” he said.
Documents show that in May 2023, he submitted a budget request for defending Galinaitis at the ECHR until the end of the year. The requested subsidy was €15,000. While a Lithuanian bank was listed on the form, the final page included Sberbank details “for transfers in roubles”.
Voinovas denies this.
“Who would open a Sberbank account for me, a law-abiding citizen of the Republic of Lithuania? What are you talking about?” he said. But the application he sent to Pravfond clearly includes his Sberbank account details.
Despite this, Lithuania still allows funds to be withdrawn from a sanctioned entity when it involves “funds or other economic resources intended solely for the payment of reasonable professional fees or reimbursement of expenses associated with the provision of legal services.” The authority responsible for sanctions enforcement in Lithuania is the Financial Crime Investigation Service (FNTT).
The agency said it had received no such request for funds from Voinovas, Asovskaja, or Burda.
“The service has no data regarding requests for permits to receive money from the individuals specified in the inquiry,” the FNTT said in its response to the LRT.
However, the fact that lawyers received payments for their services directly into accounts they had opened with Sberbank is treated even more strictly.
“A situation in which lawyers are paid for services via a Russian bank may be considered a violation of international sanctions,” the FNTT said.
“One of the main objectives of EU sanctions is to deny funds and/or economic benefit to individually sanctioned entities and to prohibit business relationships with sanctioned subjects,” the FNTT noted.
Another individual identifying as a lawyer, S. Tomas – who previously represented Rolandas Paksas, the Lithuanian president impeached and removed from office over links to a Russian businessman, in a case before the European Court of Human Rights against Lithuania – has been living in Belarus for some time.
In 2019, he smashed a controversial memorial plaque dedicated to General Vėtra (Jonas Noreika) in Vilnius. He was convicted for the act but fled to avoid serving a custodial sentence.
Juraitis, who livestreamed the incident on social media, said that his associate Tomas is currently in Cuba looking for new contacts and partnerships.
Documents obtained by journalists reveal that in 2022, Tomas submitted numerous applications to Pravfond, amounting to a total of €60,000.
“From September to November this year, we received five requests from Tomas for funding from the foundation for various projects. Decisions on earlier applications have not yet been made; they are being coordinated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” wrote Pravfond director Udaltsov in a report to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
An analysis of the documents shows that only one of five grants was approved during 2022–2023. The foundation chose to support Tomas’s application to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights over alleged violations by the Lithuanian government. The fee for the legal services was €10,000.
But sanctions against Russia caused complications with the payment. In May 2023, Tomas received a message that there were problems transferring money to his bank in Panama.
“Mr Kovaliov, today the Panamanian bank informed me that it had decided not to accept transfers from Russia. Could you please pay me in cryptocurrency, either Ethereum or Bitcoin?” Tomas responded.
Nonetheless, by July – after the foundation had already been added to Western sanctions lists – the Panamanian bank changed its stance, and Tomas confirmed receipt of the funds. “Finally, the Panamanian bank transferred the money. They had frozen it before. I got it,” the lawyer wrote.
Tomas’s services were also needed by Giedrius Grabauskas – a long-time associate of Paleckis – who has lived in Russia since 2020 and is wanted by Lithuanian law enforcement. His application sought €20,000 in cryptocurrency to cover legal proceedings aimed at challenging Lithuania before the UN Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, and Interpol. The legal actions were scheduled to take place in 2024.
STomas did not respond to questions from the investigative journalism platform OCCRP.
Juraitis and Švenčionienė – who had travelled to Minsk and Moscow – also sought Tomas’s legal assistance. The request for funding from the foundation was made by Juraitis himself.
“Please provide financial assistance,” he wrote to the foundation in September 2023. At the time, court proceedings had been opened against him, Švenčionienė and Ivanov for allegedly assisting a foreign state in actions against Lithuania and for publicly endorsing or denying Soviet crimes.
Juraitis requested €7,000 from Pravfond to cover legal services for a case against Lithuania. This resulted in a legal representation agreement with Tomas, who was to challenge Lithuania’s decision to ban the International Forum for Good Neighbourhood association before the UN Human Rights Committee.
In response to questions from LRT, Juraitis posted a separate video, stating that he might theoretically have applied to Pravfond, as he had approached many different organisations for funding.
Former forum head Švenčionienė also explored the possibility of obtaining funds from the Pravfond. Although there are no emails or documents authored by her in the material reviewed by journalists, others applied on her behalf.
For instance, in 2022, she was represented by Tomas, who noted in a letter that “Švenčionienė is currently en route to Donbas”. The request sought approximately €10,000 to cover legal fees incurred in an administrative case over her display of a Soviet flag online.
That same year, the foundation received another application from Tomas related to Švenčionienė, this time for €15,000. It concerned a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee regarding the removal of Soviet monuments from the the Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius. In 2022, Švenčionienė removed a cloth that had been covering a Soviet statue at the cemetery.
“The €15,000 request from the foundation appears excessive. Regarding all the applications, I would like to remind you of my previous suggestions: based on the request to defend Švenčionienė’s interests, we should consider awarding her €150 to pay the fine imposed by the Lithuanian police,” wrote Pravfond executive director Pozdorovkin in May 2022.
It was not possible to speak directly with E. Švenčionienė – her daughter answered the phone.
Paleckis also had an account with Sberbank
Correspondence of Jagelavičius, the associate of Paleckis, the former Lithuanian politician imprisoned for spying for Russia, revealed both of their connections with Pravfond.
Jagelavičius has been listed as wanted by Lithuanian authorities for allegedly acting against the state. He did not return to Lithuania after travelling to observe Russia’s sham referendums in occupied Ukrainian territories in 2022.
Since March 2023, he has headed the International Forum for Neighbourhood organisation registered in Belarus – founded shortly after its Lithuanian counterpart was dissolved by court order. While LRT was able to reach Jagelavičius via social media, he did not respond to submitted questions.
His name appears in the foundation’s records in 2022, when Pravfond covered costs for a propaganda event held in Minsk that November titled “The Right to Historical Memory”. The discussion, which cost €160,000, featured not only Russian and Belarusian propagandists, but also included Jagelavičius and, remotely, Švenčionienė.
As early as January last year, Jagelavičius himself applied for a €5,000 grant in order to file a complaint with Interpol against Lithuania for the alleged unlawful persecution of Švenčionienė, Juraitis and Ivanov. In the same correspondence, dated April, Jagelavičius also sought additional funding for Švenčionienė.
"Regarding Erika Švenčionienė, I also received information. She says she needs help. At this stage, she would need €700, and later €700 for a lawyer," wrote Jagelavičius.
He did manage to secure funding in the summer of 2023. A contract was signed with the fund in June for a €600 subsidy, which was earmarked for a planned application by Paleckis to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). According to the submitted form, Kremlin financing was required to translate documents from Lithuanian into Russian.
"Immediately after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Paleckis plans to file a complaint with the ECHR. His supporters and associates are prepared to help him carry this out: a lawyer is being hired by Latvian MEP Tatyana Ždanoka, while the document translation is being handled by the public organisation Good Neighbourhood Forum. Approximately 460 pages need to be translated into Russian legal language," Jagelavičius wrote.
In 2024, it was revealed that Ždanoka, a now-former MEP from Latvia, was an agent for the Fifth Directorate of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). In October 2023, Jagelavičius forwarded the translated documents related to Paleckis to the fund.
Among them was a 2018 transcript of an interview with Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) officer and witness Deimantas Bertauskas.
Bertauskas, a businessman, had also been accused of spying for Russia in the Paleckis case but was acquitted. He was later convicted of distributing child pornography.
Bertauskas, along with Paleckis, collected intelligence for Russian operatives about the January 13 case, travelled to Moscow, and met with Mikhail Golovatov, who was defended in Lithuania using Kremlin funds by lawyer Burda.
In the operational interview transcript, Bertauskas describes in detail the logistics of these trips and contacts with Russian agents. Most notably, he explains how Kremlin funds were paid to Paleckis and how he withdrew the cash in Russia’s Kaliningrad region that borders Lithuania and Poland..
Here’s an excerpt from a 2018 VSD interview:
OFFICER: Does Algirdas [Paleckis] also have an account with Sberbank?
RESPONDENT: Yes. He goes regularly to withdraw money. He told me the money comes from Sputnik.
OFFICER: Where does he withdraw the money?
RESPONDENT: In Sovetsk. He was in Sovetsk recently, a couple of weeks ago, maybe…. He receives about €700 for articles.
OFFICER: That much for a single article?
RESPONDENT: No, per month…
It is confirmed in the fund’s 2023 report, approved by the Russian Foreign Ministry, that Pravfond financed preparations for Paleckis’s case at the ECHR.
But this was not the only time Pravfond showed interest in Paleckis. In 2022, the fund signed a contract with Russian activist Galina Sapožnikova.
She is banned from entering Lithuania due to her book Who Betrayed Whom, which distorts the historical record of Soviet crimes in Lithuania in 1990–91. The contract involved translating and publishing Paleckis’s book Handcuffs for Thought in Russian. The fund allocated €5,700 for the project.
Paleckis, who is currently serving a prison sentence, refused to meet with or respond to questions from LRT.
Two other figures funded by the Kremlin-backed fund also ignored journalists’ questions. Klaipėda activist and former Klaipėda city councillor Viačeslavas Titovas, convicted of insulting the memory of Lithuanian partisan leader Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, received €20,000 for his legal defence, according to Pravfond’s 2020 reports.
"We recommend that Titovas apply directly to the fund for compensation of his legal expenses in 2020," one of fund’s directors Igor Panevkin wrote in a September 2019 letter.
Despite Western sanctions already being in place, fund money still found its way to another Russian national in Lithuania.
In 2024, the fund signed a contract with Kommersant journalist Nikolai Zubov, who represented the interests of Vladimir Vodo.
Vodo, a Russian citizen who had lived in Lithuania since 1989 and worked as a journalist, lost his residency permit after the VSD classified him as a national security threat for spreading propaganda and disinformation.
As a result, Vodo sought funding from Pravfond to file a complaint with the ECHR. The money was transferred to Zubov’s account. Vodo himself explained the arrangement in a 2023 letter.
"If the fund is unable to transfer money from Russia to the EU (Lithuania), I have a good friend and long-time colleague in Moscow, Nikolai Zubov from Kommersant, who is willing to receive the money. He’s only concerned about currency fluctuations, so ideally, the transfer should not be in Russian roubles," Vodo wrote to the fund’s leadership.
Vodo challenged the Migration Department’s decision to revoke his residency, arguing that he had deep family and social ties in Lithuania, spoke fluent Lithuanian, and had severed all ties with his country of origin.
He was deported from Lithuania last year.
January 13 events Pravfond’s top priority
A trove of internal Pravfond communications related to Lithuania reveals that ever since the fund was established, the Russian regime has placed particular emphasis on the events of January 1991.
Every individual in Lithuania who received subsidies from the fund has promoted the Kremlin’s version of events: that Soviet troops were not involved in the tragedy and that the victims of the January crackdown were defamed. Soviet army officers accused of crimes against humanity in the January 13 case also received legal support funded by Pravfond.
But the spread of the Kremlin narrative did not stop at Lithuania’s borders – Pravfond also supported related activities within Russia.
On January 13, 2021, Pravfond’s website announced that a photo exhibition and press conference would be held in Russia’s State Duma to mark the 30th anniversary of the January events in Lithuania.
"Unfortunately, recent events in Vilnius have been surrounded by historical lies and distortion of facts. We, the Public Chamber, believe that this poses a direct threat to Russia’s national security," the announcement read.
The exhibition was organised by Vladimir Derevnin, president of the public organisation Our Compatriots. Founded in 2016, Derevnin’s organisation assists former Soviet officials and soldiers accused in the January 13 case.
Derevnin had an odd email address – vladimirfsb@gmail.com. He also maintained ties with Golovatov, the former FSB officer indicted in the case and defended by lawyer Burda.
Pravfond’s reports show that whenever Derevnin submitted a request to fund campaigns aimed at discrediting the January 13 case in Russia, they were approved without much scrutiny.
For instance, in the autumn of 2020, Derevnin’s application was approved for an event in Kaliningrad in August, intended to portray the "Vilnius case" as politically motivated. The Kremlin fund was asked for €11,000, some of which went towards broadcasting the event on Russian state channels Rossiya-1 and Rossiya-24.
Soon after, Our Compatriots submitted another invoice – €850 for the production of a special photo album titled Lithuania 91. Pravfond’s involvement was confirmed in a December 2020 letter from fund executive Viktor Pozdorovkin.
"Attached are two contracts and their budgets. Please review and check that your bank account details are entered correctly. If you agree, please sign the documents and stamp the final pages with your organisation’s seal. It would be ideal if we could exchange the signed originals today," Pozdorovkin wrote.
Also attached were documents related to the funding of the Duma photo exhibition, with a request for around €1,000. This is the same exhibition announced by Pravfond in January 2021. "The grant is allocated to cover the costs of a themed photo exhibition in the State Duma of the Russian Federation dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the events of January 13, 1991 in Vilnius," the internal documents state.
Among the 2021 correspondence between Pozdorovkin and Derevnin is also a plan outlining how Lithuania should be punished for convicting Soviet officers in the January 13 case. The document is titled “Adoption of Additional Measures Against Lithuania in Response to the Verdict on the January 13, 1991 Events in Vilnius”. It was sent by Derevnin using the same vladimirfsb@gmail.com email address.
The plan consists of nine points, several of which relate to applying economic pressure by redirecting freight to Russian ports and discouraging tourism in the Baltic states. In light of the current sanctions against Russia and the severed economic ties with the aggressor state, those measures are now largely irrelevant.
Nevertheless, some of the proposals may still have an impact today.
Vladimir Derevnin suggests making broader use of Russian military archives, focusing on materials related to the actions of “police forces, SS legions, and ‘forest brothers’ during and after the Great Patriotic War”.
He proposes revealing documents to the public that supposedly prove that up to 25,000 people were killed in Lithuania after the Second World War – of whom 23,000 were allegedly Lithuanians whose relatives may still be alive today.
However, Lithuanian historians have conducted numerous studies demonstrating how the Soviet Union falsified such documents and deployed propaganda tools to discredit the Lithuanian resistance movement, distort the role of partisans, and erase their legacy from public memory.
“Hold accountable those who currently support Nazism and war criminals for genocide and crimes against peaceful citizens of the state,” reads another item in the proposal.
Derevnin also proposes the creation of counter-propaganda content. This would be broadcast from radio and television centres located in Russian border regions, including programming specifically targeted at the Baltic states. He also recommends requesting access from Russian state archives to artistic films, theatrical productions, and other material that showcases life in the Baltic republics during their time in the USSR – presented as “visual tools”.
***
Thousands of Pravfondo's correspondence and accompanying documents were analysed by journalists from 30 media outlets across Europe: the Bulgarian Bird. bg, the opposition Belarusian Biuro Media, Romania's Context Romania, Estonia's Delfi Estonia, Denmark's DR, Spain's El Periodico, Sweden's Göteborgs-Posten and SVT, Slovakia's Jan Kuciak Centre for Investigative Journalism, Greece's Inside Story, Ireland's Irish Times, Italy's IrpiMedia, Italy's IrpiMedia, Russia's opposition IStories, Belgium's Knack, France's Le Monde, Latvia's Nekā personīga (TV3 Latvia) and Re: Baltica, Lithuania's LRT, Norway's NRK, OCCRP, Germany's Der Spiegel, ZDF and Paper Trail Media, Austria's Der Standard, Moldova's RISE Moldova, Finland's YLE, and Poland's Central European Frontstory. pl / VSquare.org, the Czech Republic's investigace.cz and Denmark's Dagbladet Information.
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