Russia’s interference in European democracies has one key tactic– it seeks to exploit tensions that already exist argues Sian Norris
Russia has interfered in immigration and the European Union, including in the Brexit vote. In the US, it has exploited existing tensions around race and on the hard left. In every target country, Russia has exploited existing tensions around gender rights, namely on abortion, women’s, and LGBTQ+ rights. The issue of women’s rights over our own bodies has, sadly, always been contested. Russian interference is designed to stoke up those tensions, via well-funded anti-gender campaigns across Europe.
According to research by Neil Datta at the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Brussels, Russia is currently the largest financier of religious extremism in Europe, spending $211.8 million on Christian conservative causes between 2019-23. Much of this spending, particularly since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has gone to domestic causes. However, Datta’s research found that Russia spent $188.2 million between 2009-18 – much of which was targeted abroad.
The money primarily comes from two oligarchs: Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev (the latter is married to Maria Lvova-Belova, meaning his billions are now supporting the so-called “children’s rights commissioner’s” Ukrainian child abduction programme). Both oligarchs funded anti-gender organising inside and outside of Russia, with the aim of provoking division and weakening Europe’s ability to defend itself from Russian aggression.
Malofeyev, known as the Orthodox Oligarch on account of his conservative religious views, funds an empire of anti-gender organising and disinformation. This includes his media channel, Tsargrad TV, where he employed the far-right “philosopher” Alexander Dugin and platformed far-right conspiracists and influencers Alex Jones and Tommy Robinson. But it is through his St Basil the Great Foundation that he arguably exerted the most influence, with his employee Alexey Komov working with European and US anti-gender causes to put Russian talking points on the agenda.
Until 2022 Komov sat on the board of CitizenGO, an anti-gender petitioning platform that gets signatories on everything from campaigns to ban ads featuring transgender models, to overruling the nationwide right to safe and legal abortion in the US. He was also the Russian representative for the US-led World Congress of Families, an anti-gender conference that brings together world leaders, campaigners, lawyers and think-tanks to strategise on how to rollback women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. His colleague at the WCF and at St Basil the Great, Pavel Parfentiev, was an active member of the Agenda Europe network. The anti-abortion group was set up by members of the US religious freedom charity Alliance Defending Freedom, among others, and counted UK anti-abortion characters as well as CitizenGO team members, European MPs, and head of WCF Brian Brown as members.
The World Congress of Families was due to host its conference in Russia in 2014. The illegal annexation of Crimea put a stop to the event. It did not prevent US, European and Russian anti-abortion leaders gathering together in Moscow, however. Yakunin and Malofeyev worked together to host what Komov called the “Olympics” of the global anti-gender movement. A leaked invitation list showed that Brown was part of the group, and representing the UK on the invite list was Benjamin Harris-Quinney, from conservative think tank the Bow Group, and Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child’s Thomas Ward.
Malofeyev’s and Yakunin’s people continued to have a presence at various anti-gender campaigns throughout post-2014, whether through CitizenGO, Agenda Europe, or WCF. After the full-scale invasion, this shifted slightly. However, the US anti-gender movement continues to align itself with Putin’s goals. In 2025, for example, Brian Brown travelled to Moldova in advance of the country’s elections, determined to support opponents of President Maria Sandhu, whom he denounced as being “anti-family’. Russia also invested in removing Sandhu from power, an attempt that ultimately failed.
Underpinning this activity is Putin’s rhetoric that Europe – or “Gayrope” as he likes to call it – is decadent and in decline, due to its embrace of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. This narrative is picking up traction in the MAGA and British far right movements.
Take these comments from Mark Collett, founder of the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative. Nodding along to Kremlin disinformation that NATO is to blame for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, he linked NATO with pro-LGBTQ, pro-abortion policies, writing “wherever American imperialism takes root, [in the form of NATO] with it comes an entire range of social poisons that attack the moral fabric of the nation – feminism, the LGBT agenda, attacks on the traditional family and of course, anti-white rhetoric and policy.”
As I write this article, the US MAGA right is in St Petersburg for Putin’s economic forum, where Russia’s decade-long campaign to seduce the US, UK and European far right via its anti-gender policies will be represented by American commentator Candace Owens. The former head of communications for the alt-right group Turning Point is set to speak about the importance of large families, a key Kremlin interest. Owens, whose husband George Farmer has made large donations to the UK Brexit Party (now Reform UK), spoke of her joy at visiting St Petersburg as a “Christian”. But how Christian is it when Russia bombs orphanages, schools – even churches?
For all the far right’s hailing of Russia as pro-family, these people have nothing to say about the “Christian values” of murdering, sexually abusing, and abducting Ukraine’s children.