“They work for the benefit of those at the top." How the Association of Indigenous Peoples became an enrichment and lobbying tool

In July, the Russian Ministry of Justice declared dozens of independent anti-war organizations of indigenous peoples, including those from the Arctic regions, to be extremist groups. The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East, better known as RAIPON, initiated the prosecution of some of these organizations. Verstka, in cooperation with the NGO Arctida and with the participation of 7x7, reports on how members of United Russia and business representatives run the organization, finance relatives of the head of FADN, make money from industrial companies, and lobby the UN for the lifting of sanctions against Nornickel.

At the end of July 2024, the Ministry of Justice added 55 organizations to the extremist register.They were considered to be "structural subdivisions" of the banned and non-existent organization of the anti-Russian separatist movement. Among them were organizations such as Free Buryatia, Free Yakutia, New Tyva, and other foundations that opposed the war and helped Russians avoid taking part in it.

The list also includes decolonial organizations that support the indigenous peoples of Russia in international bodies, such as the ICIPR, the Aboriginal Forum and the Indigenous Russia. Two years ago, a blog run by activists from these groups was subjected to an extremism inspection by the government-linked Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East, also known as RAIPON. RAIPON worked with the Russian delegation to the UN Permanent Forum to organize the inspection. Earlier, opposition to the war was voiced by members of the ICIPR.

The new "extremist" status will make it very difficult for associations to operate in Russia. Citizens can be prosecuted for any interaction with such organizations. Indeed, RAPON remains one of the few "legal" representatives of northern, Siberian and fareastern indigenous peoples. It consists of 34 public organizations, including those from nine of Russia's Arctic regions (the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Oblasts, the Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Nenets, the Chukotka and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, the Republics of Karelia, Komi and Sakha (Yakutia)).

According to the organization's website, their main goal is to protect human rights and defend the interests of indigenous minorities in the north, Siberia and the far east of Russia. The association carries out this work in three areas: the legal sphere, the international sphere, and the youth sphere.

In the first area, the focus is on the improvement of legislation in favor of indigenous minorities and the provision of legal assistance to specific community members. According to an interviewee who spoke to Verstka and is involved in RAIPON's work in Khabarovsk, association representatives provide lawyers, but only for high-profile cases that do not contradict government positions.

"We had a case in which our hunters shot and killed a tiger after it had attacked a man and torn him to pieces," the interviewee told Verstka. "It was self-defense. Our public prosecutor opened a criminal case. The case became very public. And the association got involved and helped [with lawyers]. Because people would have been outraged if these hunters had been imprisoned. I find that the whole organization keeps this balance: tightening the screws at some points, trying to play defense at others, but never going all the way. And they [the federal authorities] don't let them work.

In other respects, human rights advocacy is often reduced to filing appeals and complaints, Verstka's interviewees note. Last year, for example, the association complained to the management of Channel One about Leonid Yakubovich. The host of the TV show "Field of Miracles" (similar to the US show Jeopardy) had compared the Chukchi to "idiots". In the end, however, Yakubovich's only response to the indigenous people's complaints was to advise his fellow citizens to ignore the noise in the media.

At the international level, the association sends delegations to topical meetings at the UN. The Indigenous People's Union, a public organization created with the support of RAIPON, assists them in this. Initially, the organization was created to "develop ethno-tourism and related crafts of small indigenous minorities," but later its representatives began to participate in meetings of UN bodies as members of Russian delegations. For example, Antonina Gorbunova, the executive director of the Indigenous People's Union, joined the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Her functions within these organizations are limited to monitoring the observance of the rights of indigenous peoples and preparing monitoring reports and recommendations.

Experts from the Union and from the Association itself are also involved in the development of what is called the "Youth Program". At MGIMO they have initiated a diplomatic program for indigenous minorities, and the Institute of the Peoples of the North of the Heart State Pedagogical University has a representative office of the Association. One of the students from the Russian State Pedagogical University who has worked with the local branch of the Association told Verstka that since the beginning of the war they have been pushed to be part of the production of videos in support of the government.

"We, as students, were also invited to be filmed," the Verstka interviewee, who wished to remain anonymous, recalled. "I refused to participate. Their response to me was: 'That's a sign that our work with the youth is bad. I said, 'It means that the young people have a different point of view.' There were other students who supported me and did not take part in the filming as well."

The Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East has been in existence as a public organization in Russia since 1999, but it actually began its activities in the early 1990s.

In an interview with 7x7, Pavel Sulyandziga, former deputy chairman of the association, recalled that the organization had long maintained its independence from the authorities and even stood up to big business. For their part, these companies were claiming lands traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples that were rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, coal and gold.

In the first years of its existence, the Association helped to pass three federal laws aimed at protecting indigenous lands: one guaranteeing the rights of small indigenous minorities, another on the principles of community organization, and another on the territories of traditional use of natural resources. At the same time, the Association began to participate in expert and consultative bodies of the United Nations, and headed the Secretariat of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples' Council (IPS). Looking back on that time, Pavel Sulyandziga says that there was no censorship in the organization, and if there were problems on the ground, they were discussed in an open manner.

"We also spoke out against corporations at the UN, which the authorities obviously did not appreciate," he says.

By the mid-2000s, Sulyandziga says, politicians and officials were "creeping" into the association. And by the mid-2000s, they were in charge of the entire organization.

Despite the fact that RAIPON's charter states that "interference by government authorities and their officials in the activities of the association is inadmissible," Grigory Ledkov, a member of United Russia, has served as the association's president for the past 11 years. More than 50% of the presidium of the Association is made up of officials, deputies, and senators, while the regional branches of the Association are headed by former politicians and businessmen or their relatives. Ledkov himself joined the association's leadership while serving as a State Duma deputy and has been a senator since 2020.

Under his leadership, the organization's rhetoric changed from mere cooperation with the authorities to full support of their activities. In 2022, for example, the association supported Putin's decision to invade Ukraine and even spoke at the UN "on the inadmissibility of the revival of Nazi ideology".

"We consider the actions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to protect the constitutional order, the lives and security of citizens to be the only appropriate course of action," read RAIPON's appeal during the Wagner PMC march on Moscow.

In the winter of 2023, the organization also supported the nomination of Putin for the presidency of the country, saying: "For the president! For Russia! For the stable future of our country!".

"Now they are working for the benefit of the upper echelons of power. That is, their [the authorities'] interests are now being pursued, not ours," says a resident of the Khabarovsk region who is involved with RAIPON. "There may be dissent among the local people, but no one talks about it."

She says regional organizations are now raising money to send humanitarian aid to the Russian military and condemning foreign companies that have withdrawn from the Russian market.

"I asked people if they were ashamed because they printed their books with their [foreign companies'] money," says one Verstka interviewee. "They had no response. The wind was blowing in another direction, and they ran that way, they have no convictions of their own."

Another Verstka interviewee, Yamal tundra activist Eiko Serotetto, also describes the Association as an ineffective organization. On his VKontakte page, Eiko Serotetto regularly posts about corruption among local officials and appeals to the Association to help people.

"The problems that I and all the reindeer herders and fishermen are talking about, these problems probably wouldn't exist at all if Ledkov was effective, if this Association was effective," Serotetto says. "They are now spreading [rumors] among the people:'Eiko is sitting somewhere in a village and the enemies are telling him what to say,' even though no one is telling me what to say, I am writing directly from the tundra, from a camp. I take the time to monitor all their actions. And I don't see any help for the people."

According to Serotetto, he has repeatedly appealed to the association, asking, for example, for help increasing payments to the nomads. "Five thousand rubles are provided per month. It's supposed to be helping, but in reality this five thousand is barely enough to go to the store once," he adds.

In recent years, according to Verstka's interviewees from Russian regions, RAIPON's work has been mainly focused on cultural and educational activities: organizing concerts, exhibitions, legal seminars, and meetings of indigenous peoples with Russian politicians. Verstka found that most of the association's money is spent on such events.

RAIPON is funded by a charitable foundation with a similar name - the Fund for the Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. According to its website, it is a non-profit organization created to raise additional funds to support the indigenous peoples of the North, primarily to support the work of the association itself.

The head of the fund is 72-year-old Viktor Maksov. Not much is known about his activities before he started working for the fund. As Verstka found out, Maksov may be connected to law enforcement agencies. His relative by marriage is FSB Lieutenant General Andrei Kulba, deputy head of the control department of the presidential administration: Maksov's son Denis is married to Kulba's daughter Yekaterina.

As it became known from leaked state databases, in 2021 Yekaterina was listed as an employee of LLC "LC of the Ministry of Defense". Verstka did not manage to find a legal entity with this name: it is not in the registers of active or closed organizations. Most likely, this is the Linguistic Center of the Ministry of Defense at the Military University of Prince Alexander Nevsky. Yekaterina gave her parents' home phone number as her employer's phone number. At the same time, she is listed as "Katya FSB" in other users' phone books. In late July 2024, her father, FSB Lieutenant General Andrei Kulba, was offered the post of senator for the Murmansk region.

According to the financial reports of the fund, in 2022 and 2023 it received a total of more than 70 million rubles in donations. (Most of it - 52.8 million rubles - in 2022.) The foundation spent more than 75 million. Both amounts are double the pre-war figures.

Verstka received data from the financial operations of the Foundation and found that the biggest spenders are transactions to LLC Synchrotel, more than 43.5 million rubles for 2022, an amount almost equal to the amount of all donations to the Foundation for that year. At the same time, Synchrotel is associated with a former FSB officer, retired Colonel Igor Barinov. Barinov now heads the Federal Agency for Nationalities (FADN), with which RAIPON works closely. Synchrotel LLC is owned by his daughter-in-law's parents, Tatiana and Igor Gorbachev. The Gorbachevs' daughter Ksenia is married to the son of FADN head Igor Barinov, Jr.

Synchrotel positions itself as one of the largest Russian holdings in the event industry. Its portfolio includes the organization of the Eastern Economic Forum, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and Vladimir Putin's annual press conference.

The family of the head of the FADN is involved not just in the organization of large events, but also their decoration and technical support. From Synchronotel LLC financial data available to Verstka and Arctida, it appears that most of the money received in 2022 and 2023 was transferred to another legal entity — Essiji LLC. This company handles decorations at Synchronotel events. During the two war years, it received about 120 million rubles from Synchrotel. Moreover, the company is owned by the same Barinov family, in this case the son and his wife are the main owners. In 2022 and 2023 the total net income of the company will be over 20 million rubles.

On March 11, 2022, when Russian troops had already invaded Ukraine, Ksenia Barinova posted a photo of herself on her Vkontakte page with the caption "Going back?". Arctida managed to find out where Barinova had to return from after the war in Ukraine began. Her husband, Igor Barinov, the son of the head of the FADN, owns a 338-square-meter luxury penthouse in Marbella, Spain, with a business partner.

According to the financial documents available to Verstka and Arctida, the Fund for the Support of Indigenous Minorities made payments to Synchrotel for "event support" in late March-early April 2022 and in October of the same year. According to the information on the RAIPON website, a meeting of reindeer herders of the Tazovsky district was held on these dates in the spring, and the International Forum "Public-Private Partnership in the Area of Sustainable Development of Indigenous Peoples" was held in the fall.

The forum was co-organized by the Federal Agency for Nationalities, headed by Barinov, the Russian Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Nornickel JSC. It is worth noting that Nornickel is one of the main sponsors of RAIPON.

In April of this year, at a meeting of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Andrey Metelitsa, a representative of the Kamchatka regional association and a former police officer, complained that RAIPON did not receive UN funding, that the organization was in need of money, and was entering into agreements with industrial companies to sponsor trips abroad. After the trip, Metelitsa apologized in local media for traveling business class.

One such sponsor is Nornickel. Its CEO, billionaire Vladimir Potanin, is a friend of Vladimir Putin. The company itself is the world's largest producer of nickel, palladium, platinum, gold, and other precious metals, with operations in indigenous territories on the Taimyr and Kola Peninsulas and in the Zabaikalsky region.

As Verstka learned from the financial documents of the charitable foundation that supports RAIPON's work, it received over 54.1 million rubles in charitable aid from Nornickel during the two war years. This amount was the largest in comparison with other donations. For example, Lukoil-Western Siberia transferred 25 million rubles to the Fund over two years, Russneft - 3 million rubles, and Gazprom-Khantos - one million rubles.

The Association helps companies solve problems with local indigenous populations. For example, RAIPON played an active role in the preparation of the resettlement of the Tukhard settlement in Taymyr: this resettlement, taking place under the framework of the large-scale project called "Comfortable Taymyr", was initiated by the authorities and Nornickel together in 2017. Later, when the construction of new houses and the resettlement of people did not work out the first time around, RAIPON once again supported Nornickel's idea to carry out the resettlement under the FPIC procedure. (This is a special procedure set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes the principle of free, prior and informed consent. A company must obtain such consent from indigenous peoples before extracting natural resources or relocating residents to another area. Nornickel has been trying to relocate the Tukhard settlement, which is mainly inhabited by indigenous people, since 2017. Initially, it was proposed that the residents be moved to houses without utilities. In 2021, however, it was decided to follow the new UN procedure and discuss the decisions directly with those whose lives they will affect — the residents of the settlement themselves. Nevertheless, independent activists criticize Nornickel and believe that people are being forced to agree to the company's proposals because they have no other option). This year, after much deliberation, the company negotiated a new master plan for the settlement with the residents.

Since the beginning of the procedure, representatives of the federal Association and its affiliated organization The Indigenous People's Union have been using the company as an example at UN platforms. It is highlighted at events held alongside the main program: for example, at discussions organized by the Indigenous People's Union itself or at meetings of international structures.

Against this backdrop, Russian delegates to the UN, among them RAIPON members, have begun to call on international bodies to lift the sanctions.

"We consider them [the sanctions] illegal, and the restrictions, the blocking of air routes, and Russian payment systems make our participation in UN platforms several times more expensive," said Andrey Metelitsa, head of the Kamchatka Association, at a meeting of the UN Permanent Forum in April. "We ask the Permanent Forum to analyze and condemn the unilateral restrictive measures. We can no longer ignore the impact of the crisis in international relations on the ability of indigenous peoples to engage in international cooperation!"

His colleague, Viktor Bilanin, representative of the Krasnoyarsk Association, expressed the need to lift sanctions against Russian companies as well. Before that, he mentioned the positive experience of RAIPON's work with Nornickel.

"We ask the Permanent Forum to call on industry standard-setting organizations such as the Responsible Minerals Initiative and the International Council on Mining and Metals to lift restrictions on audits of Russian companies," he said. "Otherwise, indigenous peoples in Russia will not be able to apply these standards for human rights purposes when dealing with corporations."

Alexander Novyukhov, RAIPON vice-president, senator from Ugra, was responsible for preparing the association's members for this trip and for consultations with Barinov's FADN and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Grigory Ledkov, the head of RAIPON himself, had given him this task. On the next day of the Permanent Forum meeting, Metelitsa spoke again about the need to lift the sanctions. Three months later, at the 17th session of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, he reiterated the need to lift sanctions against Russian industrial enterprises and allow them to undergo international audits.

The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) has suspended audits of Russian companies, including Nornickel, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In addition to economic indicators, such audits take into account a company's concern for the social and environmental aspects of its operations. However, the lack of an international audit jeopardizes the company's ability to make deals and sell raw materials to third countries, as well as to a number of companies that require IRMA audit results.

Representatives of the Russian Association claim that the lack of an audit affects their human rights cooperation with companies, although they actively promote Nornickel's experience in Tukhard at UN side events and do not mention any problems in their cooperation with the company. Nor has the lack of an IRMA audit of Nornickel prevented the Indigenous Peoples Union from developing joint documents with the company on cooperation with northern indigenous peoples.

In 2022, following the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, indigenous activists denounced Russia's actions. In response, members of the Taimyr Association appealed to the UN Permanent Forum through RAIPON. They demanded that Pavel Sulyandziga and other activists be "prevented" from speaking on their behalf, claiming that they were "abusing the openness and ethical principles of the Forum". Similar bickering continued later.

Eventually, Sulyandziga said, they led indigenous communities in other countries to conclude that what was happening between RAIPON and independent activists was the result of internal competition between the two organizations.

"We are concerned that RAIPON is trying to convince indigenous communities on international platforms that the Russian authorities have a legitimate policy towards indigenous peoples on the territory of the country," says Pavel Sulyandziga.

In July this year, after the regular UN session in Geneva, Sulyandziga and his colleagues held a meeting with representatives of Native Americans. Unexpectedly, the activists began to express support for the Russian government on the issue of indigenous participation at the UN General Assembly. As Sulyandziga notes, Russia has demanded that only organizations recognized by member governments be allowed to attend the General Assembly.

"They also began to suggest that our position on RAIPON was an internal dispute among indigenous peoples in Russia," he says. "We tried to explain that this organization helps the state put pressure on indigenous peoples. But they don't quite understand our principled stance against the Russian government, because Russia only talks about what is happening in the country with indigenous peoples in a positive light, leaving out the evidence of pressure and persecution of dissenters."