Free Russia Foundation president Natalia Arno at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, 5 June 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE / OLIVIER HOSLET
One of Russia’s most prominent pro-democracy organisations, the Free Russia Foundation, announced that it was investigating a potential cyberattack on Friday, following a leak of thousands of emails and documents related to its work.
On Thursday, Telegram channel SOTA reported that “more than 2,500 email chains and more than 13GB of electronic documents” from the Free Russia Foundation and The US Russia Foundation had been published online.
The Free Russia Foundation said it was “closely monitoring the illegal dissemination of documents allegedly pertaining to our operations” and that it had “launched an investigation to determine the origin, full extent and nature of this breach.”
It added that the leak was likely linked to recent cyberattacks by the Kremlin-linked hacker group Coldriver. “A number of entities have been compromised, resulting in the theft of their correspondence, including grant reports and internal documents,” the Free Russia Foundation said, adding that the attack might be used as “a pretext for a new wave of repression against pro-democracy Russians”.
Also leaked, according to SOTA, was the personal data of staff at the so-called “elf factory” set up in the Georgian capital Tbilisi where, according to independent Russian media outlet The Bell, “staff are paid to post criticism of the Russian authorities and the war in Ukraine online”.
The Free Russia Foundation is a nonprofit organisation founded in 2014 by Russians in the United States and is currently led by Natalia Arno. The foundation describes itself as striving for “a free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous Russia reintegrated into the international community as a constructive and positive actor”.
In 2019, the Russian Justice Ministry added the Free Russia Foundation to its list of “undesirable organisations”. It was added to its list of “extremist organisations” in July.
“This attack does not come as a surprise, as everyone who opposes Putin and his system, whether in our team or in other human rights or political opposition organisations, faces risk every day,” the Free Russia Foundation said, adding that it remained “committed to stopping the criminal war unleashed by Putin’s regime on Ukraine and to making Russia free and democratic”.
