Despite EU sanctions: how do Putin propagandists finance themselves?

Alina Lipp spreads Russian propaganda through her channels. However, the EU sanctions are making it more difficult for Putin supporters like her to get funding. However, questionable models make it possible to circumvent them.

“My bank accounts in Germany were blocked, the amounts on them were withdrawn and the account was closed. Payments to my Russian bank account are being prevented by EU sanctions which the banks are following,” writes the German-Russian Alina Lipp in her Telegram channel “News from Russia”. one of the most far-reaching channels of Russian propaganda in Germany.

Pascal Siggelkow

Lipp now has more than 180,000 subscribers, and her following has grown rapidly since the Russian invasion began almost a year ago. She consistently spreads Russian narratives on her channel, for example she always speaks of a “special military operation” instead of a war – as well as the alleged “genocide” of the Russian population in eastern Ukraine.

Donation options via Telegram

In order to continue making money despite the blocked accounts, Lipp had a donation link set up on her website and a bot for the Messenger service Telegram. This is like a separate channel on Telegram and users can send donations there with a click. In the case of Lipp’s donation bot, the whole thing is handled by the payment service provider Smart Glocal, which is based in Hong Kong. From there, the money is transferred to her Russian account “twice a month,” according to her website and also the donation bot’s channel.

At the request of ARD fact finder tells Lipp that she doesn’t know anything about a special payment service provider and uses “the service offered by Telegram in Russia”. In Russia, this service is very well known and popular.

In doing so, Lipp’s content is probably violating Smart Glocal’s terms of use. On its website it says, among other things, that the content of the donation bot user in his channel must not contain any political propaganda.

Smart Glocal writes that Lipp and her channel “News from Russia” have “never” been registered with the payment service provider. It goes on to say that the channel could “never” be registered as it would violate the terms of service. Lipp’s donation bot was registered under “another person”. “As such, this will be interpreted as an attempt to circumvent our identification and moderation mechanisms, in violation of our Terms of Service,” writes Smart Glocal. The link to the donation bot was therefore blocked.

Telegram refers to responsible authorities

According to Josef Holnburger, Managing Director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), Telegram has intensified its efforts to offer payment processing directly via the messenger service: “I haven’t seen any measures to curb this and that’s why actors like Alina Lipp can easily circumvent the EU sanctions that actually apply.” The development of Telegram even suggests that offers will be expanded to help avoid sanctions. Among other things, also via crypto wallets and their integration via Bitcoin or Telegram’s own cryptocurrency Toncoin.

Telegram itself points out that the donation bots are managed by third-party companies. These would “create their own guidelines independently of each other”, Telegram has “little insight” into them. “If a competent authority has made a decision about the bot, we can act accordingly,” the company said.

Technical support from an Austrian

News and own statements suggest that the companies Fancy Nerds and VPN Tester Lipp have set up the new donation options. In a Telegram post, she describes VPN Tester as her “web team” and the company names keep appearing rather randomly in relation to donation options. Both companies are after ARD fact finder-Research apparently traced back to Martin Held, an Austrian living in Russia. Held also runs the “Voice from Russia” telegram channel, in which he also distributes Russian propaganda in German.

In a video he presents himself as an entrepreneur who fights against censorship with idealism. Among other things, he confirms that he supports Lipp technically in order to be able to bypass blocks, but she is not his only customer of this kind. “I help the bloggers so that they are technically able to make their channels available and maybe also Having ways to bypass or override bans that might happen.”

Questionable company networks

When asked how Held could do business in the EU from Russia, he says in the same video: “We have subsidiaries in Western Europe, and of course we can also serve customers and can also make offers and can also calculate.” Its corporate networks remain opaque.

According to the imprint, Fancy Nerds is based in Vienna, VPN Tester in Krasnodar, Russia. The imprint of Fancy Nerds is currently not available, and employee photos have disappeared from the site, at least one of which comes from a stock photo database. Some of the same employees are shown for both companies.

The imprint of the VPN Tester website now shows Alexandra Stepanenko as editor-in-chief, in the English version there is still Martin Held. The same imprint contains different information in different languages. Publisher in German is a company called OOO GEROY, in English Fancy Nerds. But there is also a note in the English imprint that the site is not operated by fancy nerds, but by OOO GEROY.

Also this company is based in Krosnodar and is according to research by t-online also associated with hero. OOO GEROY is therefore behind a project that is expressly intended to enable people in the EU to access blocked Russian channels. And in fact, VPN Tester enables the live stream of the Russian state broadcaster RT, which is actually blocked in Europe, to be viewed in German in a channel on Telegram.

“We like to provide information about ourselves and our activities. We have nothing to hide,” says VPN Tester’s website, the request of the ARD fact finder however, remained unanswered. Lipp shared that she knew “little” about the VPN Tester project and had no connection to fancy nerds: “My service partners, who provide me with technical assistance, are official Russian companies that only operate within Russia. And they are also my contacts in Russia.”

Amount of donation income unclear

How much money Lipp actually earns with donations from her subscribers is unclear. However, since Lipp publicly shares the link on her channel “News from Russia”, she is potentially reaching out to all her followers with her calls for support. “And if only a small part of it transfers money every month, then you can definitely finance yourself with it. So the theoretical capacity is there at least. We don’t know whether it’s the same in practice,” says Holnburger. This financing option is definitely an important point for Lipp. Not only in monetary terms, but also for them to know that people are willing to transfer money for their activities.

Lipp gives other ways to support them on their website and Telegram channel. She refers to her crypto wallets and provides affiliate links to books by Thomas Röper. Röper runs a blog, Telegram and YouTube channel in which he spreads Russian propaganda and often cooperates with Alina Lipp.

In addition, Lipp is a regular guest on Russian state television, where, among other things, she presents distorted views of Germany, says Julia Smirnova, senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Germany (ISD): “She tells a lot about the alleged censorship that prevails in the West And about the alleged problems with the energy crisis and about protests against sanctions against Russia.”

Whether and how much money there is for such appearances is unclear. “We know, for example, that she is provided with accommodation and flights for these regular television recordings, at least according to her own information,” says Holnburger. “It’s nothing unusual, though.”

According to Lipp, the pro-Russian and AfD-affiliated association Vadar also supports Lipp: Among other things, the association provided a lawyer for her, and the costs for this were covered. The “Foundation To Battle Injustice” of Putin confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin has already publicly promised Lipp support, says Smirnova. The foundation announced that it intended to contact the public prosecutor’s office in Germany in the case of the preliminary investigation against Lipp and presented the case as an attack on freedom of expression.

Lipp announced that she was not paid for her appearances in Russian media. She also received no support from the “Foundation To Battle Injustice”. She confirmed the legal help of the Vadar association, although this would “also be the case for every other injured party”.

Investigations by the public prosecutor

Because of her content, Lipp has already come under the spotlight of the German authorities – because the native of Hamburg says she now lives in Russia and in the Ukrainian Donetsk, but is apparently still registered in Germany. In May, the Lüneburg public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against her for “rewarding and approving crimes” in connection with the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, their statements are suitable, among other things, for “inciting the psychological climate within the population of the Federal Republic of Germany, causing a dissent within society due to at least distorted, sometimes also untruthful representations and breaking down social cohesion”.

The public prosecutor’s office had 1,608 euros confiscated from Lipp’s account because she had previously tried to transfer money from her German account to a Russian bank account. According to the prosecutor, the 1,608 euros is the amount she received in donations in the first few weeks after the start of the Russian war of aggression.

The public prosecutor’s office in Göttingen, which has since taken over the case, informed the ARD fact finder with the fact that the investigations against Lipp have been suspended for the time being, “since the accused is not currently in Germany”.

blocking of bank accounts

Lipp is not only troubled by the German judiciary, but also by the sanctions imposed by the European Union. According to her own statements, her German account was closed, and PayPal also blocked her account. In addition, the way to receive donations through her father’s account was blocked. Payments to her Russian account from an EU country would be prevented.

Some Russian banks have been excluded from the SWIFT system as a result of EU sanctions, meaning that foreign transfers are not readily possible for these banks. In addition, some German banks have also excluded other Russian banks themselves.