On Monday, I met with a figure from an obscure British research institute called the Russia Research Network. The person, a British security analyst based in London, had emailed me to say he liked my journalism, and wanted to meet when he was next in Moscow.

We sat down in a café off Tverskaya, and he got to the point. He was working on a new project, a joint project involving his institute and the Russian think-tank, the Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis (ISOA). The project was aimed at improving relations between Britain and Russia, or “presenting them in a more objective light”.

My companion felt that western media and western think-tanks tended to be very one-sided in their analysis of Putin’s Russia, for example on issues like Beslan or the Orange Revolution. He had met with Vagif Guseynov, the head of the ISOA, in London in July, around the times of the July bombings, and they had discussed the idea of a joint project to try and shed a clearer light on the two countries’ common interests. It would begin this summer with a book on Anglo-Russian relations, with half the chapters by Russian analysts, and half by British analysts.

My companion had read my critical response to Anders Aslund’s anti-Putin Carnegie report last year, and figured that I shared his opinion. So he offered me work, writing a chapter for the book on Anglo-Russian business relations.

I asked where the money for the project was coming from. He said funding for the British side was coming from him, £5,000 from his own pocket. So how, I asked, would he make his money back? Would he sell the book? He replied that the book would help his own career as a freelance analyst. But £5,000 didn’t seem much to commission half a book, I suggested. Well, further funds would come from the ISOA. They had some pretty deep-pocketed corporate backers, he said. The book was the first step, there could well be other projects further down the line. Who were those backers, I asked? He couldn’t remember – they were on the ISOA’s website. That struck me as strange. If your project, part of your livelihood, depended on financing from Russian companies, wouldn’t you know, inevitably, who those companies were?

We parted with me saying I’d look into it. I thought I might well take the project. It didn’t sound like there would be much editorial control of my chapter, and the story of Anglo-Russian business relations was an easy and positive story to tell.

I went to look at the ISOA’s website, and immediately noted that Vagif Guseynov, its director, used to be head of the Azerbaijan branch of the KGB. Prior to that, he had been a journalist – so this was a KGB major-general, with a history of working with the press.

The funding for the ISOA’s journal, Vestnik Analytiki, came from Severstaltrans. Severstal has a close relationship with Chekist organizations – it is a shareholder in Bank Rossiya, for example, which is a bank set up by the KGB with Putin’s involvement in St. Petersburg in the 1990s.

At the same time, I was impressed by the ISOA’s work. It did not seem a simple propaganda machine. Its advisory board included people like Vladimir Ryzhkov, Arkady Volsky and Alexander Rahr. And its journal published articles by everyone from Roy Medvedev to Alexander Dugin.

Clearly, you don’t get to be head of the KGB in Azerbaijan without strong links to the Firm, and if Putin is to be believed, no-one ever really stops working for the KGB. Guseynov appears to have good financial backing to work on a project to improve Anglo-Russian relations in the wake of the July London bombings, and that funding is now apparently being channelled through British institutes, NGOs and analysts, though not through particularly well-known ones.

Is this some big scandal, on a par with MI6’s connection to the British government’s funding of Russian NGOs? Not really.

The ISOA is open about Guseynov’s link to the KGB – it is there on its website, in English. No more shocking than the fact the head of Freedom House was once head of the CIA. And it did not seem that I had to write exactly what the project wanted me to write. Nor is the Russia Research Network anything like the equivalent of Memorial or the Helsinki Foundation, in terms of fame or influence. In fact, it’s a one-man operation, recently set up. It seems unlikely this institute could have much influence on British foreign policy or media attitudes. We don’t need to get freaked out about the KGB infiltrating our civil society, as Russia gets freaked out about the CIA and MI6 infiltrating theirs.

Nonetheless, it seems to me this project is another part of Operation Image Improvement, along with the Novosti Valdai Club, Russia Today, and the plan to create a new, Kremlin-funded, anti-Carnegie think-tank. The Kremlin and Kremlin-connected companies have millions of dollars to spend on improving its image abroad, and now, finally, foreigners are getting some of the cash!

Anyway, I’ve decided not to take the job. I told the British analyst the names of some more pro-Putin analysts who seem to be desperate for the chance to polish the western image of the Motherland. If they get any money for it, I want 20%.

Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

March 9, 2006