Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu is a Russian politician and military officer who has served as Secretary of the Security Council since 2024. He served as Minister of Defence of Russia from 2012 to 2024. Shoigu has served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 2012.
Kémi Séba, born Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi on 9 December 1981, is a Pan-Africanist political leader, French–Beninese writer, and geopolitical journalist, seen as a prominent figure of anti-colonialist resistance in francophone Africa in the 21st century.
Nathalie is a female given name. It is a variant of the name Natalie/Natalia which is found in many languages, and is especially common in French and English-speaking countries.
Luc Michel is a Belgian political activist. He is the current leader and founder of the Parti Communautaire National-Européen (PCN). According to research by the BBC and Logically, he is also behind Russosphere, a French-language African social network and fake news network spreading pro-Russian and anti-Western propaganda in Africa.
MintPress News (MPN) is an American far-left news website. It was founded and edited by Mnar Adley and was launched in January 2012, and also publishes the MintCast podcast. The site covers political, economic, foreign affairs and environmental issues.
Violetta Egorova is a Russian concert pianist.
Sputnik is a Russian state-owned news agency and radio broadcast service. It was established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya on 10 November 2014. With headquarters in Moscow, Sputnik maintains regional editorial offices in Washington, D.C., Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro. Sputnik describes itself as being focused on global politics and economics and aims for an international audience.
Ilan Shor is an Israeli-born Moldovan oligarch and politician. In 2014, Shor "masterminded" a scam that saw US$1 billion disappear from Moldovan banks, resulting in a total loss equivalent to 12% of Moldova's GDP and the arrest of former Prime Minister Vlad Filat. In June 2017, he was sentenced to 7.5 years of prison in absentia for fraud and money laundering and on 14 April 2023 his sentence was increased to 15 years. All of Shor's Moldovan assets were also frozen. After spending time under house arrest he fled to Israel in 2019, where he lived until 2024. He currently lives in Russia.
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch. He led the Wagner Group private military company and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a rebellion in June 2023. Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering businesses that provided services to the Kremlin. Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2020 investigation, were "tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU".
The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner, is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.
Eva Karene Bartlett is a Russian-based American Canadian activist, journalist, commentator, and blogger who has propagated conspiracy theories in connection to the Syrian civil war, most notably the disproven allegation that the White Helmets stage rescues and "recycle" children in its videos.
The Russian information war against Ukraine was articulated by the Russian government as part of the Gerasimov doctrine. They believed that Western governments were instigating color revolutions in former Soviet states which posed a threat to Russia.
As part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state and state-controlled media have spread disinformation in their information war against Ukraine. Ukrainian media and politicians have also been accused of using propaganda and deception, although such efforts have been described as more limited than the Russian disinformation campaign.
Russian disinformation campaigns have occurred in many countries. For example, disinformation campaigns led by Yevgeny Prigozhin have been reported in several African countries. Russia, however, denies that it uses disinformation to influence public opinion.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is extensively covered on Wikipedia across many languages. This coverage includes articles on and related to the invasion itself, and updates of previously existing articles to take the invasion into account. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the conflict – and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage – has received significant media and government attention.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in late February 2022, more than 300,000 Russian citizens and residents are estimated to have left Russia by mid-March 2022, at least 500,000 by the end of August 2022, and an additional 400,000 by early October, for a total of approximately 900,000. This number includes economic migrants, conscientious objectors, and some political refugees.
Patrick Lancaster is an American vlogger, podcaster and influencer. Although described as pro-Kremlin, Lancaster has been called a double agent due to his videos covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine regularly revealing compromising Russian military information, which is used against Russia by Ukrainian forces, western intelligence agencies, and western media. Lancaster is known for regularly filming staged scenes and attempting to pass them off as real, and has been referred to as a fake master.
