“The first country which takes the risk and starts working with Taliban will get the privileges and economic benefits,” Shugalei explained to The Washington Post. “I told them that if you’re interested in media experts or other professionals, just give us terms of reference and statement of work.”
The Foundation for National Values Protection, or FZNC, is funded by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg oligarch who has been added to a sanctions list by the United States. The U.S. Treasury says that Prigozhin funds the Internet Research Agency — the troll farm accused by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by using fake social media accounts — and that he is believed to be the financier behind the mercenary group Wagner. Prigozhin has denied interfering in the election or having links to Wagner and did not respond to requests for comment.
Analysts describe Prigozhin as a Kremlin proxy who projects Russian influence across the Middle East and Africa while pursuing his own commercial gain. The U.S. Treasury says his foundation is part of his “global disinformation network.” Prigozhin did not respond to a request for comment.
Prigozhin started out with hot dog stands in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, then set up restaurants and won deals to cater at the Kremlin and state contracts to provide meals for the military and schools. He chairs the board of trustees of the Patriot Media Group, which has partnership deals with 500 regional media outlets in Russia.
FZNC calls itself “one of the leading think tanks in Russia, specializing in African topics.” Its mission, it says, is to fight Western media “fakes,” spread the “Russian ideology of goodness,” promote Russian interests and preserve traditional culture.
Shugalei has carefully curated an image as Russia’s patriotic action man, shrugging off danger, swooping into African countries — and now Afghanistan — that have been abandoned by Washington. He battles U.S. efforts to plant democratic values, much as Soviet military advisers fought proxy wars against their U.S. counterparts during the Cold War.
Shugalei is a key actor in Russia’s intricate, partly hidden influence network pumping out anti-Western propaganda. According to the U.S. Treasury, Prigozhin uses “a complex network of shell and front companies” to obscure his ownership of organizations. His influence networks, the Treasury says, include FZNC, “phony election monitoring missions” in Africa and “fraudulent” think tanks. Media linked to the oligarch broadcast interviews with this web of influencers, while Prigozhin and his associates denounce independent Russian journalists.
In September, Shugalei accused the independent online media group Mediazona of imposing “unacceptable Western and European values on our youth” and called on Russian authorities to take action. The government declared the media group a foreign agent.
Patriot Media Group outlets cite politicians and bloggers extolling Shugalei’s courage. They air Shugalei commentaries every few days: The United Nations is destabilizing Libya. Olympics gymnastics judges were anti-Russian. Sudan’s military coup was “logical” and beneficial. France trained terrorists and stole natural resources in Mali. Transgender people “and other perverts” will never gain acceptance in Russia. The U.S. departure from Afghanistan caused “general jubilation.”
With his craggy face and shorn head, Shugalei has swashbuckled his way across Africa, turning up in Madagascar, the Central African Republic and Sudan, offering political advice to politicians, and spending 20 months in a Tripoli jail with interpreter Samer Khasan Ali Sueifan.
The pair were arrested on a “research trip” to Libya in 2019 and accused of actions to undermine the nation’s interests after Shugalei met with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Moammar Gaddafi’s son.
Amid a drive to get Shugalei released, a “true story” action movie series about his purported exploits was commissioned (though by whom has been hidden). “Shugalei” and “Shugalei 2,” both released in 2020 and promoted heavily by FZNC, tell the story of his arrest, jailing and torture by a Libyan militia.
He was in jail when the movies were released and claims they saved his life and helped win his freedom in December 2020. The movies aired on Russian television and streaming sites, attracting more than 6 million views on YouTube. They have been translated into French, Arabic and Turkish.
The third installment, “Shugalei the Return,” debuted in September, and now there’s talk of a fourth.
