Navalny foundation rocked by dueling accusations as ex-officials break ranks

A new scandal is unfolding around the Anti-Corruption Foundation. It began with an interview Meduza published with Irina Alleman, the host of the Populyarnaya Politika (“Popular Politics”) channel, who resigned and criticized the organization’s leadership and colleagues for a “toxic atmosphere” and an unwillingness to discuss pressing problems. The controversy then deepened when former Anti-Corruption Foundation director Ivan Zhdanov, who had left the previous fall, gave an interview to Irina Shikhman published on May 10, in which he accused Anti-Corruption Foundation leader Leonid Volkov of benefiting personally through “fictitious individuals” within the foundation’s structures and held him responsible for the criminal cases brought against Anti-Corruption Foundation supporters over donations. Volkov responded to those accusations — and he was not the only one. Here is how events unfolded.

↓

Irina Alleman, the host of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s Populyarnaya Politika (“Popular Politics”) program, resigned from the Anti-Corruption Foundation and gave an interview to Meduza in which she described a “strong reluctance” within the foundation to discuss difficult issues — among them the prosecution of supporters against whom criminal cases have been opened over donations.

↓

Alleman’s interview drew responses across other media and on social networks. Anti-Corruption Foundation staffer Khelga Pirogova was among those who responded, saying Alleman, in complaining about a toxic atmosphere at the foundation, was “tactfully omitting that she herself was no small part of the source of that toxic atmosphere.”

In a livestream on journalist Alexander Plushchev’s channel, Alleman added details to her Meduza interview, saying her co-host on the Chestnoye Slovo (“Honest Word”) program and head of the international Anti-Corruption Foundation, Maria Pevchikh, had demanded that she clear all questions she wanted to ask on air with Pevchikh first.

↓

Ivan Zhdanov, the former director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation who was dismissed from the organization in the fall of 2025, gave a lengthy interview to Irina Shikhman. In it, he said that some of the legal entities within the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s structure had “fictitious employees” serving “some personal purposes” of Leonid Volkov, and that “it would be good to conduct a thorough audit there.” Meduza reached out to Zhdanov for comment; he declined — “at least for now.”

↓

Leonid Volkov responded to Zhdanov’s accusations in comments to the independent Russian broadcaster TV Rain and the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona. Volkov called the claim about “fictitious employees” untrue and characterized the accusations as an act of treachery on Zhdanov’s part. “We’ve been through so much together with this man, and now he comes along and says things that aren’t true. It hurts very, very, very much,” Volkov said.

On the criminal cases over donations, Volkov said all decisions at the foundation at the time had been made collectively, and that leadership had proceeded on the assumption that no payment identifier existed that could point to the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

↓

Yulia Navalnaya commented on Zhdanov’s interview, saying he had not been fired from the Anti-Corruption Foundation but had merely been removed from his position as director. The decision was hers, she said — she had been dissatisfied with his work and considered him a “weak manager.” Zhdanov’s interview came as a “genuine shock” to Navalnaya. “The words claiming that the FBK had supposedly abandoned the principle of ‘don’t lie and don’t steal’ stunned me. First of all, it’s a lie, and second of all, if it were true, then it would be Ivan himself, as director, who would have to bear full responsibility for that,” Navalnaya said. She wished Zhdanov well in “dealing with his outsized grievance against everyone.”

↓

Alexander Pomazuev, a lawyer who worked at the Anti-Corruption Foundation under Zhdanov’s leadership and continues to work there, also responded to his former boss. He wrote that for the past five years Zhdanov had been “the biggest champion of internal secrecy” at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and asked why Zhdanov had signed payroll sheets if he saw “fictitious employees” on them.