Yesterday at 20:21
Correction: The rubric has been changed, as it appeared earlier that the woman is charged with espionage. She is rightly charged with violating Section 108 of the Criminal Code, which, among other things, deals with enabling a foreign intelligence service to operate in Denmark.
The Russian embassy will demand that the Danish authorities immediately release a Russian citizen who was arrested earlier today.
This is what the Russian ambassador, Vladimir Barbin, writes in a post on Facebook .
The woman is charged with enabling a foreign intelligence service to operate in Denmark .
Read also : Woman arrested for helping Russian intelligence in Denmark
According to DR’s information, this is the same woman who last week DR was able to uncover has for several years received money from a Russian state fund that has intelligence officers in very central positions.
The disclosure is based on internal documents from the Moscow-based Pravfond, which DR has obtained from a foreign, Western intelligence service.
It is expected that the woman will be released after she has been questioned.
- Pravfond has been sanctioned by the EU since June 2023 because, according to the EU, the fund contributes to “creating instability and division” and plays an “important supporting role” by, among other things, spreading “the primary propaganda messages from the Kremlin”.
- The fund’s full name is “The Fund for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Abroad”.
- Since 2012, the foundation hears has distributed money to a large number of people and projects – including in a large number of EU countries.
- In 2023 alone, Pravfond received a total amount corresponding to just under 18 million Danish kroner. The majority of the money came from the Russian state, the foundation’s accounts show.
‘Cheeky provocation’
The woman, who is a Russian citizen, is a central figure in the Russian community in Denmark.
Among other things, she runs a counseling center for Russian speakers in a city in Zealand. Since 2017, the center has been awarded a total of at least 338,000 Danish kroner from Pravfond, internal documents show .
Read also : Documents reveal year-long flow of money from Russian spy fund to association in Zealand
Several European intelligence services have informed DR that the counseling centers are actually a piece of a Russian propaganda drive that is intended to create stories about discrimination against Russian-speaking citizens abroad.
On Facebook, the ambassador calls, among other things, the arrest of the woman a “brazen” provocation by the Danish security service “to frighten our compatriots and discredit their organizations in order to maintain contacts with the motherland”.
The ambassador also calls DR’s stories about the activities of the Russian Pravfond and the counseling center “false material”.
– The advisory activity in the legal center in Denmark was carried out until 2022 and was always aimed exclusively at helping our compatriots understand Danish legislation. There were no other tasks, says the post on Facebook.
Media in collaboration
DR, the Nordic public service media SVT, NRK and YLE as well as German Paper Trail Media, ZDF and Der Spiegel, British The Guardian, French Le Monde, Estonian Delfi Meedia, Latvian Re:Baltica, Swedish Göteborgs-Posten, Belgian Knack and Der STANDARD in Austria.
Newsessentials Blog 
Posted on June 12, 2024
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