Ivan Zhdanov launches the FBK YouTube channel Popular Politics in 2022. Photo: FBK

Following the announcement of his departure from The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) on Monday, the organisation’s former director Ivan Zhdanov has told Russian independent media outlet Meduza that he had not left of his own volition, but had been forced out by other senior FBK board members.

“The decision for me to resign was made by Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh,” Zhdanov said, referring to the FBK’s political director and its head of investigations, in an interview with Meduza published on Monday evening. “This decision was made without me. No specific reasons were given to me. I was given the chance to remain on the team, but I felt it was no longer possible.”

According to a statement posted on the foundation’s Telegram channel on Monday morning, Zhdanov, the FBK’s director since 2018, had decided to step down to focus on his YouTube channel Samoe Vazhnoe. The FBK went on to thank Zhdanov for his “professionalism, responsibility and loyalty” over the past seven “very difficult” years.

Zhdanov’s decision to go public about the manner of his exit confirms recent media speculation that the FBK leadership was riven by infighting. Describing the foundation, which campaigns against corruption and for transparency, as being “a rather closed organisation” itself, Zhdanov acknowledged his differences with Volkov and Pevchikh, but added that the organisation has also changed significantly since the death of its founder, the late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, in 2024.

“The FBK under Alexey Navalny had a completely different strength. The foundation was so much stronger as it was headed by a man with Alexey’s personality and charisma, who was also in Russia, in prison, and had endured incredible torture by Putin’s regime,” Zhdanov said.

When questioned by Meduza about media reports that Yulia Navalnaya had insisted on his removal following the sudden cancellation of an FBK fundraising concert in Berlin earlier this year, Zhdanov replied that his dismissal had had “absolutely nothing” to do with the concert, adding that the claims were “just a tabloid invention,” though he declined to say why exactly the event had not gone ahead as planned.

Zhdanov also said that he though Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was actively working to provoke infighting within Russia’s disparate political opposition in exile: “I think that the Russian FSB — much like the Soviet KGB — tries to ensure that as many disagreements and clashes arise within the opposition as possible.”