Revealed: the Russian ties of Liz Truss's radical right conference
CPAC UK was set up by a lawyer who worked with sanctioned 'notorious kleptocrat' - and speakers include politicians linked to pro-Kremlin networks and Moscow talking points
In a couple of weeks, the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) rolls into London. The speakers list is a who’s who of the transatlantic radical right: there’s Liz Truss, CPAC Great Britain head honcho, a host of MAGA influencers, and the headline act, Reform’s Nigel Farage.
CPAC Great Britain’s motto promises to “Save Britain. Save the West”. The conference’s links to Trump’s Washington have certainly attracted plenty of column inches.
But the radical right jamboree’s ties to the East, and Russia in particular, have had far less attention. Democracy for Sale can reveal that CPAC GB was set up by a man who spent years working for a charitable foundation founded by a pro-Russian oligarch now under British, US and Ukrainian sanctions.
Several of the speakers at CPAC’s London debut, meanwhile, have documented links to pro-Kremlin networks or have echoed Russian talking points on the war in Ukraine.
A senior Ukrainian politician told Democracy for Sale that the ties between Russian interests and CPAC’s British spin-off were “very concerning.”
“Putin and Russia use every opportunity to spread disinformation and misinformation. People need to realise this,” said Oleksandr Mishchenko, Ukraine’s deputy minister for foreign affairs.
CPAC GB was set up earlier this year, registered as CPAC London Limited at Companies House in March with two directors: Truss and lawyer Alexander Walsh.
Walsh was secretary of the Firtash Foundation for five years from its inception in 2008. Commonly known as the DF Foundation, it was funded by Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian-born gas magnate who made his fortune brokering deals between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine.
The British government, which described Firtash as a “notorious kleptocrat”, sanctioned him as part of a crackdown on individuals accused of corruption and illicit finance. Firtash is also sanctioned by Ukraine, whose president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called him a “pro-Russian oligarch.” Last year, the Austrian courts blocked his extradition to the US, where he faced bribery charges.
The Firtash Foundation, which is no longer active, focused on Ukrainian arts, culture and education. Its most high profile gift was £4m to Cambridge University.
Walsh left Firtash’s foundation in 2013, before the war in Ukraine and before the oligarch was sanctioned by numerous governments. He now co-runs a consultancy catering for family offices, the private investment vehicles favoured by the super-rich.
Walsh also previously worked for Enyo Law, a London dispute resolution firm that has acted for numerous Russian state-controlled banks and companies. He founded the Vorontsov Foundation “to promote cultural relations between Britain and Russia”.
Walsh resigned as a director of CPAC London Ltd on June 5 this year, a few weeks before the conference. Neither Walsh nor Truss responded to questions from Democracy for Sale, including whether Truss was aware of her co-director’s work for the Firtash Foundation when the pair set up CPAC London.
Walsh is not the only Russian connection on CPAC GB’s bill. The 20 announced speakers include George Simion, leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians, who has been described by analysts as a focal point of pro-Kremlin networks during Romania’s 2025 election.
Simion has been investigated by Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service over alleged meetings with Russian GRU officers, and last year lost an appeal against a Moldovan court ruling that found he had worked in collaboration with “Moscow agents”. He denies working with Russian intelligence.
Other CPAC GB speakers have amplified Kremlin talking points on Ukraine.
Jack Posobiec, a former US navy intelligence officer turned alternative news anchor, has claimed that Boris Johnson sabotaged a potential Russia-Ukraine peace deal in 2022 and has repeated Russian disinformation about “Ukrainian biolabs”. Paul du Quenoy, president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute, has described Ukraine as a “corrupt post-Soviet kleptocracy”.
And then there is Farage. The Reform leader, who spoke admiringly of Putin in his Ukip days, said earlier this year that he would vote against any UK government plans to deploy the military in Ukraine. One of his former Ukip colleagues, Nathan Gill, was last year jailed for ten years for taking bribes to make pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament. (Farage said Gill was a single “bad apple”.)
Mishchenko told us that the positions taken by Farage and others at CPAC were “Russian talking points” that “find any pretext to blame the victim”.
“Lots of countries have corruption. Nobody is immune. We are fighting against it. But when that argument is used it is a kind of pretext to blame the victim. It’s immoral.”
He added that Ukrainians “don’t know what to expect” from Farage, especially after Reform removed Ukrainian flags flown in solidarity by councils under its control.
“When they started to take down the Ukrainian flags, that felt like a bad sign. It doesn’t bode well.”
This month’s conference is CPAC’s first British outing. For decades CPAC was an American conservative affair: when it started in 1974, the first speaker was then California governor Ronald Reagan.
In recent years it has mirrored the Republican party in becoming increasingly pro-Trump, while expanding as an international franchise. CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp, who is speaking in London, has boasted that “12 countries in five continents” have hosted the conference.
Under Schlapp, CPAC has become a “pay to play” franchise. After Peter Magyar’s election victory in Hungary earlier this year, it emerged that taxpayer funds had been used by Viktor Orban’s administration to help finance CPAC events in Budapest, prompting calls from US Democrats for an investigation into the organisation’s funding.
Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy, Inc told us: “Despite its name, CPAC has nothing to do with conservatism. Anyone can now pay to bring this traveling circus to their country, to promote the local branch of the far-right revolutionary international, with its pro-Russian, pro-MAGA, anti-European and anti-NATO links.”
Who is footing the bill for Truss, Farage et al in London? That’s not clear. CPAC’s website gives no details of funders, and the organisation did not respond to our questions.
What we can say is that CPAC GB appears to be struggling to fill seats at the InterContinental London. Emails seen by Democracy for Sale show that earlier this week CPAC attendees received emails “asking our core supporters to help us expand the room.”
Below the request to “refer a friend” was a blurb for Truss’s conference speech. The title of Britain’s briefest prime minister’s address? “Reframing honour and shame: How the Right can win.”
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Why do we let these planks into the country ? Undesirables/illegals/troublemakers - CROOKS
I think Liz Trust should be under investigation. The fact that she is not says a lot about UK politics