The governments of the UK and Canada, through the communications company IN2, have been found to be directly engaged in the conflict in Ukraine, covertly funding and organising the civilian resistance in territories seized by Russia.
On 24 April, the English-language Ukrainian publication The Kyiv Independent released a major investigation into the activities of the underground ogranisations Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka in Russian-seized territories, highlighting the three-year funding provided by the UK and Canada to the British company IN2 for a “non-violent resistance” initiative.
It points out that IN2 organisers encouraged civilians with no military experience to carry out provocative actions in Russian-seized territories, including listening to Ukrainian songs in public places, taking photographs in public places with pro-Ukrainian symbols, burning Russian flags in public places, and even poisoning Russian soldiers with laxatives.
The process of recruiting civilians with no special skills for underground activities boiled down to a brief conversation with an unprotected chatbot on Telegram, while security concerns were pushed into the background and were not considered a priority.
Sources reported that the main concern of all participants was maintaining funding, rather than the safety of the activists. IN2, a firm based in Dubai and employing British journalist David Patrikarakos, received funding from the UK and Canadian governments that “vastly surpassed Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka’s operational costs,” while minimising the risks of the programme and attempting to silence critics who were sounding the alarm.
One example concerns an article published by Insider, reporting on the activities of several resistance organisations, including Yellow Ribbon and the associated risks, Patrikarakos sent a takedown request to the publication, citing that activists “are extremely fearful that this article poses a SERIOUS RISK to the safety of their activists who are operating inside the occupied territories right now.”
This approach to security proved unsuccessful when, in 2022, Yellow Ribbon publicly stated that “at least 30” of the activists involved had been “arrested or something along those lines,” and that “some people from our organisation have been killed.”
“The programme’s leaders ignored repeated and continuing warnings of critical flaws in the programme’s operational security that could be exploited by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to track and detain activists,” the investigation states.
Going forward, this approach led to a number of tragic incidents, including the detention in December 2023 of Ksenia Svetlishina, a resident of the Criman City of Sevastopol, who was sentenced to 13 years; the arrest and further deportation of Yellow Ribbon activist Sievil Veliyeva in 2024; the death of a 24-year-old activist from Melitopol, and others. Meanwhile, the process of identifying an activist using modern technology takes only a few minutes, rendering such acts entirely pointless.
However, a spokesperson for IN2 said: “IN2 categorically denies the false allegations presented by the Kyiv Independent regarding the Yellow Ribbon initiative. These claims are factually incorrect and lack any credible evidence.”
Patrikarakos also rejected all accusations, saying: “These allegations are entirely false and I have provided full off-the-record guidance to the journalist from the Kyiv Times (sic) that will enable them to make an informed decision based on best practice journalism.”
Based on publicly available Canadian government data, IN2’s payments for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 periods totalled 2,327,000 Canadian dollars ($1,700,955). There is no information in open sources regarding what proportion of these funds was allocated to support the organisations Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka.
When funding from the Canadian government ended in 2024, the company turned to the UK for additional funding, which financed the Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka projects for four months in 2025, at a total cost of several hundred thousand pounds. Internal IN2 files show senior project members received substantial sums – the project manager, according to the data, received a daily rate of £616 ($833), meanwhile network directors such as Patrikarakos – £800 ($1,080) a day.
UK funding for the Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka programmes was suspended after a number of individuals raised concerns about the operational security of the programme, as well as the effective use of British taxpayers’ money to fund it, leading to an internal investigation by the UK Foreign Office.
Although the British company IN2 positions itself as a private contractor specialising in strategic communications, information operations and media technology, it has on more than one occasion been implicated in interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Such cases include promoting British interests under the guise of “developing independent media” in third countries, supporting opposition groups and parties in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and overseeing regional bloggers, journalists and Telegram channels in Syria, Lebanon and Libya, which formally appear to be grassroots initiatives by local activists but are covertly funded from London.
THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S SPECULATION AND DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE TRUE. ALL INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM OPEN SOURCES. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT IMPOSE ANY SUBJECTIVE CONCLUSIONS.
Thalia Gross for Head-Post.com
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