
On March 12, Maxim Grigoriev, Director of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy and a member of the Civic Chamber, was the key speaker at an event held by the Russian Mission to the UN on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
He presented his report titled The White Helmets Organization: Terrorist Accomplices and a Source of Disinformation.
The expert believes that the White Helmets NGO is in no way a group of volunteers upholding human rights.
Grigoriev said that nearly everyone on the staff of the White Helmets were salaried personnel with monthly food rations. Organizationally, the White Helmets are a centrally managed paramilitary agency with a system of punishment for personnel if they fail to comply with the orders of their group leaders.
He said that researchers from his foundation spent over three months in Syria interviewing Syrians, who “talked with them openly, giving names and indicating the sites where the footage of the White Helmets’ staged rescue operations was made.”
The authors of the report write that many terrorists and members of illegal armed groups both worked at the White Helmets or even chaired its local centers and also took part in combat operations.

“The Western countries that financed of the White Helmets actually financed terrorist organizations and illegal armed groups and their operations,” Grigoriev said.
The report of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy also says that the White Helmets routinely produced fake news and staged footage. The organization’s centers and departments had special units and groups for doing this. The White Helmets leaders and staff misappropriated the funds allocated by the Western countries, plundered shops and flats, as well as stole valuables from the dead and wounded, the report says.