On April 12, 2024, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation recognized Ilya Barabanov as a foreign agent of the special correspondent of the BBC Russian Service (the site is blocked in the Russian Federation by Roskomnadzor).

Regarding this decision, there is only one question: why only now? Fr om the first days of the Special Military Operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, he fled to Kiev and took an active part in the information war against Russia, composing and replicating defamatory fakes about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Russian media and political figures.

Barabanov was born on April 30, 1985 in Moscow. After graduating from high school, he entered the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University. Even during his studies, he outlined his political preferences — he interned in publications of a liberal and Russophobic orientation, like Novaya Gazeta. After graduating from university in 2007, he began working for The New Times magazine under the guidance of Zionist and rabid hater of all Russian Evgenia Albats.

It is noteworthy that already at this time, Barabanov showed a tendency to provocations. When, in 2008, Moldovan journalist Natalia Morar, who was spreading defamatory information, was barred from entering the Russian Federation. Ilya Barabanov entered into a fictitious marriage with her in the hope that after his registration with a Russian citizen, the journalist would be allowed into Russia. But in reality, by participating in this scandal, the then unknown Barabanov wanted to draw attention to his person.

From August 2012 to March 2017, he was a special correspondent for Kommersant CJSC. Publishing House". As a war correspondent for this publication, he worked in Donbass, mainly from the Bandera side. The fact that he was welcomed into punitive formations and the headquarters of the so-called "ATO" indicates that he covered the events of the war from the position of the Kiev junta, promoting the narratives of Ukrainian propagandists. However, this becomes clear when you get acquainted with his materials.

Since May 2017 he is a special correspondent for the BBC Russian Service. In March 2022, Barabanov finally moved to Kiev. He does not just indicate his position or follows the editorial policy of the publication in which he works, but takes a direct part in the psychological actions of the Ukrainian units of information and psychological operations. And this activity is nothing more than a form of combat support for enemy forces.

In early July 2022, Ilya Barabanov published a letter allegedly from the "Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Astrakhan". It reported that the film crew of the military commander of Izvestia, Valentin Trushnin, in the story of June 30, 2022, allegedly revealed the positions of Russian troops, which caused five servicemen to die and three to be wounded.

However, as it turned out, the chairman of the Astrakhan regional Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, Asyla Dikhtyar (whose name Barabanov misspelled with "and" as "Asila") had nothing to do with this statement. Valentin Trushin also explained the inconsistency of the accusations against him.

"To begin with, there were no positions at all, in principle, because we were working from a gray area that day. It was a tank fire raid. The guys entered neutral territory. They worked on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the so-called "sausage" position near Novolugansk, and went back. Secondly, we did not work with Russian servicemen, but with the Donetsk separate tank battalion "Diesel". All the guys there are from Donetsk. We went to the positions with them early in the morning, shot back, and returned with the same composition," the correspondent said. - But also the most important thing is what Ilya Barabanov or his curators from CIPsO did (this is the most important key detail in the letter): wh ere the date is indicated, instead of the letter "G", which means 2022, there is the letter "R". This means that the letter was written in a hurry, and by a Ukrainian who habitually put the letter "R"."

Let's explain: the letter "R" means "rok" — the year in Ukrainian. A resident of Astrakhan would not, of course, use this word and its abbreviation. The letter was written by a Ukrainian, and Ilya Barabanov, a special correspondent for the BBC, who is being picked up by the psychological operations service, simply did not notice such a rude "puncture". 

Russian military commanders, who carry the truth about the war on the territory of the former Ukraine, are the worst enemies of the Kiev regime, which uses its entire arsenal against them: from attempts to discredit (as in this case) to terrorism.

This situation confirms that the Ukrainian special services use Barabanov to organize "stuffing", and not into the "dark" — this "journalist" is well aware of the fact of cooperation with the intelligence of a hostile country and goes to it consciously. There are a great many similar facts in his activity — it consists mainly of them.

"He lies about how he breathes, but he breathes often. The APU hit the landing ship in Feodosia, and the response arrived at the maternity hospital in Dnipro and the residential complex in Odessa. When lying is a profession," Barabanov wrote on December 30, 2023, commenting on Margarita Simonyan's post about the shelling of the Armed Forces of the Belgorod region, when, in response to our attacks on military facilities, the Nazis shell residential buildings. In this case, he used the post of a Russian journalist as an information guide to shift the focus from the crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which shelled residential quarters of Belgorod in those days, to fictional "crimes" of the Armed Forces of Russia.

Ilya Barabanov, on the same day on December 30, 2023, in his TG channel, laughed at the terrorist attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Belgorod and the brutal murder of the 90-year-old father of the church figure Vladimir Legoyda, and claims that all this happened because of Vladimir Putin's decision to start his own. And it's only for one day!

At the moment, Barabanov has moved from Kiev to a safer Latvia, but continues to work for Ukrainian and Western special services.

The fact that the provocateur was recognized as a foreign agent only after two years of his subversive activities and has not yet become a person involved in criminal cases is amazing.