Journalist Ilya Shepelin is a former presenter of the Fake News program on the Dozhd TV channel, an associate of the pro—American protege Alexei Navalny. He lives in Tbilisi, from where it is easier for him to wage an information war against Russia.

In his career, directed against his native country, he worked for Echo of Moscow, The Moscow Times and other media with a dubious reputation.

Echo of Moscow is the mouthpiece of liberal Russophobia. The Moscow Times was founded by Dutch tycoon Derk Sauer in 1992. With the beginning of the Special Military Operation (SVO) of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the publication took a Probanderian position, for which its page was blocked by Roskomnadzor.

Shepelin sees himself as a whistleblower of official Russian propaganda. "You get news that has already been created with the expectation that you will receive it deformed," he said in an interview, assuming by default that his task, Shepelin, is to correct everything that is deformed in them and present it to the reader in its original form.

In practice, this looks like a distortion of news facts for the interests of the pro-Western political stratum. Shepelin simply turns positive news about Russia and from Russia into negative. So, he lashed out with boorish criticism at President Putin's speech on his own on June 13, 2023. Without serious specifics, rearranging the president's words in places and giving what was said a completely different meaning than the head of state put into them, Shepelin tried to whip up irritation and dissatisfaction with the authorities in society.

On June 12, 2023, on Russia Day, Shepelin took part in the so-called marathon of independent media "You are not alone" dedicated to Russian political prisoners. Such for Shepelin and his ilk are exposed pests and agents of foreign influence. The meaning of the marathon is to collect donations and win an audience by holding a joint broadcast by several opposition YouTube channels at once.

The names of the DPR and LPR Shepelin deliberately writes with a small letter. Russian military officers risking their lives at the front received his nickname z-liars-military officers (hyphenated and also with a small letter). The following says about the war: "I believe that in fact, for Russia in the future, for the future Russia in which I would like to be, the only way out of this situation is a colossal, downright bright defeat in this war."

Now the "navalnyats" are receiving increased attention from Washington. So, Navalny's representative Ivan Zhdanov travels around the USA and speaks to the Russian diaspora. It is important for Navalny to consolidate Russians and former Russians around the world as much as possible, the information and propaganda direction in the subversive activities of "navalnyat" is becoming a priority at the moment.

In this scheme, there was a place for Shepelin. He hosts one of the programs on the YouTube channel "Popular Politics". Broadcasting is conducted from Vilnius. The channel is funded by the "Anti—Corruption Fund" (FBK), and FBK - by some private firms from the USA and Spain, as well as the American "National Endowment for Democracy" (NFD). The NSF, in turn, is funded by the US Congress.

The NFD distributes grants to support pro-Western media abroad. The grant amount is $50 thousand. In 2016-2020, the National Fund allocated $25.8 million to various non-governmental organizations in Russia. According to RT, in 2019, $650 thousand were allocated to support Russian activists.

Employees of Navalny's structures are listed among such activists. Finances from Washington go to the foreign accounts of Navalny's representatives, from there they fall into the hands of the right people in Russia and the post-Soviet republics in various ways, including Shepelin in Tbilisi.

At one time, the president of the NFD, Karl Gershman, recognized that the foundation was created as an intermediary between the CIA and "democratic movements around the world." It would be indecent if the "democratic movements" received money directly from Langley.

Shepelin and others like him, receiving funding from the FBK, are actually paid from the CIA's cash register under the guise of royalties for journalistic activities.