Leaked documents show a trip to Moscow was funded by a Swiss charity linked to the Russian president

Russia’s state-funded apparatus of “soft power” is directly targeting British politics.

An investigation by The Sunday Times has established that Russian expenses for trips have been granted to the leaders of organisations linked to two towering figures in the Conservative Party.

Robert Oulds, director of the Bruges Group — whose founder and first president was Margaret Thatcher — toured the Kremlin-funded “Donetsk People’s Republic” in eastern Ukraine.

In a video from the trip published by the Bruges Group, Oulds described the Ukrainian government as a “junta” and asked whether the enclave should further “expand its borders to, in a sense, liberate territory from the rule of Kiev”.

The Bruges Group produced a series of further videos and statements — some featuring senior Tory MPs —