From Russia to the far right: the shadowy forces challenging the NHS puberty blockers trial

When the anti-trans campaigner Keira Bell announced legal action against the NHS’s clinical trial of puberty blockers, she said the trial’s parameters must be “out in the open”. But she didn’t mention her legal moves are funded by a pressure group backed by Russian oligarchs and linked to the far right.

The case, which Bell is putting together alongside James Esses and the controversial Bayswater Support Group is backed by CitizenGO – a lobby group which campaigns against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights around the world, and is closely tied to the Kremlin and the Spanish far-right party Vox.

The group was founded in 2013 with financial backing traced back by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights to pro-Putin oligarchs Konstantin Malofeev and Vladimir Yakunin – evidence disputed by CitizenGO. It is the global wing of ultra-Catholic Hazte Oír, a organisation with direct ties to Vox, a far-right political party based in Spain. Vox advocates for mass deportations and to repeal a law on gender-based violence which it argues is discriminatory against men.

In May, CitizenGO pushed hard to help Donald Trump pass a tax and spending bill it claimed would permanently defund Planned Parenthood – a non-profit that is the largest provider of reproductive healthcare in the US. In the same month it campaigned against a WHO treaty that aims to prepare the world against future pandemics, and in September it organised an online campaign against moves by the Kenyan government in support of LGBTQ+ rights.

CitizenGO’s accounts show it received donations totalling over $7m last year – its highest reported revenue in a decade, and $2m increase since 2023. An undercover investigation from Good Law Project has revealed that the organisation is actually expanding its operations in the UK.

At the anti-abortion March for Life in September, a CitizenGO staff member told a Good Law Project reporter posing as a member of the public that the team in the UK has increased from two to seven members of staff since 2023.

The group is moving beyond its usual online petition work to fund legal cases, the staffer said, adding “I’m like, we have good income, let’s put it to good use!”

CitizenGO’s global campaigns manager Caroline Farrow has a long history of attacking reproductive rights in the UK, as well as promoting anti-trans views. When Farrow posted in 2022 about having her life “dominated by insane trans rights activists”, JK Rowling replied “Big love to you xxx”.

Farrow has also posted on social media about “swarthy” men and recently described Reform UK as “the true conservative party” and “willing to defend life, family, freedom and compassion”.

Farrow insisted that her work is “grounded in long-established beliefs about the dignity of human life and the importance of safeguarding children” and rejected the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights evidence that CitizenGO is backed by Russian oligarchs.

“CitizenGO has never received funding from those individuals or any ‘Russian oligarchs’,” Farrow said.

According to Good Law Project’s trans rights lead, Jess O’Thomson, the ties between the anti-trans movement and the global far right have been clear “for a long time”.

“Everyone should be concerned about the potential dark money funding behind this intervention,” O’Thomson said, “which poses a threat not just to trans rights, but British democracy. This challenge to the puberty blocker trial is part of an attempt to eradicate gender-affirming care in the UK, with a wider extremist agenda in mind.”

Author and journalist Sian Norris, who has reported extensively on anti-gender groups, told Good Law Project that movements like CitizenGO tend to be “very canny at working out what issue will work out well for them” in different countries.

In the UK, because abortion has wide public support, “anti-gender campaigners and their allies in the far right have focused much of their energy on campaigning against trans rights, and events such as drag queen story hours,” said Norris. Terms such as “indoctrination” and “sexualisation” of children are then used, she continued, alongside “gender ideology” – a term which came from the Vatican in the 1990s in opposition to women’s rights – with the aim of winning support and ultimately going after other gender rights such as abortion.

Bell is still waiting for permission to intervene in the puberty blockers trial. It’s not clear if the High Court will allow a challenge backed by Russian oligarchs and the far right to proceed.

Keira Bell did not respond to our requests for comment.

• This article was updated on 7 January 2026 to include responses from Caroline Farrow. She clarified the status of CitizenGO’s operations in the UK and disputed evidence of Russian links from the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. We also removed a mention of Farrow’s arrest in 2022 – she said that this was a wrongful arrest and that Surrey Police paid damages in November 2025.