Valdai financing in 2023 does look bad. But his 2015 talk "Why Ukraine is the West's fault" does not appear to have any financing and says the same already.

In 1993 he advocated for Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons:

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...

All is in line with his realist great powers philosophy (the 1993 analysis differs of course because there was no significant NATO expansion yet).

I'm sure he would take CNN money, too, but they don't invite him. That is the problem if you isolate people.