USAID is experiencing reincarnation and remains in Russia?
After the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia Alexander Lukashevich notified the American side that USAID ceased operations on the territory of the Russian Federation from 1 in October of the current year, this decision of the Russian authorities caused controversy in society. It is difficult to call a broad debate, because the number of ardent supporters of the indispensable continuation of work in Russia of the US Agency for International Development is quite correlated with the number of those who were somehow interested in the kind of assistance from representatives of this agency. But the number of people who understand that the activities of an American organization that pushes the interests of the American government on the territory of Russia can hardly meet the interests of Russia itself by several orders of magnitude more. Alexander Lukashevich, explaining the reasons that official Moscow decided to close the USAID shop, said that the nature of this organization’s activities did not respond to questions of bilateral assistance from the United States and Russia, and in some regions also contributed frank discord. Lukashevich said that the USAID representatives practically openly tried to influence the course of political processes in the Russian Federation, and the activities of the agency in the North Caucasus caused, to put it mildly, a lack of understanding among official Moscow. Obviously, here we are talking about the fact that in the North Caucasus, the notorious organization Memorial, which (among many) received funding from USAID, conducted an active policy for several years. Representatives of Memorial themselves declare that at the closure of the Russian representation of USAID, the Russian people and, in particular, the peoples of the North Caucasus will suffer more. According to Oleg Orlov, Memorial used money from the United States to conduct activities in the North Caucasus region aimed at combating torture by law enforcement officials, bureaucratic corruption, and kidnapping.
It is clear that such an acceptor organization, such as Memorial, would like to prevent the withdrawal of its main donor, USAID, from Russia (of course not with its own will), but when you consider that the legal activities of Memorial in the North Caucasus were carried out not a single year, why are the results of this work not visible? People both disappeared in a whole number of republics of the Russian Caucasus and turned out to be recruited by international terrorists, and disappear; corruption among the officials here is such that multi-volume works can be written on this subject. It turns out that either the activity of “Memorial” in its legal field under the patronage of USAID should be admittedly unsuccessful, or it will be a question to ask: did the “memorialists” involved by human rights activist Oleg Orlov speak about that? ..
In general, USAID seems to be leaving, and its Russian chicks, left without parental warmth and a worm in its beak, now open their beak wider and wider. And this is understandable, because when people conducted their “human rights” activities not with their hard-earned funds, but with the money of their “older brother,” their dissatisfaction is very easily explained.
Interesting thoughts about the lengthy work of such an organization as USAID in Russia, and it has already worked since 1993, said State Duma deputy, member of the United Russia faction Vladimir Burmatov. According to his statements, the American organization used its rather stable position in Russia plus financial resources in order to seriously influence the growth of the radical opposition movements in the country. Burmatov, in particular, said that over the past year alone, the organization, let's say, has invested about 135 million dollars in Russia. “Investments” at the same time were very interesting ...
After such words, many opponents accused in absentia of United Russia itself that it received a certain part of the money from the American agency for the implementation of its projects. They say, why are you from the stands of the non-systemic opposition you throw mud at the mud, but you keep quiet about your party, Mr. Deputy. But Burmatov, speaking specifically about the active support by USAID of Russian zealous oppositionists, was not at all deceitful. This is easily explained if you look at the total cost estimate of USAID published by Kommersant. It says that USAID spent 2011 a million dollars on Russia for 127,6 for the year, and 55% of these funds went to the so-called promotion of “democratization” and control over the observance of human rights. The remaining 45% were distributed in certain proportions between projects to combat tuberculosis and AIDS, help orphans in the development of educational programs, as well as assistance to people with disabilities. It turns out that USAID had to finance United Russia either solely in terms of fighting the diseases of the Russians and supporting unprotected people, or teaching United Russia how to democratize Russia correctly ...
Suppose funding went to help the very orphans reported by Kommersant. However, due to the fact that the author of the material has had to work with such children for a long time, it can be said that during all this time not a single ruble of funding from educational institutions on behalf of USAID has been received. Has “United Russia” simply appropriated American money for itself and kept silent about their origin when financing Russian educational projects? This is highly unlikely, if only because USAID itself would shout the loudest that it was it that helped orphans in Russia in terms of obtaining the necessary education. After all, who will miss the opportunity to get points when using the phrase "helping orphans"? ..
But USAID was silent and silent, which means that if in this regard the American agency financed someone, then definitely not “United Russia” and definitely not state educational institutions ...
Suppose that United Russia received “mad” money from the Americans for “democratization,” which deputy Burmatov allegedly kept silent about. To understand that the money really was, but for tens of millions of dollars, they clearly do not pull, it is enough to turn to the LiveJournal of one of the main Russian “non-systemists” Boris Nemtsov. With his publications, he confirms the fact that if “ER” received money from USAID, then this money was intended to work for USAID itself. In particular, Boris Efimovich writes in his blog that USAID financed United Russia in 2011 the following way: she helped translate the franchising handbook to the participants of the Seliger forum in Russian and hold a round table discussion on the activities of foreign NGOs. Here, in fact, all the funding by USAID of United Russia ... If we consider that in just 2011 a year, the American agency spent the same 127,6 (or 135, according to Vladimir Burmatov) millions of dollars on Russia, how much, I wonder did it take to translate a small book and organize round-table gatherings? .. Obviously, such funding can be called ridiculous compared to the very 70 millions of dollars that flowed into the most active Russian opposition members in the 2011. By the way, the more the flow of these funds was, the more active were the oppositionists, and as soon as the flow began to weaken, so the vigor of the opposition marches also began to decline.
It turns out that USAID financed United Russia somehow quite modestly. And there is an explanation for this: if the US agency defiantly provided financial assistance exclusively to “non-systemists” and foundations, under whose wing many of them worked, then USAID's activity would have long been suspicious. And so, it seems, everything is extremely clear: both by “our own” and “alien”, but only by our own “marshists”, “invaders-invaders” tens or even hundreds of times more. Like Markin, just a round table, like Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov and other acceptors, so a whole “March” of whole “millions” (on one white ribbons a million “greens” were let down - this is not a Russian translation of the brochure).
An interesting statement about the closure of USAID allowed himself to be made by the American Ambassador, Michael McFaul. In particular, he stated that he regretted the closure of the agency, was proud of his activities (and the author’s comment), and would also help all employees who will be dismissed from the USAID Russian office find a job. It would seem to be quite regular phrases, but McFaul is considered to be the chief ambassador-newsmaker in Russia, because he didn’t stop at what he said. The diplomat said that he would try to find a job with all the abbreviations in the ... US embassy in Moscow. So that's it ... It turns out that in fact, USAID does not leave Russia anywhere, it just goes under the full wing of Mr. Ambassador's warm wing in order to have diplomatic immunity from all claims of the Russian authorities and Russian society.
It turns out that our oppositionists wept out of system early, mourning the timeless departure of USAID, because there was a superhero who would cover this organization with a superhero cloak from assaults ... Let's hope that the obvious subversive activities of USAID will get in this forbidden tower, in the windows of which you can see tense profile of the American ambassador ...
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