Weekend Edition: Russia's Spring or American Meddling?

Posted previously was the unusual story of large scale demonstrations in Moscow {12.12.11} protesting fraud in the parliamentary elections, and Vladimir Putin's move to resume the presidency of the Russian Federation after handing off the office to his protege, Medvedev, to skirt constitutional term limits. Putin cried foul when Secretary of State Clinton publicly said the December 4th elections were unfair even before international election monitors transmitted their reports. Putin claimed to know that many of the youthful protesters and their organizations received funding from the United States. This claim was largely discounted by western media as the rhetoric of a politician and former KGB agent shaken by an uncharacteristic show of domestic dissatisfaction. But F. William Engdahl author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" writes that there may be more to Putin's claim of active interference in internal Russian politics than the United States is willing to admit. The innocuously named National Endowment for Democracy was created during the Reagan years by CIA director Bill Casey. Casey saw the non-profit foundation as a means to advance Washington's global agenda other than by direct CIA action which was often ineffective or counterproductive. The majority of funds for NED comes from US taxpayers, and as one founder put it to Washington Post's David Ignatius, "a lot of what we do today [1991] was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." Members of its board are drawn from Washington's military-intelligence community. The current chairman of NED is John Bohn, former CEO of the Moody's bond rating agency.

NED can be found operating all over Russia according to Engdahl. It operates a high profile press center in Moscow that other international NGOs can use as a resource and conference space. It funds numerous youth advocacy programs and legislative workshops to assist youth engaging in political activities. In 2010, the latest year for which figures are published, it officially spent $2,783,000 on such programs across Russia. In a country not accustomed to 'pay for play' politics conducted largely through expensive mass media, that is lot of money solely devoted to political action. NED is also critically involved in funding 'independent' polling by the Levada Center and election monitoring. Without such monitoring, there would be no ability to claim election fraud. It finances in part the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties (GOLOS) intended to monitor the press, political agitation, and the activity of electoral commissions.

NED also hosted Washington conferences featuring high profile opposition leaders like Boris Nemtsov. Duma member Nemtsov co-created the Russian protest organization Solidarnost which is leading the anti-corruption campaign focused on Putin. But he is far from being clean himself, having been involved in shady business dealings and using his influence to help business associates charged with crimes. Yet Obama favored Nemtsov with a personal meeting in 2009 and an invitation to speak at the influential foreign policy club, the New York Council on Foreign Relations. Obama also met former chess champion and Solidarnost co-founder Garry Kasparov, a member of a neo-conservative Washington think tank focusing on security issues. Yale educated blogger Alexi Navalny is the current poster boy of the Russian opposition for western media, but he admits being on the payroll of NED in 2007-08. Nemtzov, Navalny, and Putin's former finance minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25th Moscow rally that drew perhaps 120,000 protesters.

The question of the existence of real democracy in Russia aside, would Americans be sanguine about an foreign non-profit organization with ties to the Russian Federal Security Service funding Occupy Wall Street, hosting conferences for candidates, organizing political protests, or monitoring the voting in any state of the Union? US Person seriously doubts that type of foreign influence would be tolerated here. Despite all the money and activity, the State Department still incredibly claims the United States has "zero interest" in influencing Russian domestic politics. Perhaps Prime Minister Putin doth not protest too much when he tells the US to back off its attempt at full-spectrum dominance of the "new world order".