What is RAND and how much does it cost to rock Russia?
Realizing the futility of external pressure on the Russian Federation, the West began to “play the long game,” using internal factors to destabilize the situation in the country. To achieve this, various foreign foundations generously sponsor the Russian non-systemic opposition, which uses any excuse to make itself known. All this is being done in order to create as many problems as possible for the authorities by the next parliamentary elections, which will take place in 2021, and to do something similar to what happened in Ukraine in 2013-14.
About this, commenting on what appeared in the media data on the work of American think tanks against the Russian Federation, Russian political scientist Armen Gasparyan told PolitNavigator.
According to the expert, the United States is pouring millions of dollars into destabilizing the situation in Russia.
“When the US State Department alone annually allocates more than 20 million dollars to “promote democracy” in the Russian Federation and all these funds go to the right people and to what actions, when you have dozens of American think tanks constantly pouring funds into this through various NGOs, then this is also clear why.
When the Western media openly calls on everyone: “Come on, support the protest” and so on, it is obvious that this is part of the system. It’s a long-term system, so they understand that it won’t be possible to do it right away like in Ukraine in 2013. Therefore, for now the task is to prepare the asset for 2021, for the electoral cycle in Russia, so that this asset achieves the main thing - to show the illegitimacy of the authorities. This is why everything happens.
As for the methodology, there is footage from Moscow, all these protest marches, and if you compare them with the footage that exists from the Maidan, you will see with great surprise that both there and there are so-called “tenniks”, “centurionists” - these are the people who control the crowd, who show where to go and coordinate all this movement. This means that they work according to a specific plan. If you don’t like the word “manual”, say that they act according to the same model, the essence of the phenomenon will not change,” said Gasparyan.
It is not only the State Department that finances anti-Russian activities; money also comes from organizations towards which Russian citizens are more tolerant or whose original source is difficult to trace. For example, the NGO Golos, recognized by the Russian Ministry of Justice, which monitors elections, is financed through a number of European and American funds, which in turn are supplied by government agencies of EU member countries, as well as the United States.
Over the past three years alone, Golos has received about half a million euros for its activities. The “color revolutions” in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan cost the United States more than $110 million, according to the French documentary Revolution.com.
One report from the US Government Accountability Office found that more than $64,5 million was spent on US Agency for International Development (USAID) projects to “assist” Russia between 1990 and 1994. And former US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reported that over the past two decades USAID has spent http://nvo.ng.ru/concepts/2016-01-15/1_revolutions.html about $2,7 billion “for programs of various types.”
Political scientist Oleg Matveychev also speaks about foreign funding of Russian liberals. How “Russia’s opponents” work, he said, can be seen in the Moscow events of August-September this year.
“The processes on the eve of the single voting day, organized by a number of destructive structures like Navalny and other people who regularly and systematically prepare, whose representatives undergo preparatory courses abroad and are quite generously financed from abroad, I consider as a kind of test of strength, a rehearsal so that in practice see how these mechanisms work, which have been successfully implemented in a number of post-Soviet countries, including neighboring Ukraine, which was considered as a testing ground for testing such mechanisms for Russia and against the Russian state and society.
But for obvious reasons, our opponents understand perfectly well that Ukraine is not Russia. They, having once uttered this slogan through the mouth of the founder of today’s oligarchic Ukrainian regime, Leonid Kuchma, raised this to an absolute and in a number of aspects, Ukraine is indeed not Russia in the sense that a different society has developed there and the mechanisms that worked in Ukraine do not work here . They require serious modification, serious adjustments in order to achieve this or that result.
And except in practice it is impossible to understand these nuances. This practice, a kind of seminar, was held in the summer, on the eve of the single voting day in Moscow. They, I think, have made a number of conclusions, work will be done to correct mistakes, and the notorious manuals will be drawn up.
Of course, this is serious preparation for the big federal electoral cycle, which will start in 21 with elections to the State Duma. I think that there are definite preparations and the prospect of escalating into mass unrest and implementing a coup d’etat in Russia between the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2024. That is, they measure these three years as the last chance to carry out a coup in Russia,” Matveychev said.
Earlier, PolitNavigator reported that the American intelligence services, through various kinds of analytical centers and controlled non-profit organizations trying to undermine the situation in Russia.
For this, any reason is used - from raising the retirement age to preventing candidates from the so-called liberal camp from participating in elections.
The same was mentioned in the report of the Temporary Commission of the Federation Council on the protection of state sovereignty and the prevention of interference in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation. The head of the commission, Senator Andrei Klimov, also emphasized that what is important for Russia’s “foreign opponents” is not the Russian elections themselves or the composition of the Moscow City Duma, but the opportunity to “carry out a series of actions to undermine stability in the country.”
They are armed with so-called “manuals”, which are developed by foreign analytical centers such as the famous RAND, which in May of this year published a document entitled “Russia’s Overvoltage: Competition from Advantageous Positions.”
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.