Russian Investigators See U.S. Funding Behind Putin Protests
March 11, 2016 — 7:16 AM EST
Updated on March 11, 2016 — 8:29 AM EST
Russia’s Investigative Committee said an opposition leader being checked for her role in the aftermath of anti-Kremlin protests in 2012 received foreign funding to instigate a so-called “color” revolution through mass unrest in Moscow.
Natalia Pelevine received more than $35,000 from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy in 2013 and 2014 to distribute to families of protesters convicted of attacking police during the Bolotnaya Square protest in the Russian capital, the committee said in a website statement Friday. During a search of Pelevine’s home on Thursday, police uncovered a pen with a hidden video camera that could be used to gather information illegally, the Investigative Committee said.
Seven people were jailed for what the authorities said was a mass riot at the Bolotnaya Square rally as the Kremlin moved to suppress the largest protest movement of Vladimir Putin’s rule. The demonstration took place a day before Putin’s inauguration as president for a third term in May 2012.
The opposition is coming under growing scrutiny as the ruling United Russia party gears up for parliamentary elections in September that may be its toughest test amid the country’s longest recession in two decades. Russians will go to the polls as they endure a second year of economic contraction after the collapse in oil prices. Incomes have dropped the most since Putin came to power in 2000 and the ruble lost more than half of its value against the dollar in the past two years.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-11/russian-investigators-see-u-s-funding-behind-anti-putin-protest
Pro-Democracy Nonprofit Is Banned in Russia
MOSCOW — A nonprofit that promotes democracy has become the latest American-linked group to be banned in Russia under restrictions on “undesirable” organizations signed into law by President Vladimir V. Putin in May.
The office of Russia’s prosecutor general on Thursday outlawed the nonprofit, the National Democratic Institute, claiming in a statement that the group posed “a threat to the foundations of Russia’s constitutional order and national security.”
The restrictions on so-called undesirable organizations are meant to limit the influence of outside groups in Russia and to prevent what the Kremlin worried might be a foreign-sponsored uprising against the government.
Russians are barred from working with organizations deemed to fall under the law, and the offices of such groups in Russia have been shut and their assets frozen. With the National Democratic Institute, five organizations have now been added to the list, all American-linked. They include the nonprofit National Endowment for Democracy, and the Open Society Foundations, a group founded by the billionaire George Soros to help countries make the transition from Communism. The MacArthur Foundation, which is based in Chicago and which awards grants for activities related to higher education, human rights and limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, closed its offices in Russia in July.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/world/europe/national-democratic-institute-banned-russia.html?_r=0
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